The Man Who Couldn't Blog

Tree_Cartin

2012-01-24T10:56:00.000-08:00

15) tree_bro's twitter feed

Apparently this young man passed a few days ago.

I was mildly—massively—obsessed with it all yesterday (Monday, the 23rd of January, 2012) and was able to find an obituary, piece together a cause of death from what others were saying, learn about a strange incident from tree_bro's real life, find out about his drug/alcohol problems, discover a wing of very talented writers with a very odd and very funny sensibility who had all found one another—and who all had, it seems, discovered this voice/tone/discipline as a consequence of Twitter's constraints.*

It's a style I've played around with but am not sure if I have managed to pick up yet. (Not on my own twitter feed, which is mostly an extension of my more formal/longer writing and another hub for my own online social life, but on an anonymous account that I won't link to here, but assume some people might already know is mine.) But I'm working at it.

***

16) Making Word: Ryan Trecartin as Poet & Sexts from Patricia Lockwood by Brian Droitcour

I found the Ryan Trecartin article a few days ago and—being undecided on Ryan Trecartin—thought I should read it to find out if it made me less undecided on Ryan Trecartin. I am happy to report that it sort of did.

I like Patricia Lockwood as a poet and I like her as a Twitter user. I'm fond of this particular series and am happy Brian Droitcour decided to gather them in one place like this.

An interesting sidenote to all this is that I read the Sexts piece today and the Trecartin piece a few days ago, but did not look at the Trecartin piece's byline until I sat down to make a note about it for this reading journal. So it is only now I am realizing that one person was responsible for both.

SPECULATION: I discovered the Trecartin piece by following a link from Patricia Lockwood's Twitter feed. Unable to verify. Maybe didn't.

***

17) Momus interviewed by Marie Calloway

Nice job, Marie. Enjoyed this very much.

A friend asked me recently about the interviews I do (for Hobart, for HTML Giant) because she wanted to do a few for her own blog. She was thinking of asking her friends some questions about their creative work, and wondered how I had gotten into asking writers about writing. If maybe I'd read a book.

I have not. I studied journalism briefly, but found that I didn't care being told to go out and ask people a bunch of nosy questions.

When I started interviewing authors, though, I was interviewing friends or writers who were—to my mind—contemporaries. Other "internet" writers. People who published on the same journals I had. And though there have been a couple of exceptions, most of the people I've interviewed have been people I had some sort of prior relationship with.

And, frankly, I think the interviews are better because of it. Interviews have a certain structure to them, and fall into familiar patterns. There are certain questions that are simply "the questions one is bound to ask." When one has a long-standing relationship with the interviewee, I think it becomes possible to adapt those familiar questions, to find new and interesting ways for those questions to be posed, and to find new and interesting sub-questions within them.

(I mention all this because I am aware that Calloway and Momus have known each other for a little while. It shows in the interview. In all the right ways.)

***

* In the future, we will all be stalkers for fifteen minutes.

Hands

2012-01-17T11:55:00.000-08:00

It's been a slow few days for reading. I'm in the middle of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (9), and am struck by the hands in the book. There are hands everywhere. Heads held in hands (3 or 4 times). Hands thrust in pockets (4 or 5 times). Trembling hands. (So much trembling. So many hands.) And descriptions of hands.

From "Hands,":

"Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back, came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery of expression."

From "Paper Pills,":

"The knuckles of the doctor’s hands were extraordinarily large. When the hands were closed they looked like clusters of unpainted wooden balls as large as walnuts fastened together by steel rods."

From "Mother,":

"Her long hands, white and bloodless, could be seen drooping over the ends of the arms of the chair."

From "The Philosopher,":

"The saloon keeper was a short, broad-shouldered man with peculiarly marked hands. That flaming kind of birthmark that sometimes paints with red the faces of men and women had touched with red Tom Willy’s fingers and the backs of his hands."

From "Respectability,":

"He took care of his hands. His fingers were fat, but there was something sensitive and shapely in the hand that lay on the table by the instrument in the telegraph office."

From "Loneliness,"

"'...I wanted to touch her with my fingers and to kiss her. Her hands were so strong and her face was so good and she looked at me all the time.'"

From "The Untold Lie,":

"Ray, who was the more sensitive and always minded things more, had chapped hands and they hurt. He put them into his coat pockets and looked away across the fields."

From "Drink,":

"For five years she scrubbed the floors in an office building and then got a place as dish washer in a restaurant. Her hands were all twisted out of shape. When she took hold of a mop or a broom handle the hands looked like the dried stems of an old creeping vine clinging to a tree."

From "Death,":

"'There was always paint on his hands and face during those days and he smelled of paint."'

We spend an awful lot of time on faces. We spend our time staring at, glancing quickly at, studying, reading emotion from, searching for duplicity within, making up our minds about someone based upon the details of, etc., etc., the face.

But faces, and voices (their partners in crime) spend a lot of time lying. Or convincing. Or seducing.

Watch the hands. Hands over to help you up, and hands hold knives that are about to get stuck in your belly, and hands steal your wallet while a face gives you gentle, innocent eyes.

I think that's why Anderson spends so much time on hands. You can, as a writer, fill faces and words with lies, and then pack all this truth in hands.

Also probably worth mentioning: when one is a certain kind of person (and this is often true of writers) one spends a lot of time trying to look into the faces of people who aren't looking at them, and one spends a lot of time avoiding the direct gaze of people and instead doing a very thorough investigation of their hands.

***

10) Andrew Sullivan on Obama

"And the only way out of that deadlock is an electoral rout of the GOP, since the language of victory and defeat seems to be the only thing it understands."

***

11) Jay Caspian Kantor on Kobe Bryant & 12) Greg Monroe, possibly the only thing about the Pistons worth being hopeful about

My girlfriend and I moved into a place together a couple of months back. The hardest part has been trying to find a way to blend the book collections of two professional book sellers. Her solution has been to accept every bookshelf we've been offered. Mine has been to slash and burn my way through my collection, selling and giving away the last decade of contemporary "literary" fiction. (I have, if you are interested, lots of books I'd be happy to give you/trade with you for something other than books (film for my cameras? baked goods? something else? whatcha got to offer? Lots of story collections. Drop me a line. Read slash love the books, and I'll be happy.)

One thing about the place is that it is incredibly dry. Because it is dry, we both spend our evenings snoring at each other.

It's been a long time since I had a roommate. Of course, this is a bit different. But not entirely. One of the last roommates I had would—from another room—spend the night quietly (and sometimes loudly) snoring at me as I quietly (and sometimes loudly) snored back. That was also in a fairly dry apartment. So dry, I spent the first month waking up with a nosebleed. There have been blood spots on the pillows, but nor serious, early-morning nosebleeds.

So, anyway, a lot of the time I spent hanging out with the snoring-from-the-other-bedroom roommate was spent watching professional basketball.

Which I had never really done prior to that living situation.

Now I sometimes just wish I was watching basketball when I'm not.

***

12) Rachel Aviv reviews The Church of Scientology

***

13) Tom Bissell on the making of "Madden NFL"

***

UPDATE:

14) Blog Post 2012 by Adam Robinson

Can't believe I forgot to include this in my journal of Favorite Reads over the last few days.

I did a reading with Edward Mullany last night, and we talked a little about our friend (and publisher) Adam Robinson. And this HTML Giant post about disc golf. And books. And H0bart's upcoming Luck issue.

—Speaking of Hobart, Elizabeth Ellen has a book called Fast Machine coming out soon. There are many reasons why I'm excited about this. Here's one: I'm really glad she's finally calling a book Fast Machine. When Before You She Was A Pitbull was in process, and she was coming up with a title, and Fast Machine was one of the options, I thought it was the one to go with. I like Before You She Was A Pitbull just fine. I really love the title Fast Machine. I'm not sure why.—

Mullany is quite nice and his book (15) in the next couple of days; not finished yet) is pretty damn good. The lines are concise. The language is direct. But it's all deceptively simple. He has a wonderful prose poem called "Important," which describes hearing about a famous painter who "would've been 100 today." Dead and yet still, on certain news reports, still worthy of having his birthday marked.

I asked Mullany about the poem. Specifically, what was it that weighted that moment—the moment where you hear someone mark a dead man's birthday—to the point that it became worthy of poetic consideration. His answer: the ambiguity of it. The fact that it is sort of funny and also somber. The way it shuttles back and forth between meanings in one's mind. And in that way, begins to transcend its two possible interpretations. The way it lives as both things at once.

Here's a song for you:

Later.

Toklas

2012-01-09T08:58:00.000-08:00

Reading journal continues.

3. The Elder Scrolls wiki page for Breton (Skyrim)

I picked a Breton character sort of at random when I created a character for Skyrim. Mentioning I was a Breton to a friend—who was also in the midst of a Skyrim campaign—he said, "Oh, the half-elves."

I wasn't sure how he knew that. I didn't remember reading anything about it on the character creation screen. Befuddled, I went to the internet and found confirmation.

***

4. Murder in the Kitchen by Alice B. Toklas

Two notable things about this long essay on Alice B. Toklas's education as a cook and her relationship to food.

1) The recipes are provided in a more narrative form than one gets from a contemporary cookbook. There is no ingredient list prefacing the description of the cooking of each dish. No number of steps or multi-paragraph format to break the steps up for ease of use in the kitchen. She writes about cooking a dish the way she learned about cooking a dish. She stood and watched the dish being made. She relays what she saw happening. She tells the story of the making of each dish. She does not always tell the reader how much of a certain thing is needed in the dish. (This ambiguity is most common when she talks about butter. Butter, it seems, does not come in exact amounts for Alice B. Toklas in the kitchen. Butter is in "large pats," or "a lot of"s. Which makes sense. It's butter. Butter is too important to be measured. It just needs to be there. In large amounts.)

2) Gertrude Stein is always referred to by her full name in the book. She appears throughout, but is never diminished as "Gertrude," and never honored as, "Ms. Stein." She is, always, "Gertrude Stein." Like butter. Always there and always in large amounts, but never entirely quantified. Driving their many (named) cars. Eating and conversing with Alice. (Never are the details of any of their conversations relayed.) Finding mushrooms. Though Toklas is the lens through which we experience everything in the book, Stein is the foundational figure. She looms in the book.

Which, really, is something Getrude Stein does anyway. So it seems appropriate.

****

5 & 6. The Wikipedia page for Alice B. Toklas & Gertrude Stein

Just to refresh my memory.

***

7. The Allmusic review of Funeral at the Movies by Shudder to Think

Funeral at the Movies is significant probably because it includes the first version of "Red House," on of Shudder to Think's best songs. It's relevant here because it includes the song that gives the album its title:

You can sort of hear Craig say, "What a beautiful day for a funeral," at the beginning of the song in the video embedded above. The source of that line is the 1968 Peter Sellers comedy "I Love You Alice B. Toklas," which has its charms, if you're into that sort of thing.

I quite like this record, and disagree with the lukewarm review offered by the Allmusic reviewer. (I admit, though, it is not as good as Get Your Goat, or Shudder to Think's major label debut, Pony Express Record.

[And how about Pony Express Record? During that weird moment in the '90s when major labels were reaching into the indie world and seemingly indiscriminately scooping up large handfuls of post-punk bands in hopes of finding another Nirvana, did any band respond with a more difficult {and beautifully weird} record than Pony Express Record? A lot of bands tried to alienate while they cashed in—tried to remain loyal to their loyalist—but no one fucked with the pop rock hegemony with the ease of Shudder to Think's Pony Express Record. {Let's not talk about 50,000 BC.}])

***

8. The Wikipedia page for the Cheesesteak

Read on my phone in a small (non-chain) restaurant in a mall that was serving something for Happy Hour (ALL DAY SUNDAY) they called "Cheesesteak Sliders," after my girlfriend and I returned ill-fitting Christmas sweaters. Needed to confirm that there are certain places where they believe the proper cheese on the cheesesteak is Cheez Whiz.

An annoyance: I tend to agree with the purists who insist a "slider" is not merely a way to refer to any small sandwich, but instead a small hamburger that is cooked on a griddle covered with a bed of onions.

*** ***

And here's what you probably want. (Note that this recipe apparently originated not with Alice, as it tends to be reported, but with Bryon Gyson:

HASCHICH FUDGE
(which anyone could whip up on a rainy day)

This is the food of Paradise—of Baudelaire's Artificial Paradises: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR. In Morocco it is thought to be good for warding off the common cold in damp winter weather and is, indeed, more effective if taken with large quantities of hot mint tea. Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter, ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost antything Saint Teresa did, you can do better if you bear t5o be ravished by un évanouissement réveillé.

Take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 avergae sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander. These should all be pulverized in a mortar. About a handful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds, and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of canibus sativa can be pulverized. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient.

Obtaining the canibus may present certain difficulites, but the variety known as canibus sativa grows as a common weed, often unrecognized, everywhere in Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa; besides being cultivated as a crop for the manufacture of rope. In the Americas, while often discouraged, its cousin, called canibus indica, has been observed even in city window boxes. It should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green.

Cheers.

Welcome to 2012

2012-01-06T10:55:00.000-08:00

I was thinking maybe this year I'd use the blog as a reading journal. But not just a reading journal wherein (or, maybe in this case it's "whereon," because things are in a bound journal, but on a website, right?) I mention all the things I read. Or maybe just all the really notable things I read?

Let's try this.

***

1. "Don't believe in writers block, but I do believe in analysis paralysis" by Reynard Seifert

I'd really like to read the book Reynard talks about here. Sounds fantastic.

***

2. "Necropolis Now" by Paul Constant

This is, so far, my favorite wrap-up of the weird, distressing, comic/tragic field of Republican candidates fighting to run against Obama in the 2012 election. Paul's a very funny writer and an astute political observer.

***

3. The Marbled Swarm by Dennis Cooper

This was great. Period was my favorite Dennis Cooper novel. Pretty sure The Marbled Swarm is now my favorite. Here are a couple of notes on aspects of the book.

NARRATOR: The glib charm of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley speaking like an overconfident Tristram Shandy. (Marbled page, marbled swarm?) Ripley tells readers his story because he knows there will be no consequences. Who the heck are we, anyway? To Ripley, the fictive world is real life, and the reader/audience is the imagined thing. So he can say what he wants. And yet, he feels the need to charm, to win his imaginary audience over. To win himself over? To tell his story to us (himself) in such a way that he convinces himself all is right and well and proper?

Shandy presents his evidence of the injustice of his life. But Shandy is not able to focus. Shandy builds, but he is an architect given to adding unnecessary reinforcements. Shandy says he was doomed from the beginning, wants to tell us all about the terrible injustices of his life, but he never seems to get to his life. He's easily distracted.

The Marbled Swarm's narrator is caught in the labyrinth of his own language. Enamored by a labyrinth of language built originally by his father. Trapped in a labyrinth of language built by his father. (Daedalus, Icarus? A bull-cocked driver named Azmir?) But he talks his way deeper and deeper into it, instead of out.

SETTING: On HTML Giant, I put up a quick, flip snippet: Setting is not character. Stop saying that. Blake Butler countered well. In his counter: "the tunnels & houses in the Marbled Swarm is a character".

Having read TMS now, though, I might respond: No. The labyrinthine setting is not the character here. The "maze" of them is only a maze because the character has a language that makes mazes out of everything. Out of sex, for example: "As I've mentioned, having sex is always new to me," he says late (very late) in the book. All sexual experiences, a new unexpected corridor. A sudden dead-end. A turn to a long, strange, unfamiliar, dizzyingly out-of-orientation hallway. The houses. The tunnels. The assholes. The mouths. The secret passages. They're all active and disorienting because the narrator only has access to his language, his "marbled swarm," to discuss them. And to think about them, too.

In his pre-language brain, the whole thing might make as much sense as: "This is meat. It may be human meat. It may be cow meat. It nourishes. I will eat it." (The book's cannibalism as the narrator's escape from the "marbled swarm"? Even though the cannibalism is also a result of the father's influence on the son? Doing double duty?)

PLOT: Read it. I'm not telling you anything about it beyond what I've revealed discussing the narrator and the setting.

A fine interview with Dennis by Mike Meginnis
A fine review by Ken Baumann

Recents

2011-11-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

Let's all together I'm sorry
Remove then the way it seems like ourselves
Talking about the then trying for left
Answer your way in the attack center of
Climb so much for never overthrow

Hell, what's the remember
Can't probably in the salt with
I'm coming over then have stamped
A kid with a end times holy right

***

***

Everything about this is wonderful:

***

Matthew Beard's book is out soon. Go to his Tumblr.

***

Recent tweets:

"Sort of a good news/bad news thing: I do not have pyrokinesis. #2hoursshoppingatIkea"

"Selling a jar of Sufjan Stevens' tears on eBay, but haven't met the minimum yet. Think maybe the market bottomed out 3 years ago."

"The Donkey Kong kill screen is actually an homage to the ending of 2001."

"I still like to imagine that the band Fishbone all live together in a haunted mansion on a hill."

"Hell is author people."

"Sometimes I think waitstaff will lean in and kiss my forehead when they hand me food, and then I feel disappointed."

vague

2011-08-08T14:53:00.000-07:00

Trouble is what it is. I think that. Like, once there was this guy who thought a lot was going right for him. Like, once that guy was moving in the right kind of direction, and moving in the right kind of direction made sense to him because he had himself access to this sort of inner wayfinder.

And he felt good about the inner wayfinder. It jazzed him up, and kept him moving and thinking all was okay and right with everything and, sure, he was going and moving and yes.

This all makes sense. Don't deny it. I know you are there claiming—at least internally or inside your head or two your spouse/partner—that this seems vague and, Hey Writer! Why all the sudden so vague?

All the sudden is what sticks with me. Like you and I have this longer-ish term relationship. It's not real, this longer-ish term relationship you think we're having. Not at all real. You are engaging with me and because I am a written series of words on a page, you are adding me to all the other written series's of words on pages that you have seen recently and also over the years. We are all rolling up together into a big ball in your mind that you are rolling around and around.

So, having all the way dispensed with that wierd whatever it is that is going on in your weird whatever head, I'll get back to my thing that I was saying before.

Wait. What was I saying before?

***

HBDKB.

inchworm

2011-08-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

You should listen to that way too loud.

***

That song used to really scare me. When I was little.

Now I'm bigger and I decided to slow it down a little so it would scare me a little again. Just a little.

Little is known.

Little more is about.

Little is lots bigger than it appears.

Right-o.

#h#a#s#h#t#a#g#w#r#i#t#e#r#s#

2011-07-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

Many of these appeared on Twitter late at night. I like them so I am putting them here, too:

Don Knotts walking down a long, empty hallway, one small tear hanging from his chin. #gustaveflaubert

Three chicken nuggets, on the floor, never ever to be picked up, even to be thrown away. #raymondcarver

You and I are in an Ultimate Frisbee game and there's a caribou running across the field. #tcboyle

The guy keeps digging and digging under his fingernails, and eventually he finds his mother's skin cells. #chuckpalahniuk

Words turned blue in a garment bag. #douglascoupland

"Pop Tart?" "No, I'm good." #flanneryoconnor

A horse backs up when a firecracker goes off and it steps on your toe and it breaks it. #markrichard

Everyone laughs when the ketchup bottle sputters. #davidsedaris

Certain the hitchhiker has a knife. Pick him up & figure if he pulls the knife, you are more than ready to drive into traffic. #barryhannah

Door's open. Walk through. Fall to your death. Turns out you forgot you were on a helicopter. #lydiadavis

Guy at a party talks bonobo sex lives and it's: interesting, boring, annoying, creepy, and then fucking fascinating again! #jonathanfranzen

Carpal tunnel syndrome from spending all summer practice-writing "Have a good summer," for next spring's yearbooks. #samlipsyte

(Fixed a couple of typos.)

***

TMWCB Classic

Pet (July '07)

We bought a dog made out of sand.

I know. Buying a dog made of sand. Bad idea.

We bought the dog made out of sand as a gift for our son.

I know. Having a child. Bad idea.

Our dog made out of sand liked to run in the backyard. And it howled at the squirrels in the trees. And it lounged on the couch next to anyone who lay down there. And it ate the dry kibble we fed it with enormous gusto.

In this way, our dog made out of sand was just like all the other dogs in the world.

We were unable to wash our dog made out of sand because when we did, we lost parts of him.

The first time we tried to wash him, we poured water over his paw and watched a bit of it melt away and spin down the bathtub drain. He walked with a limp until we went out to buy more sand from a hardware store and repaired the wound we had caused with water.

So we knew not to wash him ever again. And we never let him out in the rain.

When the rain came, our dog made out of sand howled at the sliding glass door. He wanted to go out. He wanted to run around in the rain and gallop through the wet grass. He wanted to roll in the puddles.

But we could not let him out. We did not want him to fall apart, piece by piece. We loved and wanted to protect our dog made out of sand.

Often, a story like this will end in a sad way. Often, a person who writes a story like this will decide that in the end, the dog made out of sand would somehow get out of the house in a rainstorm, and melt into the grass. There is a tradition in a story like this of sad endings.

One wonders, then, how I will end it.

***

This is my 4th favorite Tumblr.

There will soon maybe be an announcement about that guys Tumblr and something else.

***

Made you something

2011-07-11T16:33:00.000-07:00

I practically made this for you.

I mean, I practically did. Practically.

I made this part of it first, and when I looked at it, I thought of you.

I thought of you. I did. I swear.

I made this long part next, and while I wasn't really thinking about you while doing it, I was thinking about someone you know. It connects this long part to you in that way.

I made the part with the stuff on it while I was drinking a soda. And you like soda a lot. You always seem to be drinking soda. White sodas. Cola sodas. Root beer sodas. Green lime sodas. You and the sodas. So when I made this part and soda was involved, man that certainly seems to connect it to you.

There was a part here that I ripped off and threw in the garbage. And the thing is, I threw it in your garbage can. Remember that thing in the garbage? The thing you asked about? And I was evasive? Makes sense now, right?

That part there was an accident. Look away from it when you look at this thing. Pretend its not there. That's what I've been doing. Doesn't take long to get used to it. It gets easier.

I was thinking of blogging about the process of making this thing. But. Can't.

***

I like Twitter. I really do.

***

I have a new CLVRSKLL column.

Napkin. (A Man Who Couldn't Blog Classic.)

2011-07-05T16:15:00.000-07:00

from the early days, 8.26.05

It's very difficult to get a blog these days. They are scarce, rare as diamonds. And valuable. I would very much like to have a blog. On the blog I would blog. Every day I would sit down to blog on my blog. Yes, given the chance I would certainly love to verb on my noun.

But, alas.

I do not have a blog, because they are hard to find. You can't simply go online and sign up—free!—for a blog. What kind of a world would it be if you could, do you think? Pretty astonishing. It would be a wild and beautiful world if everyone of us could have a blog of our own. We'd all be so free and so very lucky if we could—every single one of us!—have a blog of our own.

But, alas.

I've no blog. Can't find one. Can't get one. And so, I write on napkins. Little, soiled napkins. I find them and I write on them. I write about how much I wish I could blog. I take soiled napkins from restaurants and bars and hotdog stands, and stick them in my pocket, and I bring them home with me. I take out a ballpoint pen, and I grab the napkins from the bottom of my pocket, and I write on them. And I take those napkins and drop them from my window. They fall into the alley behind my apartment. People pick them up and read them.

People like you. You standing there with this soiled napkin in your hand, reading.

***

Last night, I thought a lot about George Plympton. That's because last night was the night we in Seattle explode things in the air over water. And George Plympton—the great and powerful Plympton—loved more than most the act of exploding things in the air. (Sometimes over water.)

For George, here is a list of the fireworks in the Spinners, Wheels, and Wings category sold by Black Cat Fireworks:

4 Wheel Drive, Blow Your Top, Cat Eyes, Crackling Jumbo Ground Bloom, Disco Spinners, Dizzy Spell, Escape the Mothership, Extra Large Ground Bloom Flower, Green Hornet, Gyro Pyro, Hypno Spinner, Kamikaze, Solar Wind, Space Bugs, Spin City, Super Jumping Jacks, Surface to Air Missile, Tasmanian Devils, The Wacky Whistle Machine, Twister, Utter Chaos, Wailing Wheel, Wasp, Whirl Wind, Yellow Jacket.

***

Yes. I get to decide if something I wrote on this blog is a classic.

2011-06-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

this is goodbye or hello or something and i don't know what.

what?

Running again

2011-04-29T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hello again.

It's that time of year when I link to this story.

Which means it's that time of year when I ask if you might be able to donate a little money for breast cancer research. And to bribe you into giving money, I run a little.

But I know I do this every year. And because it keeps happening—and will keep happening for a while—I know you get a little fatigued by it.

So this year, let's have some additional bribes. Here's what we'll do.

I have a fairly small goal this year. $600. If I manage to make that goal, I'll go out with my Holgaroid:

and take a photo for everyone who donated. (And, as loathe as I am to do this, I'm going to ask that you at least donate $5 to be eligible. $5 is not bad, right?)

UPDATE : Due to film cost, though, I think I need to cap this to the first 12 donations. Sorry.

If I break $600—even by a dollar—I'll have a hardcover copy of A Jello Horse printed and everyone who donated will be entered into a drawing for it.

If I break $800, I'll have a hardcover copy of The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge printed and everyone who donated will be entered into a drawing for it.

If I break $1000, after the 5K, I will run the additional 5 miles home.

(Friends—if you would like to offer to donate another prize for this, please drop me a line.)

I would not be a published author right now if it weren't for a specific person. That person died very young. Breast cancer. So, once a year, I run.

Thanks.

Housefire

2011-04-05T13:37:00.000-07:00

HOW WE WILL SLEEP (A Distribution of Duties) on Riley Michael Parker's HOUSEFIRE.

***

Keep tripping over it. You see it there? In the road? I keep running along and tripping over it. Jesus.

What was it, you think? Bird, maybe? Insect?

Probably this was once a houseplant, and someone just threw the fucker off of the roof, and it landed here, and it got run over, and here we are. Look, though? Is that green? Is that a leaf? Does it breathe? Are we standing in its light?

Does it need us? Can it vote? Might it fly a little? Will you break its back?

Am I tired? Is this me, all docile and free? Can the sky call? Can we save it?

Can we blog about it?

***

Blake's book is now for you.

***

I don't know what this is, but I think it might be important later.

***

♥

2011-02-24T15:13:00.001-08:00

***

We trundle from place to place. Can you trundle? We can and must trundle.

From place to place.

Place.

To place.

Hi. So, then, when all is what is. Then what is what is?

Good question, Reginald! Good, good question.

Hark, and thus, such as we have been in and out respond a little til you think is all besides and haven't.

I'm not. I'm interested in and not. Return it. Reskin the fingers and reskin the toes. And stop with all the mess. And such.

Remove the fingers and remove the toes. Replace the fingers and replace the toes. Use pebbles. Use chicken fat. Respond in kind. Fall.

Are you falling now?

Good.

Trim a little farther away from. Stop the bottle up. Terminate.

***

I ♥ perspective!

golden baby diety

2011-02-07T15:03:00.000-08:00

Hi, then. I have wrote you two letters for one.

For two, why don't you read them?

THE SECOND LETTER IS REVEALED TO YOU

***

Books I've Read This Year (Ongoing)

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Toward You by Jim Krusoe
Field Guide by Robert Hass
The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball by FreeDarko

2011-01-25T17:54:00.000-08:00

***

Books I've Read This Year (Ongoing)

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Toward You by Jim Krusoe
Field Guide by Robert Hass

books and stuff

2011-01-11T14:14:00.000-08:00

Four Books You Should've Read Last Year But Can Read This Year If You Want:

The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich

Forecast by Shya Scanlon

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte

How They Were Found by Matt Bell

Those were four of my favorites. You should go read them now.

***

Hey, so maybe live a little worse, yeah? I'm not saying go out there and go nuts or nothing. I'm just saying living a little worse. A little worse. Not a lot worse. A little worse. Everyone's always on about living a little better. Being a little better. What about the worse? Why not live a little worse? Just a little, though. No need to get crazy on the thing. But, sure. A little worse.

Hey, so maybe live a little less, yeah? I'm not saying go out there and end yourself way too early or anything. A little less is all. Maybe instead of spending all your time drawing back the curtain like you do now, maybe cinch the curtain up a bit and use it to hide a little more. Maybe get a little smaller, life-wise. It's probably easier to do than you think. Live a little less. Just a little, though. No need to get crazy on the thing. But, sure. A little less.

Hey, so maybe learn to blog. I mean, I can't. But sure. You can.

***

Books I've Read This Year (Ongoing)

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Toward You by Jim Krusoe

2011-01-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

This is what the world will be like in 2011.

In 2011, I'll never make up the lyrics to songs on the elevator muzak stereo system, and when you are standing next to me, you won't be forced to drown out my singing lyrics to the songs on the elevator muzak stereo with wild, loud, intense gum chewing. This is one of the things I can promise you, world, about 2011.

In 2011, I'll never make risotto. Not once, not once, not once, not once. So I will never make a risotto where the rice is still not completely cooked. I won't do that because I won't even attempt the risotto in the first place. This, world, is one of the things I can promise you about 2011.

In 2011, I won't make you read a draft of some sort of poem that I have written that is about faulty brain chemistry. All my writing about faulty brain chemistry will be done in prose form. I will not even write about faulty brain chemistry in prose poetry form. This is my ironclad promise, world. This will not happen in 2011.

And that's it.

That's all I can promise.

***

I have twenty for thirty. Don't know about you. But if you've got thirty, I've got the twenty to return to you for it.

Hey, let's talk. Hey, let's get in touch about this later and some stuff.

Really, though. Hey, I've got twenty for thirty. You know?

Maybe you don't. See, and then once you do see, you don't see what you don't see. You only see what you do see.

And how limiting is that? Right?

Am I right?

Really. I'm wondering.

The comma or the period. I can't see the sentence for the punctuation, sometimes. It's all dash this and semicolon that. What good's to come of all this looking and looking and looking if the sentence gets lost in its stops and pauses?

That's what my priest says, anyway. That's what my priest tells me when I'm looking up at him over the edge of the silver dish.

Am I right?

Really. I just want to know.

***

Don't touch this man in 2011, you. Don't you dare do it. (You know who you are.)

***

Books I've Read This Year (Ongoing)

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

rumpled

2010-12-27T15:42:00.000-08:00

climb clamoring up the skywall fireside chat reminder mark. read haven has pulled release revolving another enormous normal nomadic reasonable ache in the eyes. size is built response. weight is ripped response. hold is dispassionate. release is romantic. age is over. vague is precise. leave living in corners.

***

I'M FINE. HOW ARE YOU.

***

things i'm going to learn do next year

Once I learn how to do these three things, I will have the best year ever.

clvrskll

2010-12-24T15:36:00.000-08:00

Now doing a monthly black metal etc. column here.

That is all for today.

The Mouse and His Child

2010-12-14T17:33:00.000-08:00

The movie that mightily disturbed me as a child:

My thanks to Jason for knowing the film.

death

2010-11-29T15:24:00.000-08:00

when i was little—and i sometimes still really feel little because i'm not that tall or anything like that—i saw some sort of cartoon show where under the water there was a can of dogfood and some characters of some sort went under the water to find that can of dogfood under the water and when they got there they looked at the dogfood can and the label on the dogfood can had a picture of a dog excite about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can on which there was a label with a picture of a dog excited about a dogfood can, etc.

i wish to g-d i could remember which cartoon show that was, because now sometimes when i'm thinking about death—which is, i'm sorry to say, a thing i think about more and more and more—i think about that a lot.

in the same way i think about how in synedoche, new york, there is a theater building within which is a model new york within which is a theater building within which is a model new york within which there is a, etc.

now when i think about death—which is, i'm sorry to say, a thing i think about more and more and more—i just think about deeper and deeper levels of interiority, and interiors inside interiors, and, frankly, the claustrophobia of it all scares the hell out of me.

but then, in an attempt to calm myself down, i remember just how enormous the interior of the mind can be if the mind decides it wants to be enormous.

that helps, i guess.

***

nothing to see here.

winners

2010-11-23T13:30:00.000-08:00

Make Tirade Fair & Brux Callison and the Entangled Photons both won my The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge song contest. Go check out the other entries. My sincere thanks to all the people who participated. I'm touched you put your time and effort into creating something for my little book.

So there's that then. I think that's it. I am pretty sure I have nothing else to say about the book. I sure this will be a relief to the rest of us.

***

VOTE!

2010-11-16T10:45:00.000-08:00

All right. Here it is. Time to vote.

First, go HERE and listen to the songs that were inspired by The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge. (Scroll down a bit.)

Then vote. You have until noon, Pacific Standard Time, November 23, 2010.

UPDATE: Fire in My Bag is my own personal one-man black metal project. The song contest winner will receive one of the very small number of hardcover copies of The Moon Tonight I am printing up. As I will be printing one for myself anyway, the Fire in My Bag song on the page is not eligible.

Click Here for Poll Online Survey
Conjoint Analysis
| Polls
| Email Marketing

| Feedback Tab
View MicroPoll

shoes

2010-11-09T11:25:00.000-08:00

Let's make shoes. Let's us all make shoes. You make shoes. Me make shoes. Us make shoes. And let's not be ashamed of the shoes we've made. Let's us be okay with our us made shoes.

Let's make shoes out of leather.

Let's make shoes out of burlap.

Let's make shoes out of hemp.

Let's make shoes out of grease.

Let's make shoes out of rubber.

Let's make shoes out of, I don't know, leaves maybe.

Let's make shoes out of cocaine.

Cocaine shoes! Let's make and walk in cocaine shoes. Let's bark and dance in cocaine shoes. Let's take off and put on cocaine shoes!

Everyday shoes=cocaine shoes

Yes.

***

As I type this, copies of my book The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge are being mailed out to people who ordered them over the last few months. Enjoy!

As I mentioned, I'm going to have a very small number of hardcover copies of the book made. They will not be for sale. One person will get one, though, if they win my Moon Tonight song contest. The deadline for entries was going to be this week, but I think maybe I'll give it another couple of weeks because I've had some late interest from folks who like to make music.

Right now there are six entries here at the book's contest bandcamp page. (Fire in My Bag is me and I am not eligible to win.) If you would like to write a song about the book, about one of the stories in the book, or simply a song inspired by the title, cover, or black metal-ish aesthetic of the book, do so and contact me about where to send the file and song "cover art," etc.

I'm at

happy
cobra
books

at symbol

gmail

dot symbol

com

Check out some of the entries, too. We have an electro-dance number, a metal roots rocker about heavy metal show violence, a noise-y sample-y drone, a punk bleakrock rant, a piano banjo duet, and a slightly medieval ballad.

They are all lovely.

(If you have not purchased a copy of the book and want some inspiration, song writers who want a pdf of the book can have one for free. Write me.)

***

Three bands I am listening to:

Barn Owl - Light from the Mesa from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

BARN OWL

Wolvserpent | NYC @ The Acheron | 05 Oct 2010 from (((unartig))) on Vimeo.

WOLVSERPENT

Death Drive Trailer from Flingco Sound System on Vimeo.

WRNLRD

the book

2010-10-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

Important stuff below. First, though, some images.

Spinal Tap, Spy Kids, Spy Magazine, Spina Bifida, Spiral Stairs, Spider Bites

I made a galley of the book Happy Rock. I made these galleys on an Espresso Book Machine at the bookstore where I work. I made the galleys—five in all—to give to the people who have consented to take a look at the book and consider offering a blurb for it. There are four people who have said yes. I made an extra, which I will probably just keep for myself.

Winter Soldier, Win Some Lose Some, Wind in the Willows, Winn Dixie, Window Washer

Oh Fever One Day, Famishing the Next

The world of galley creation is cutthroat, but equally it is sublime. The world of blurbing, though, is not so. It is hard and cruel and always the strong win out.

I think I would like to arm wrestle a monkey. Not a small one, though. One of the midsized ones. I've been working out a little at home.

Free Essay Topics—Go Ahead and Use It, Folks

On Suffering in Silence, and Then Interrupting Said Silence with a Really Loud, "Ouch!"

I think this all looks pretty good, this series of images of my galley as it is being made by the Espresso Book Machine.

I think I'm happy with this post.

Don't forget, though, that The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge, my minibook of stories and stories about one-man black metal bands, is available. It will be real and physical probably by SAMHAIN!

There is a song contest for the book. Write a song and send me the file, and I will have a contest, and the winner will get a free hardcover copy of The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge. This contest has a bandcamp page. If you need inspiration, I will give you a digital copy of the book. Only serious requests need ask for a free digital copy. Because if you want one and are not musical, you can actually get a digital copy of the book for free by paying with a tweet at the Keyhole Press website.

Song contest

2010-09-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

When will the new book "drop"? Samhain!

Okay, so here's what I'm thinking. You could, if you are so inclined, write a song for my book THE MOON TONIGHT FEELS MY REVENGE. I will start a bandcamp page on which I will collect songs that have been written for THE MOON TONIGHT FEELS MY REVENGE. We will, at the end of November, vote for the very best song dedicated to THE MOON TONIGHT FEELS MY REVENGE. The winner will receive one of the five special hardcover copies I will have printed of THE MOON TONIGHT FEELS MY REVENGE. You may enter one or two songs, if you are so inclined.

My one-man black metal band, Fire in My Bag, is not eligible.

***

Museum of Me

jesus

2010-09-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

shh.

Hunger

2010-09-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

I'm off food right now. Just for a little while. Had a tooth yanked, and am trying to just go with cold liquids, as instructed, while the pit in the back of my mouth heals over.

I forget, sometimes, the pleasant disorientation that accompanies hunger. The subtle high of malnutrition? The slow shock felt in the body when the body does not receive the food it is used to receiving?

(Very different, this, from, say, a low calorie, vegetable diet. A salad at mealtime instead of nothing at lunch or a smoothie at lunch, for whatever reason leads to a hard edge to my personality. I sharpen. It is—unpleasant.)

Light-headed, but not at all uncomfortably, at my desk. Reading Bluets and thinking of writing. Posting to my blog, which, of course, is something I am unable to do.

Sometimes I think about not eating for a week just to see what would happen. Sometimes I think about not sleeping for a while, too. Just for the heck of it.

Then I accidentally eat a sandwich. Or take a nap.

***

Me? I'm me. What's your excuse?

***

Rose Hobart by Joseph Cornell

***

2010-09-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge.

2010-08-31T09:26:00.000-07:00

New book can now be pre-ordered.

The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge: Stories and One-Man Black Metal Bands includes three short stories (one of which appeared in Bust Down the Doors and Eat All the Chickens; the other two have never been published anywhere) and a series of short pieces about one-man black metal bands.

The bands in question are: Xasthur, Striborg, Wrath of the Weak, ad Burzum.

The book has a blurb from Lance, the King of Black Metal. Lance said: "My only problem with this book is that it was printed with ink instead of being scrawled in goat's blood. It was a pussy move if you ask me. Other than that, I deem the Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge completely Taint-worthy. Read it by torchlight or I will fucking crush you."

***

Influences on book:

Matthew Beard:

Lotte Kestner:

Joe Biel:

This list will continue to grow. Check back.

MORE4Sale

2010-08-12T16:49:00.000-07:00

Make an offer. Free book with every picture purchased.

Trades are acceptable.

***

My name makes a fine Black Metal logo, yeah?

Polaroids4Sale

2010-08-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

Polaroid, Impossible PX 100 film

SOLD

Original for sale, if you're interested. I need to fund my Impossible project film buying habit. Grey spots on the flower were actually on the scanner bed and are not on the picture itself.

Also for sale. Make an offer.

Not this one, though.

***

***

The three button suit.

Never button the bottom button.

***

Currently working on a cover for my Keyhole Press mini-book, The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge.

Currently listening to lots of Guided by Voices.

Currently writing a secret project.

Currently playing Mass Effect.

Currently drinking gin and vodka tonics.

Currently reading Against the Day.

Currently worried about dying suddenly.

Currently running six miles four times a week.

Comment

2010-07-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a comment I received on my blog:

"If you were a dinosaur, you'd be a Jerkasaurus Rex. From the Jerk-Ass Period."

I am a dinosaur. I am a Jerkasaurus Rex. I am from the Jerk-Ass Period. No ifs about it, anonymous commenter. I am. Live with it.

Don't move fast. I can see you when you do that. It's best to remain still and quiet.

And if I find you, you know what then? Then I make sarcastic comments. Then I ridicule your appearance. Then I chew on your ankle.

And then I sleep.

This is my life. This is the life of the Jerkasaurus Rex.

Quite a life.

Quite a life.

***

Geocities, once you built a railroad. Made it run. Made it race against time. Once you built a railroad, now it's done. Webhost, I can't spare a dime.

***

***

I'm reading on Saturday at Pilot Books with Matty Byloos and Carrie Seitzinger. It's at 6pm. Please come.

best of the web 2010

2010-07-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

Today, we promote Best of the Web 2010. It's a fine book, and you should buy it!

Here's a full list of the contributors.

Here is a Large-Hearted Boy Book Notes from various contributors.

Here is a review by Jonathan Messinger.

***

Here is my cover of Ryan Manning's Sky Polaroids.

***

And now, back to Best of the Web 2010. My story, Caves (Lamination Colony) appears in it.

Caves features an apartment building with large glass windows that let people on the street see into the apartments. And the building is shaped like the set of The Hollywood Squares.

When I wrote about it, I was thinking about this building in Seattle:

There. Now you have a note on my process.

***

This song is featured in the story:

I like this Ink Spots song, too:

2010-06-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

I think I have an anchor. I feel it.

My anchor doesn't pull down, though. And it doesn't pull up. It doesn't pull to the side. Or the other side. Or the other side. Or the other side. Or the four places in between the side.

My anchor doesn't pull back in time. It doesn't pull forward in time. It doesn't hold me steady in time.

My anchor does not anchor me to any direction that is beyond those of the four dimensions.

My anchor does not anchor me to my own personality. My anchor does not anchor me to any other person.

My anchor is not attached, as far as I can tell, to anything. It does not anchor me to anything at all.

But I have it. I know it's there.

I know because even though my anchor doesn't seem to exist in any one place or time, I have seen my anchor.

I am seeing it now. I see the anchor. And, because I see it, I know it is there.

And so I know it is an anchor. And I know it is mine.

And I know I'm attached to it.

I just don't know what to do with it—with the anchor knowledge—beyond that.

***

Run DMT.

***

Tex Arcana.

***

I will be reading at Pilot Books on July 17 with Matty Byloos and Carrie Seitzinger.

keyhole

2010-06-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that soon Keyhole Press will release a small book of mine called The Moon Tonight Feels My Revenge. It contains three stories—only one of which was previously published—and some short pieces about one-man black metal bands.

This is exciting.

This is even more exciting: next year, Keyhole Press will be publishing Happy Rock, my collection of short stories about Upper Michigan.

Please enjoy these celebratory photos of an old pinball machine that has been turned into a booth at Shorty's.

sky

2010-06-10T13:46:00.001-07:00

You were asking earlier how the sky was doing, right?

Everything seems normal. I'll drop you a line if there are any changes.

Mostly, though, I'm just mad at it. You maybe don't really know what that's like, right? What it's like to be mad at the sky.

Someone's gotta be, don't they?

If not me, who will be mad at the sky? President Obama, maybe? I doubt he's going to be sufficiently mad at the sky. I mean, I feel like he's the sort of person who might mostly just be, like, disappointed in the sky. He might tell you that he's really disappointed in the sky, and because of that disappointment, maybe you'll get the sky to try harder.

Someone involved in this movie might have been mad at the sky:

but I think all those people are dead and can't be mad at the sky anymore.

Maybe you think God should be mad at the sky. God can only ever really be mad at herself. That does us no good, I'm afraid. No good at all.

So I'll do it. I'll take the weight. I can take the weight. I think I'll be okay with that. I'll be the one mad at the sky.

Because, I figure, fuck it. What else am I going to do.

***

Joe

2010-06-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

In this post, I mentioned that I was thinking of getting a Joe Kittinger tattoo.

I did it.

It's based on this photo.

Footage of this jump appears in this Boards of Canada video:

At the 6 minute mark of this video, a friend of Joe's gives him the finger:

I'd never seen that video before. Now I sort of want to get that image—a friend, no doubt filled with stunned admiration and a little love-tempered envy—a man flipping off one of the bravest men in history.

***

Still happening.

***

***

tagged

2010-05-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

this post will be free of images

this post will also be free of words

these are not words you are not reading words right now

i know you think you are seeing words here

i know you think that you are reading

i am aware that this is what you think

i am painfully aware of this

that is not a cliche

i am actually in pain because i am aware that you think you are reading words right now even though you are not

you see there are no words on the screen right now

this is not a blog post

this is another lie much like the zoos are lies

and this is the source of the pain that i am feeling

this is a blank white screen

you are looking at it

i know you are looking at it

i am where you are

i am very tiny

i am in your eyes

i am very tiny and in your eyes

in your eyes i am holding a marker

(an on the run .070 jumbo hard 2 buff marker filled with a water-soluble paint)

i am writing this on the backs of your eyes backwards and upside-down

and then wiping it off quick

line after line

there is nothing on this site

i am tagging your retina

live with it

i am very tiny

and i am a tagger

not a blogger

a tagger

punctuation takes a lot of time

i don't have much time

i so i've eliminated most punctuation

initial caps would take time

i have dropped them too

just getting the info up and moving on

yr tagged

i tagged you

do something about it if you can

but you can't

***

Zoo

2010-05-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

When we go to the zoo, we are involved in a lie.

When I say this, I do not simply mean that we are complicit in the artificial world that is the zoo. I am not just talking about the sets.

I'm talking about a greater deception.

That deception has to do with the perspective we take at the zoo. We "go there to look at the animals." This is the deception. This is not true.

It's in the word "look." That's where the lie exists. Because no one uses their eyes at the zoo. Not their real eyes.

Oh, sure. The eyes on one's head will often make like they are looking. They make like it, but they ain't.

Something very much else is going on. You see—heh, see—our eyes shut off in the zoo. We aren't really actually seeing anything. We are imagining it. We imagine the animals at the zoo. The exhibits at the zoo. The other children at the zoo. The food at the zoo. All in our minds

The zoo n'existe pas, my friends. It is a sick fantasy. We walk into an empty park and build the entire thing from our imaginations.

And, really. Think about it. You should be ashamed of yourselves. We should be ashamed of ourselves. All those animal. In cages. Behind glass.

Sick, sick, sick.

***

WILL RUN FOR MONEY.

***

Wrote about Interrupture.

***

truth

2010-05-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

Blake Butler is going to have a baby. All by himself, he's going to have a baby. That's what it says on his blog.

The fact that everything on a blog has to be always always true is one of the reasons I have so much trouble blogging. I can't just lie and make up untrue-ish things because that flies in the face of blogging. All you have to do is spend time reading blogs to know that everything on them is true. It's just the way the world is.

The blog world.

This is true:

That's true. Even though Shya wrote it, it's a true thing that my family says. And it's true all the other things in it as well. It's all real and true.

I like it all real and true and nothing else.

Don't tell me nothing else. That is, tell me everything.

***

A new prayer at On Earth As It Is.

Awesome

2010-04-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

This blog is awesome.

This blog is awesome.

This blog is awesome.

This blog is awesome.

This blog is awesome.

This blog is awesome.

Those blogs are awesome. Why?

***

If you see a thing, say a thing.

If you hear a thing, tell a thing.

If you feel a thing, refer to a thing.

If you ask about a thing, answer about a thing.

If you remember a thing, show a thing.

If you pretend to think about a thing, draw a thing on a sheet of paper.

If you are a thing, go ahead and be that thing. You.

***

This is a bridge.

This is a television screen.

Can you tell the difference? Can you write me an essay explaining the difference?

Please?

***

There is a wonderful new prayer on On Earth As It Is. It is by Matthew Batt.

***

Sad sad thing:

Guru, Rest in Peace.

***

Dead Space cheats:

+1,000 credits (one time only per playthrough) X(3), Y, X.
+10,000 credits (one time only per playthrough) X, Y(3), X(2), Y.
+2 Nodes (one time only per playthrough) Y, X(3), Y.
+2,000 credits (one time only per playthrough) X(3), Y(2).
+5 Nodes (one time only per playthrough) YXYXXYXXYXXY
+5,000 credits (one time only per playthrough) X(3), Y, X, Y.
Refill you Oxygen X,X,Y,Y,Y
Refill your Stasis and Kinesis energy X,Y,Y,X,Y

2010-04-19T17:51:00.000-07:00

w

w

w

w

hi

x

x

x

x

low

l

l

l

l

under

***

There is a new story on On Earth As It Is.

***

It's nice to have a party. Let's have a party. Eat a party, maybe. People like to eat a party. They like to start by eating all the joy. The joy is tasty. The joy is sometimes the best part. The best part of the party.

It's nice to eat a party. It's nice and it's easy.

***

My foot is stomping lately. Can you talk to it? It? Can you? Can you talk to it?

I'll wait.

***

The prophet Elijah Mohammed and I have been looking for a place to move in together. Know anywhere?

I'll wait.

***

I have typing typing fingers. And a brain that's lost its nerve.

I'll wait.

***

New On Earth As It Is. And it is good.

***

Guru died:

Robison

2010-03-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

I met Adam Robison years back, but I met him on the phone. On the phone, I talked to Adam Robison about life and love and all sorts of other unsightly, embarrassing things.

And then I hung up. I hung right on up on Adam Robison and I didn't look back. At the phone, I mean. I walked away from the phone and didn't look at it, because I had just talked to Adam Robison on it.

After that, I wrote a letter to Mathew Simon.

Dear Mr Simon,

Have you worked hard all these years? Is there something in the way of the door? Will Pluto ever become a planet again? Does this mean we no longer understand understanding? Where are you standing? Is it in in? Is it in out? Freedom means many things to many people. Does it mean any of those things to you?

Where do you stand? I mean, where do you really stand? Not where are you standing. Where do you stand?

I am for things. I am for socks. I am for raspberry bushes. I am for squirrels climbing up my window screens in the summer. I am for catching a fly in my fingertips. I am for buying new sunglasses and then losing those sunglasses.

Mr Simon, what about you?

Do you know Adam Robison? I know Adam Robison. I hung up on Adam Robison. Will you?

Matthew

***

Adam Robinson is featured on On Earth As It Is this week. Enjoy.

***

***

Owlbear

Other dangers

Canadians

2010-03-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

This is a true story. I wouldn't. I wouldn't make something like that up. It's true. True true.

I find that the border guards are not all that rude. When I was little, I once had a border guard between Canada and the US ask me if my dad had any computers or fresh fruit in the car. He had already asked my dad. Then he asked me. He assumed that I would rat out my dad.

I would've. For the record, I would've ratted out my dad. If it would've made my dad love me slash pay attention to me, I would've ratted him. Sigh.

This is a photo of me and my dad:

Sigh.

It's not only border guards who want me to rat out my dad. But mostly it's border guards. Borders between states in the United States of America like to stop me when I am driving in my car, and they like to ask me to get little again, so that I will be honest. And they like to ask me if my dad has any computers or fresh fruit somewhere.

He probably does, at home. He probably has this stuff that they are asking about. But I don't really know for sure. I never ask and he never tells me. Plausible denial. Willful ignorance. Don't ask, don't tell. It's all game theory, here. Don't learn and you don't need to lie.

Canadians, though, are out to get my dad. It's because my dad is a floating ball of light.

Canadians hate light. Canadians need less light. They want less light. To Canadians, there is no difference between need and want, though. It's all the same to them. All the same. To us, to we normal people who are estranged from our dads, need is need and want is want.

But nope.

Before I get to blogging, though, I need to confess. I have fresh fruit and computers.

***

I'll be reading at AWP in Denver. Here's a poster for one of the readings:

Here's a poster for another of the readings:

Those two readings are on the same day. I will run from one to the next. (I will not actually run run, but I will move quickly from one to the next.

I also hope to do a reading in an elevator at some point. For Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens. Details to come.

***

Recent HTML Giant stuff I'm proud of:

I talked about talk.

I interviewed Matthew Stadler of Publication Studio.

***

***

Some updates on A Jello Horse:

—A fourth printing is on its way. Cover.

—Another excerpt accompanies this interview with me.

—Reviewed along with my friend Travis Nichols's book Iowa here.

chilton

2010-03-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

Alex Chilton died.

***

Reading tonight at Pilot Books.

Lunch

2010-03-08T16:44:00.000-08:00

I would like to introduce you to the lunch demon. This is the lunch demon:

The following things are true about the lunch demon.

1) The lunch demon has a soul that is heavier than the souls of regular people. It is weighty. Weighty.

2) The lunch demon refers to himself in the second person. "You would maybe like to go out and get a pizza? Yes, you would. Will Bob come with?"

3) Remorse is something that the lunch demon feels as a kind of all-over itch. When the lunch demon does something that makes him feel remorse, the lunch demon feels this unpleasant, all-over itch and it can't scratch it. So it goes for a swim.

4) That thing you just said? To yourself? That thing? The lunch demon heard that.

5) You will, when you die, find the lunch demon waiting for you at the gates of Hell. And you will feel an all-over itch.

***

I am reading in Portland (March 15). I am reading in Seattle (March 18).

I am sleeping the rest of the time.

***

On Earth As It Is is sort of finally here.

Smallpressfest

2010-02-24T17:29:00.000-08:00

Come see me. I'll also be in Portland. Monday, March 15, as a part of Smallpressapalooza at the mighty, mighty Powell's on Burnside.

***

Rock

2010-02-10T11:37:00.000-08:00

A new story is up on The Fanzine. It is the title story for my collection, Happy Rock.

***

CAVES will be in Best of the Web 2010.

***

Self-interview and story at The Nervous Breakdown. Excerpt:

So, when and how often do you write?

On no set schedule and as heartbreakingly (my heart) infrequently as possible.

***

Burning Beard

Marvin

2010-02-01T13:29:00.000-08:00

Some thing are and some things are not about Marvin. Some Marvins are Marvin, and other Marvins are not Marvin.

Go ahead. Sit down and look through your history books. You'll see that I'm right. You'll see. Just check.

Marvin has his hands bound. Marvin leaves his jacket unzipped. Marvin remembers birthdays with unerring accuracy. Marvin looms large in the minds of those who think about people other than Marvin.

Some of those things are about Marvin. Some of them are not. You must decide on your own which is which.

Marvin will repair the fence for you. Marvin lives in fear of being discovered by his uncle. Marvin reads much, much, much, much slower than any other person in the entire world. Marvin has never ever killed a bug.

Some of those things are about Marvin. Some of them are not. You have free will. God has given you free will. I leave it to your free will to make choices.

Marvin resembles no one so much as Marvin resembles Marvin. Marvin has a tree in his bathtub. When John Cage talks about silence, John Cage is talking about Marvin. When Flannery O'Conner talks about God, Flannery O'Conner is talking about Marvin. God is forever talking to everyone he knows about Marvin.

See the paragraph above the paragraph above this sentence for further instructions. It won't take long to reread it. Reread it. It's important. Trust me.

Marvin shines a light, shines a light, shines a light in the daaaarkness. Marvin is rude to children when being rude to children is completely necessary. Marvin stalls out after 600 miles of running in place. The sun is not efficient. The sun is not efficient. Stop believing that the sun is efficient.

Just stop.

Can't blog. The sun is not efficient.

***

This is Brujeria:

This is Lotte Kestner:

Both can help you relax.

***

Blake Butler and Jamie Iredell will be in Seattle on February 13 reading at Neptune Coffee. Come see, Seattle people.

***

Took a Polaroid photo of my friend Liza:

Came out good. Looks just like her.

EPidemIC

2010-01-28T00:07:00.000-08:00

Also on HTML Giant:

Take a poem or very short prose piece you really like and send it to a small number of poet/prose writing friends. Let’s say five. Send along this message:

“This is the spreading of an infection. Read this piece of writing. Become infected by it. Respond to it with a piece of writing that includes a line or a phrase from it. Send the results to the author of this piece of writing. (If you do not have time to do so, you have resisted the infection. Thank your immune system.) Also, send the results to five more people and infect them. Send this message along with it. When you receive the results, return them all to the person who started the infection.

“This infection began with _____.” (Fill this in only if you are the first person to start the infection.

Collect the results. See how the infection has spread. See how the virus has mutated.

At some point, tell us how it went.

***

Reading at Hugo House on Thursday. Come on out.

Houses

2010-01-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

A short excerpt from my "novel" is up on at Alice Blue Review.

Also in the Alice Blue Review and really good: Joseph Young. Kathy Fish. Sasha Fletcher. The mighty, mighty Matt Bell. Others, too. Lots of good stuff.

But I'd like to say how particularly happy I am to see a piece by Ofelia Hunt. I love a lot of the Bear Parade books, but Ofelia's, I think, is my very favorite. It's called My Eventual Bloodless Coup. I think Ofelia is incredibly talented and I'm happy to see she has a novel coming this fall.

Here is a link to her blog, even though she hasn't updated it since June of 2008.

***

We have always lived in these houses.

We have always slept in these beds.

We are forever going from room to room.

We are forever finding new closets in which to put our winter coats.

We have always lived in these houses.

We have.

You have always lived on the streets outside our houses.

You have always looked in our windows.

You will fog the windows with your breath.

We leave notes under the welcome mat.

Do you read them?

We wonder.

We will tell the others.

We will warn the others.

We will raise a cry.

Sons

2010-01-12T12:42:00.000-08:00

Sons are sons and daughters are daughters. We have sons; we have daughters. We have them, we look at them, we think about them, we move toward them, we move away from them.

We have us our sons. We have us our daughters.

You have neither and this is why we spend so little time in your company. You have no son. You have no daughter. You have nothing but you and it is strange and terrible.

This son here has more fingers than that one. This daughter receives messages from the stars. This son is allowed no more than ten carrots a week. This daughter will try at some point to kill a horse with her teeth.

Minor adjustments to the world, and all this would be very different. Did you know that? You might have the sons. You might have the daughters. Instead, things are how they are. They are what we see them to be.

They will not change.

***

I'm in love with Grouper.

***

I"m teaching a class in late January. And it will happen every Tuesday until March.

Kitchen Sink Fabulism: A Primer for Girls and Boys

There is a movement afoot in contemporary writing—a new(ish) movement with some very old roots. Calvino, Barthelme, and the fabulist writers of recent history—those writers who mined the themes of old fables for their new stories—ago have inspired the likes of Kelly Link, Kevin Brockmeier, Aimee Bender, Etgar Keret, and many more to write in the fabulist mode while also crafting contemporary, domestic tales. We will look at a number of writers in this mode, and discuss how to add elements of the fantastic to your own work in a seamless and elegant fashion.
Instructor: Matthew Simmons
Meets: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Tuesday, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Min: 5 Max: 15

***

Two readings coming up. Both at Hugo House. One is on January 19 @7pm. The second is at Cheap Beer and Prose, January 28, 7pm.

***

New review of A Jello Horse, now in its third printing.

***

Studio

2010-01-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

My brother's studio was, for a while, in a federal building south of downtown Seattle. The artists had to leave at the end of 2009. You can read an article about the place closing here.

Jeff is using this blog to display photos from the studio's history.

***

Some Publishing Genius Press news:

Justin Sirois's amazing book MLKNG SCKLS is now in its second printing. New cover! Way to go, Justin.

Adam Robinson, PGP's headmaster, has a book of poems called Adam Robison and Other Poems. Can't wait for it. Here's the cover:

This thing is one of my favorite things:

Michigan

2009-12-29T19:51:00.001-08:00

Walking in Michigan from happycobrabooks on Vimeo.

Hi. Sorry. Holiday. Here's a video.

Pillows

2009-12-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

This man is hugging a pillow:

He's in a relationship with that pillow. A long-term relationship. They will be together for the long haul*. That man and that pillow are together.

This man is hugging a pillow:

He is merely using this pillow for a short time. After this photo is taking, he will be dropping this pillow back onto a couch or something. He will see it around—like when he sits on the couch—but he will not treat it quite the same. It is unlikely, for example, that he will be photographed holding that pillow again. Not like this, anyway.

The first person knows how to commit to a relationship. The second is still afraid of long term commitment. The first image is a marriage. The second image is a one-night stand.

***

My dear friend Brittain is very close to having enough money to make her next record. If you have a little money, you should send it to her.

Here are some photos I took last time I saw Brittain perform her wonderful music.

***

This person can make you a beard. I would like a small one for my two-year-old niece.

* Accidentally said "the long hall" in the first version of this post.

updates

2009-12-02T16:45:00.000-08:00

Keyhole nominated me for a Pushcart. It's for a story I wrote called "Father" which begins:

We’re “living in sin” in the Keweenaw Peninsula with a big-ass Mastiff we call Father. And this is it, miles from anyone, no one bothers us anymore. Father must weigh upwards of 200 pounds, and has a motley face, with a huge frown and tiny black eyes.

This is what the Keweenaw Peninsula looks like.

***

On Twitter, I've been Speaking Truth to Cereal:

Captain Crunch decimated the native culture on Crunchberry Island.

The links between Cheerios and higher levels of serotonin are tenuous at best.

Frosted Flakes are not fooling anyone with the blond tips. We know they have gone gray.

The Yummy Mummy belongs in Egypt where it was found, not in some museum in some Imperialist country.

Froot Loops proves that the teaching of phonics is responsible for our pathetic standing in the world re: education.

***

A Local weekly newspaper called The Stranger is running a charity auction called Strangercrombie. There is a package called DIY MFA Semester Two, and if you win it you will receive a story consultation from Maria Semple and James Morrow, a graduation dinner with Ryan Boudinot, a custom laptop bag, free coffee once a week for three months from Short Stop Coffee, and also, I'll have a couple of beers with you to discuss writing craft. I think I originally volunteered to discuss white space for an hour with the winner. They have made it a little more open-ended.

Actually, it sort of looks like the winner and I will go out and get drunk together.

Seems like a proper DIY MFA experience to me!

It's for charity, and Ryan Boudinot is great. And James Morrow is great. And Maria Semple is great. You should bid and bid a lot.

***

Best guitar riff ever:

interview

2009-11-25T11:17:00.001-08:00

Shya Scanlon has started a little series of interviews on Facebook. Reprinted with his permission, here it is:

Facebook Tiny Interview Series: Matthew Simmons

Shya Scanlon: Are you ready, Matthew?

Matthew Simmons: Sure thing.

Shya Scanlon: You are the author of A Jello Horse—a novella out from Publishing Genius--a contributor at HTMLGIANT, The Man Who Couldn't Blog, and you've been an editor for Hobart and before that, for Monkeybicycle. You're basically a big fat writing scenester. Tell me a little about your own publishing project: Happy Cobra Books.

Matthew Simmons: When I decided to put together a bunch of really short things I'd written in a cover and call it a chapbook—Creation Stories—I figured I needed a to give myself a publishing name. I never really intended to do anything else with it, but sort of ended up approaching a couple of other writers and being approached by a couple of other writers, and next thing I knew, I had a website and a couple of stories to turn into chapbooks and ebooks and some obligation to do so.

In my defense, everyone else seemed to be doing it at the time. And it felt like I needed yet another distraction to keep me from my own writing and editing.

Shya Scanlon: Did it work? How long can you go without writing before you start to feel like a bad person?

Matthew Simmons: Pretty long, actually. After I finished my MFA program I went months without being able to write a word. In the time since, I've edited and written a little, but not as much as I'd like. All the other things I do make me feel connected to writing, though, and I sometimes wonder if it's a bad thing. Sure, I haven't finished that novel, but I posted a short, craft-oriented observation on HTML Giant a couple of days ago, so I'm still engaged in the work in one respect, right? I'm still preparing some material for a Hugo House class, right? I'm still doing it, aren't I?

Maybe not. I mean, aren't there enough venues for writing-related work to be done that I could distract myself with them for the rest of my life and never write another piece of fiction? I like my blog, and I like interviewing people/editing interviews for Hobart, and I like HTML Giant, but what if they are killing my novel?

Shya Scanlon: I know what you mean. There are many places to scratch right around the perimeter of the itch itself—so close, in fact, that the relief almost feels the same.

In both your book A Jello Horse, and your unpublished collection Happy Rock, you seem to pursue a kind of realism charged with the fantastic—sometimes overtly, as when a narrator's mother is a series of exploding clay Golems, and sometimes more subtly, as in the House of Telephones scene at the end of Jello. Do you think life itself is magical, or do you just wish it were?

Matthew Simmons: Neither, really. The real world is difficult and unpleasant and occasionally very beautiful, and I'm okay with it staying that way—and this is lucky because it is not going to bend to my desires. I want the world on the page to be whatever it wants to be—which is to say whatever my creative impulse wants it to be—and this is lucky because I am in complete control of that world.

Shya Scanlon: Are you really? What are the writers who most influenced you as a young reader, and/or a young writer.

Matthew Simmons: Yeah, I think I am. I suppose that I like to write things that other people want to read, and because of that, I have traded a measure of my artistic independence, and made a kind of non-aggression pact with an audience, but I could break that pact at any time. I could write something that is totally unfriendly, completely unreadable, and alienate readers if want to. I suppose one might argue that without readers there is no writing—that my fiction occurs in the shared space between me and the reader, but I could be my own reader, right? I could produce something just for me, and defiantly decide that it is good and done well even if no one else agrees with me.

It took me a little while to become a reader. As a teenager, though, Douglas Adams led me to William Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut and I've never forgotten what it was like reading them. Vonnegut I can still read, too. Burroughs not as much. But the liveliness of his imagination and the power of his language still influence me, I think. Burroughs is maybe a little too bleak for me now. Vonnegut is dark, but his narrators seem resigned to and above the absurdity of life. He's comforting in that way.

A few years ago, when I was just starting to write seriously, just starting to send my writing out to places that published stories, just started to toy with finding readers for what I was writing, I read Meet Me in the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich. Up to that point, I was tentative about surrealist/fabulist elements in my stories. Ray's book was full of them, and also full of stories that I connected to emotionally. Stories that made me happy and sad. After reading that book, I said, "well, all bets are off," and just wrote what I wanted.

Shya Scanlon: Respond to this observation: It seems to me many writers of our emerging generation see a conflict between "serious" writing and "emotional" writing. Do you think young writers avoid melodrama to a fault?

Matthew Simmons: They avoid it to their detriment, I think. Melodrama, sentimentality, even cliche. It seems like we run from it, preferring instead an arch tone. But I think we will, as we get older, return to it. I think eventually sentimentality and melodrama reveal their benefits to writers over time. A line from a story by Steve Almond: "It takes years to become as soft-hearted and hopeful as I am."

Shya Scanlon: This feels like a good note to end our Tiny Interview on, Matthew. Thank you so much for playing along. If anyone would like to ask Matthew any questions, please use this space to do so.

Matthew Simmons: We ended on my endorsement of melodrama, cliche, and sentimentality!

***

I read in Portland with the lovely and talented Daniel Bailey on Sunday. Here is a recap.

Mike Daily was there, and he made videos of the reading.

I need a haircut. And to exercise more.

***

My brother's tumblr blog is still going strong.

Umbrella

2009-11-17T16:55:00.000-08:00

My brother has a tumblr blog.

***

Tuesday morning I saw a guy running for the bus stop. He had a double-breasted overcoat, a tophat, and a pair of goggles. He was very steampunk.

But he also had a little beige Totes umbrella.

Totes umbrellas aren't steampunk, right? I mean, just because they have a little button on them that extends them, that doesn't make them steampunk. They're just functional. Steampunk isn't supposed to be functional, right?

The question is: if you aren't going to commit 100% to a look, should you leave the house in the look? I realize it was early in the morning, and it was raining, and it was a Tuesday and the guy was probably on his way to his job—at a comic book shop? at a call center? at Home Depot?—and not on his way to a local steampunk drinkery or danceclub, but he had the tophat. He had the goggles. He had the large, brass-buttoned, double-breased overcoat. Has he just not yet found the right umbrella?

Where in Seattle is the steampunk umbrella store? Does the guy need to borrow a few dollars so he can buy a proper umbrella for his outfit? Should I start a collection here on the blog to buy the steampunk guy a proper umbrella for his outfit? I'll do it, if that's the problem.

Are you out there, steampunk guy with the wrong umbrella? If you are, and you would like me to start some sort of fundraiser for you so you can buy a proper umbrella—one that matches the rest of your look—please feel free to get in touch and I will do it. I'm sure the loyal Man Who Couldn't Blog readers would be willing to help out with a few dollars, and would be willing to spread the word that your look is incomplete, and because it is incomplete, it was jarring for me to have to see you in it, and because it was jarring, it made it impossible for me to blog about anything important, and instead I blogged about your incomplete look, and we'll all gather some money for you to complete your look so that I won't be jarred and I can maybe blog.

This also happens to me—the jarred reaction to clothing—when I see a man in a basketball jersey, athletic shoes, and blue jeans.

***

I wrote a writing prompt that asks the writer to rot one of her or his stories.

***

Ginny Parker Woods interviewed Justin Sirois.

***

Leni Zumas has a blog.

***

Dolphin

2009-11-10T14:17:00.001-08:00

I want again to talk at this time in this place about the thing that is called Dolphin Telepathy. It is very much now an important current thing to discuss, what with dolphins being everywhere in the news right now.

Are you a dolphin? Are you, a dolphin, reading this blog? Can I talk to you via and using telepathy? Let's try it now.

Let's try to communicate here in real time using dolphin telepathy. Think something at me.

Think it.

Come on. Think it. I'm listening.

While you, the dolphin, are trying to think things at me for me to pick up on with the thing that is my mind, I will spend here a moment discussing the efficacy of dolphin telepathy with my not-dolphin readers. I assume that there is a small number of people who read this blog who are not dolphins. I assume, but am not 100% sure because as of right now, Google Analytics does not break out human from dolphin readership in its statistics about this site.

Odd.

Anyway. Humans, you and I should work hard to make more common and familiar this dolphin telepathy. Dolphins have for us many lessons. Such as there is more than one fish in the ocean. In fact, there are many, and many types as well. Such as there are some really nice things that await you if you are willing to every once and a while jump through a hoop. Such as why not go ahead and swim with people sometimes. Such as—

Wait.

Yes?

No?

No. Sorry. I thought I heard something in my brain. I thought I was being contacted.

But and still there is much to benefit for people like us if we begin to expand the amount of dolphin telepathy that goes on in the world. The dolphins would like to tell us much about the water, for example.

Water is almost everywhere. Lots of things are wet. This is what the dolphins know above all else.

What of me? Why not me? Why have I been so blind to this? Why can't the dolphins tell me more about this? Open my eyes? Open my ears? Open my cosmic blowhole?

Etc?

Thinking, I will.

***

The Third Policeman is amazing.

***

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Thank you, dear Dennis.

Compulsion-Analysis

2009-11-02T12:38:00.000-08:00

Today is a day for examining what it is that makes you wonder what it is. This is what I've been thinking a lot about. It's hardly a day to pretend other than that.

Like, what if there's a moonfall event tomorrow?

Like, what if all the birds are more or less finished with flying?

Like, what's that word that's supposed to follow the word you've got stuck in your hand?

Like, how will we all cope now that the bees have gone and flown away to space?

Like, really are you satisfied with the way your beard smells?

Like, if dolphin telepathy is just a couple of years away from completion, what will Big Science do with its free time?

Like, are armies on the march because this battle is finished again and they are coming home or are they going somewhere new?

Like, Friday is just another way of avoiding Saturday for 24 more hours, right?

Like, arms get folded more often than we think but no one's really keeping score, are they?

Like, research research research. Is that all we'll ever read a book about?

But, honestly, let's be honest with ourselves. The pillow remains dry. The stairs keep going up and up. The neighbors have your dog hostage. Relax and live a little, am I right?

Yes, I am.

Forward and onward and upward. Blogging is impossible and for another day.

***

I answered questions about some books I like. I typed "Holy Smokes" twice.

***

I'll be reading in Portland on November 22 with Daniel Bailey and Bryan Coffelt. I think it's with this store, Ampersand, but it might actually occur at a nearby coffee house. When I know more, I will tell you more.

***

Shane Jones's new book, The Failure Six, is very good. I have read about four of the failures. I am up to number five. You should buy The Failure Six. And you should read it in a room with a cat watching you read it.

Song for The Failure Six:

***

Brother Blake has a story here. It's one of my favorites of his.

Someone told me about visiting a museum in Russia that had a room full of jarred still-born fetuses. Someone had sewed tiny lace ruffles around their wrists, and tiny lace collars on their necks.

***

Frickin' Burch is frickin' awesome.

Cross

2009-10-20T15:43:00.001-07:00

Whenever I watch that, I want to write it.

So, what's next?

I think recently I finished the revisions, edits, and endings to a book of short stories called Happy Rock. I think so, but I am not sure.

I am not sure about a lot of things. I am, as the name of this blog indicates, not sure how to blog and being unsure I haven't decided that it is impossible. I am not sure when a story is finished, and because of that I have decided that a story is never finished and I am allowed to tinker with it for as long as I live.

I am not sure how to write a novel, so I think perhaps I am writing a novel write now. It has beetles in it. The beetles perform surgical procedures.

That's all I will say about that.

Because I am not sure what else to say. Not sure how much to say. Not sure why I felt like saying that.

What happens if it is never finished—which, I think I have established, it never will be—and I have mentioned it here. Will you hold me to it? You? Will you ask me about it? Will you ask me about the progress of it? Will you hold me to it?

Who are you? Please tell me who you are.

Can you blog?

Can you finish a story?

Can you use a beetle to perform a surgical procedure?

***

I was going to write about gnomes. I have been thinking about gnomes.

This is a gnome:

This is a gnome:

Did the first gnome simply wish to rub noses with the Argentinians? The theme song to David the Gnome says that if your heart is true, you will find them, too. Does this indicate that the Argentinians terrorized by the terror gnome simply had true hearts?

This is another song about gnomes:

Gong wrote about gnomes:

To disparage Swiss bankers, people call them The Gnomes of Zurich. This is because gnomes live underground and hoard their wealth.

I have wondered in the past if the gnome was an anti-semitic symbol of some sort.

People put gnomes in their gardens for some reason. They seem to me to invite people into your garden. Because they aren't scary. You could step on them very easily. And that would be the end of them. Do you want people in your garden? Is that it? Do you? Where people go, rabbits are almost guaranteed to follow.

You didn't think about that, did you? I thought not.

Silly you.

That's some stuff about gnomes. You should nominate the gnome portion of this blog post for a Pushcart Prize.

Conor

2009-10-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

I'd like to say that I haven't updated because I've had a lot of writing things going on lately. Mostly, though, I've been playing Fallout 3. And, actually, I'm right now thinking about going home and playing Fallout 3 tonight, too.

Sorry.

***

Happy Cobra Books is very happy to announce that it has published its second ebook. That book is a story called "Conor Oberst Sex." It's very good.

It is accompanied by an EP with music by my friend Michael Sanchez. The EP is called Music Is My Boyfriend. It's also very good.

Enjoy them both, please.

***

Last week, a review of my book A Jello Horse appeared in The Believer, one of my favorite magazines. I'm humbled. Thank you, Jim Ruland.

This is doubly exciting because the book is now BACK IN PRINT!

Also humbling: Michael Kimball, a brilliant writer, wrote my life on a postcard.

Holga

2009-09-28T11:08:00.001-07:00

Jello

2009-09-24T15:49:00.001-07:00

My book, A Jello Horse, is back in print. Please consider ordering a copy.

Here are some reviews:

Open Letters Monthly
The Stranger
HTML Giant
NOTANOCTOPUS
Probably Just a Story
Goodreads

Thanks to all the reviewers.

If you would like to interview me about the book, or would like a guest blog post, or something, feel free to contact me.

Bombs

2009-09-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

Gave Shya two weeks. Seemed like a good idea.

***

There are cities and there are villages in foreign lands. Have you noticed? Have you looked it all up on maps of the world?

I have.

First, there are foreign lands, and that's one thing. That's one thing.

Then, next, there are cities and villages in these foreign lands. Cities AND villages! Not just one or the other. They have both. Both all over the place.

I mean, why, right? Isn't the first thing enough?

In these cities and these villages in foreign lands, they also have people.We have things like that here, right? They have them over there, too! They have them. People who live in cities and villages, and who have jobs and have telephone numbers and have nights where they all get together and play games of cards with each other.

They do those things. They don't even ask us. They just do them. One day at a time. And never does it ever stop or anything.

So I'm thinking it's time to go ahead and bomb them. And I'm not even just kidding about this like I was the time I told you that I thought it was maybe a good idea for us to have a third person come into the bedroom with us and maybe help you along with the making me pleased.

This time I mean it. I think we should find those foreign countries on one of the maps, and we should get in the car, and we should pack up two bombs, and we should travel to one of those foreign countries, and we should drive in to one of those countries, and we should find first a village, and we should bomb that village, and we should get back in the car, and we should drive then to a city, and we should plant a bomb in the big city's biggest building, and we should wait there and be there when it goes off.

That'll show them is what I think. That'll teach them to have what they have.

I'm not jealous of what they have. I want them to appreciate it. That's all I mean by this. I want more people to understand what they have. I think blowing up a little property is the best way to do that.

***

Dear Sir,

What are you on about?

From,
Sir

Dear Sir,

Thanks for writing. What do you mean?

From,
Sir

Dear Sir,

I mean with the bombing and all that? What are you on about?

From,
Sir

Dear Sir,

Nothing in particular. I'm just on about things. Sometimes I'm just on about nothing with something. Sometimes something is something. Sometimes I'm on about it.

From,
Sir

Dear Sir,

You realize, though, Sir, that you are on about something that is on the minds of others right now. Because of dates and things?

From,
Sir

Dear Sir,

I suppose this is true. But the thing I'm on about isn't actually that thing. I mean, it feels like that thing, but it sort of isn't. I'm on about what I'm on about, and it's maybe just a coincidence.

From,
Sir

Dear Sir,

Highly unlikely. Hard to believe. Impossible to believe. I mean, we are having this correspondence, after all.

From,
Sir

Dear Sir,

I see your point, Sir. You make a lot of sense. I am noticing, of late, a greater sense of attention to the awareness of what it is I am on about in you. And in you means in me. What do we think this could all mean?

From,
Sir

Dear Sir,

Perhaps you are having an episode of some sort. A bad episode. A difficult one.

From,
Sir

Dear Sir,

Save me from myself.

From,
Sir

Dear Sir,

No.

From,
Sir

***

John Madera reviewed my book.

Forecast 42

2009-08-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

Forecast (Shy Scanlon)

Forecast is being serialized semiweekly across 42 web sites. For a full list of participants and links to live chapters, visit www.shyascanlon.com/forecast.

***

Chapter 14

Of course, there have always been those among us for whom emotion is an end in itself; the rub of love, for instance, being somehow more important for some then the object of that love’s abrasion. There have been these, and then those that, on top of this, proclaim the fact loudly, failing to hide it under a current of romantic effluvia, rather pressing it to the fore, as if they could thereby be protected from the eventual wane and scatter of characteristics which, when composed and controlled, described something lovable. And yet this is not always a deficit. Poets, musicians, painters and priests, great cultural leaders, are linked in this way. Still, the expression, but more native even than that – the experience itself: of love, of hate, of grief, all these inner goings-on distract some from the ultimate source, or perhaps goal, of the ability to feel in the first place.

It becomes something of an addiction. But it is not, as it may first appear, the narcissistic brand of self-interest, of vanity, that might otherwise be thought a first order threat to true connection. Because this is not a retreat into the self so much as an escape from the self. An emotion’s internal bloom does not reflect one’s own face, but distracts exactly from it. It is a nameless, universal equivocation of the self. These experiences transcend the finite, fleshy vehicle and open one up to some vast encounter with the anonymous nature of life. It is a release. A passage. A leap of faith. And it should not be undertaken lightly.

At least this is what the guidebook says.

The advent of REMO, or Re-experienced EMOtion, and its subsequent abuse, could probably have been foretold had people been interested as much in mapping out the consequences of our new technology as they were in using it. But when is this ever the case. Once the connection had been made that, by ingesting the by-product of emotional transfer, one could achieve some sort of heightened, or at least altered, emotional state, certain among us, people who might otherwise (in my opinion) have been called to greater things, spiraled down into the abyss within themselves, preferring to become part of the cosmos rather than part of one another’s lives.
Fortunately, other than the un-quantifiable loss suffered by a society whose potentially great contributors sacrifice social interaction for exploration into more remote regions of the self, REMO doesn’t cause too much trouble. Its addicts, despite a relatively lackluster bent toward prosthelytization, aren’t exactly a menace, and since they produce their own drug, in most cases the whole REMO culture has been safely nestled in between our preoccupation with issues we find more imminently worrisome and the benefit we reap by functionally ignoring such trifles, or at least denying we care. Still, REMO is considered a dirty indulgence in most circles, and the majority of people, it’s speculated, either use the drug rarely, or not at all. Helen is an example of the former category.

More accurately, Helen has only tried it once. But Zara’s night of experimentation is another count against her. In neither case, to her benefit, has it been her idea, nor, for obvious reasons, her REMO. Because she’d never been able to produce her own Buzz to begin with, the thought that REMO would have any noticeable effect on her was far from her mind. Besides, her parents had so fervently encouraged Zara to experiment with other drugs that her appetite for altered states had already, when REMO made its appearance, long since vanished.

But of all the ways Helen distinguished herself from Zara, one thing that remained consistent was their romantic resolve. Neither the intrepid Zarabarbarian, nor the fiercely domestic Helen, held anything more dear than the intimate bond they’d chosen to foster between themselves and their respective men. It was Asseem who’d suggested REMO the first time, and Jack who, in a drunken haze, slipped some into her drink the second, wanting Helen, as he put it later, to “have a little fun.”

“I don’t need drugs to have fun, Jack,” she’d said the next morning, squinting to see him from under her enormous REMOver.

“How do you know,” was, after a long pause, all he’d come up with, “what you need?”
But Helen knew, contrary to what she’d expected, that REMO did, in fact, have an effect on her. Quite an enormous one. And unpleasant. Simply put, it plunged her so far inside herself that she lost all ability to communicate. She was stripped bare of all social conventions – something she’d always already had difficulty with – and made mute by the sheer force of feeling that congested the internal corridors of her personality, bottlenecking her ability to translate intention into action, impression to expression, and will to power. For someone whose entire self-image was based on her knack for saying what she thought, when she thought it, this was more than merely awkward. It was terrifying. Fortunately, Zara’s experience with Asseem took place in his apartment, alone, and he took care of her, sensitive to the struggles inherent in articulation. They’d stayed together for the duration, Zara in a fetal position with her lover slowly stroking her forehead, playing soothing music, and doing all the talking.

With Jack things were different. They’d gone to a Forecast party – known for their extravagance and extra-curricular activities – and wound up in a room where people were tongue-tied to a pulsing ETM, the others taking turns standing in the conduction spot, giving the getter a full range of other people’s insides. After Helen had demurred two or three times, Jack made the decision for her, gathering a mouthful of the stuff and kissing his wife, spitting REMO down her throat. She’d known better than to “raise the issue” at the time, knowing Jack was just in it for fun, and Helen had taken her troubles to the coat closet, curled into its darkest corner, and stayed there until being called by the familiar voice of a certain forecaster whose acuity did not extend to the tumultuous weather of his own wife’s heart.

When Rocket licked the ETM, Helen’s first response had been a mixture of alarm and pity she might normally have reserved for people, and upon further consideration, having no reason to assume that, even if other animals could be affected by human REMO, the experience would be for Rocket what it was for her, she felt sheepish. After following Busy out of the ETM chamber and into the office, she noticed that he didn’t seem the least bit worried about the dog, doing nothing to follow up on the episode. She scaled back. She expressed a cool disinterest. She let him be. She tried instead to focus again on what Busy was speaking about, to resume the pose she’d used in the car to convince him of their affinity.

The room Busy had brought them to was small, square, and wore nothing on its walls. After shaking Helen’s hand, the man walked behind a simple desk and sat, motioning for her to sit in the room’s only other chair. There was nothing mechanical anywhere, and the only monitor on the desktop appeared to be off. She looked at Busy and attempted a confident grin. They exchanged some simple statements, he what a pleasure it was to be sitting there with someone other than Blain, she what an interesting place they were sitting in, that she was glad to be trusted with an insider’s perspective. The contrast of this near-naked room to everything else she’d seen of the baroque, metal-made pit-mine was slightly unnerving, and with the sound insulation, Helen found she had to intentionally keep her voice raised or it would drip out of her mouth like a leaky faucet rather than project across the uncluttered space between them.

Their attention turned to the dogs. Rocket was sitting, almost stolid, with Busy’s dog circling him, sniffing here and there, nudging, generally making a good-faith effort, it seemed, to engage the unfamiliar animal.

“Any guy off the street would either bark or bend over backwards to be nice,” said Busy. Helen looked at him and noticed that for the first time since she’d met him, Busy’s face betrayed something other than suspicion or appreciation. His eyebrows were bent upward on the inside, and though the corners of his mouth were squeezing out a smile, his lips pressed against one another for support.

“Dogs are just so damn…” he seemed lost in thought.

“I know exactly what you mean,” Helen tried, hoping to maintain their rapport.

Busy broke out of his state and slapped his hand on the desk. “And that’s what I like about you, Helen. You just seem to get it.” Helen watched as his face returned to an old stand-by expression. He relaxed, and pulled himself closer to the desk. As Busy launched into a rather long-winded explanation of the chop-shop cum drug production facility, she was reminded of her many hours sitting with her high school counselor, Mrs. Green, whose gym coach slash reformed hippy approach to Zara had always induced a measure of comfort coated with a pinch of pity. Far from the initial, rather imposing pose he’d struck in the parking lot along I-5, the man before her shrank even as his bombastic gesticulations took up more and more space. He was harmless. He was good natured and spirited and his once intimidating dog was a happy-go-lucky hound waiting for Rocket to give an inch.

“The truth is,” Busy continued, “that I’ve put a lot of time into making this facility the smooth operation you saw out there.” He sighed. “When I was hired there were maybe a few vehicles brought in on any given day. And now look.”
Helen nodded.

“And the REMO resale? My idea. But see – and this was just plain lack of foresight on my part – the drug production really changed the whole atmosphere of the place. Everyone’s so bent on being a big part of the REMO scheme, getting the most Buzz for their buck, that nobody shows much interest in just how damn amazing this facility is. People look away. They come in here and pretend they’ve just walked off the street for a pack of smokes and look at me with these big vacuous eyes when I hand them their change, like, Hey, man, good thing these don’t cause cancer…” He trailed off again. Helen was beginning to realize Busy didn’t have many people to talk to. Which was okay, she thought. She wasn’t quite sure what her next move should be, and she decided to go along with this peculiar man for the time being, feeling a little nostalgic as she was, and wanting to savor the sensation. She hadn’t felt nostalgia in years.

“But if they weren’t so determined to play into the system,” she noted, “it wouldn’t work so well, right?”

Busy’s eyes bore into her, but he smiled. “You’re absolutely right, Helen. It wouldn’t work very well at all.”

They sat, having reached this minor consensus, and looked back to the dogs. Rocket was finally showing some interest in his fellow four-legger, and a tidbit of tail-wagging earned him an increasingly eager playmate. Busy took this as his cue, and walked to the door, opening it to let the creatures tumble out, tossing each other around like dogs. Helen watched with disinterest left over from her REMO masquerade, but wondered, despite herself, if they wouldn’t get lost in those labyrinthine hallways.

She looked at her host and smiled. “Rocket is normally quite affable,” she assured him.

“Affable?”

“Friendly.”

“Right.” He didn’t seem put-off in the least by his ignorance. “Well this is a pretty strange place. I’m sure he’s just-”

“Yeah,” Helen finished.

Then silence.

“The wife,” he finally continued, having resumed his position behind the broad, bare desk, “didn’t like the idea of me taking Fred to work.” He looked at her, as if for assurance. “At first, you know.”

“You mean because of the noise?”

“Well, the noise, yeah…”

“Or-”

“Well he makes for some Buzz production around the house, I guess, and—”

Helen thought of her neighbor.

“Well couldn’t she figure out a way of turning his absence into Buzz?”

Busy’s face found some critical pose, then let go and lit up. “Helen that’s a great idea. Maybe we should put out some-”

“Lost dog signs.”

“Exactly!” He marveled. “Damn, Helen, you know I could use someone like you around here.” It was a flippant remark, but Helen realized that it wasn’t often she heard such open praise. It felt good. She traced the sensation as it wound around her relaxed intellect and danced along the border between thought and feeling. She was beginning to like this funny man.

“So you’re married,” she said.

He withheld his dismay with remarkable grace. “Grace. Seventeen years now.”

“Congratulations,” was all she could think to say. She couldn’t imagine.

“Right, well, I’m a busy man.”

“I see.”

Busy looked around the room as if it had been populated, at some point, by things to see.

“You know, Helen, I’ve been saying that for over a decade, and I still never intend the pun.”

“I don’t buy that for a minute,” she lied.

“You’re too kind, kid.”

Helen wondered if it was true. Busy leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. He was obviously at ease, and she felt both delighted and disgruntled by the idea that she didn’t seem to pose a threat.

“You’d be surprised how hard it gets to keep your chin down, around here.”

“Well things are good, it seems.”

“Yeah but the wife, she gets a little tired of having to put in overtime on Buzz production for the household. I just get home from work and, well, you know, I usually have to admit that I had a good day.”

“Bummer.”

“Grace shouldn’t have to deny the dog in order to cook the roast all the way through. I should be able to come home and vent about a shitty day when I need to, give her a chance to relax.”

Helen heaved a deep sigh she thought might be appropriate, then surprised herself by feeling it. The parallel was an obvious one, but she didn’t expect it to matter, the standards one holds for oneself so distinct, in her mind, from those imposed on others.

“I know how you feel,” she said. “I can’t produce Buzz, myself.”

Busy frowned and cocked his eyes. This did not compute. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I can’t make ETMs work.”

Busy looked off at the room’s ghost appointments, and Helen was left with her own words repeating inside her head as if they’d upset their source and found another mouth to come from. This wasn’t something she told many people. She thought back as Busy’s face cycled through histories of itself, looking for something to match his mood, and couldn’t, she realized, remember the last person she’d told. Could it have been Jack? Actually, she’d told her neighbor more than once, but only in order to give Joan a chance to make a little extra on forgetting it. Helping people toward their errant goals was Helen’s most direct route to actually producing the stuff, and as she’d told her parents before, if there was a way to capture those emotions it would be another thing altogether.

Busy settled on perplexed, and gave it his best shot. “So you mean you don’t have…”
“Negative emotions? Hardly. Honestly, Busy, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s just never worked for me.”

“Hmmm, I didn’t even know there was trick to it, you know? I’d always just put myself in the conduction field and-”

“Right. So it goes. Believe me, I’ve tried. It’s not like I don’t have dirt to draw from.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Exactly.”

Busy paused, considering. “Well I gotta tell ya, kid, it’s pretty strange, but between you and me,” he leaned forward, “I think that makes you pretty special.”

Before Helen could respond to this the door broke open, letting three dogs tumble into the room and behind them Busy’s partner, Blain, who walked to a far corner and beckoned to Helen’s host. She grew tense. Busy stood, smiled, and shrugged before joining his partner, but he returned to her directly and held out his open hand. On it sat a pair of earplugs. She rolled her eyes but took the offering, an apology, and settled in to watch the dogs. Now fully animated, Rocket rolled around with the two new animals, which, though bigger than him, took care, it seemed, not to overwhelm the suburban mutt, instead spending as much time under as on top. Helen glanced now and then at the men in the corner, and tracked Busy’s typically loose expressions as they grew more steady, then stopped changing altogether, frozen into a hybrid of stern observance and what she could read only as sadness, a wistful look for which she had trouble imagining a source. They stood for a while without speaking, until Busy began on what seemed like a longer monologue, and the winces and wide eyes of his partner made it apparent that, whatever he was saying, it wasn’t something mutual.

Just as Rocket and the rest were winding down, Busy came up to Helen and motioned for her to take out the plugs. She hesitated slightly, but the man’s demeanor suggested more concern than anything else, and she pulled out the instruments, letting the panting and ambient hum of the office pour into her empty ears. She looked up at Busy, whose head, she noticed, was backlit by the ceiling light, awarding him with a halo of sorts, and she smiled to herself until she heard him say “You have any idea why there might be an APB out on you?”

***

Onward to chapter 15 (Redivider).

Back to chapter 13 (Matt Briggs)

Treedance

2009-08-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

UPDATE:

Now available from Gene Morgan's Twitter Feed Press is "What 'Twas Done Us In, See" by me. Free to download. Enjoy.

***

New Bright Stupid Confetti post is up. Christopher always manages to find something—or two somethings, or three somethings, or many somethings—that drop my jaw.

He featured my brother recently, too.

***

I like me some trees sometimes. I wrote about a Moon tree a while ago.

a tree dancing from happycobrabooks on Vimeo.

Sometimes I'm just outside and I'm looking around, and it's the evening, and I see that a tree has started dancing. I'm not sure what music a tree listens to when it is dancing. I'm not sure if trees produce their own music, or if they have some sort of source that they tap in to. Like, with their roots? Is there music under the grass? Is that why grass exists, as a sort of baffling, so the music doesn't overwhelm all of us above the earth? Is that it?

Is that the point of grass?

I've always wondered what was the point of grass. And now I think I know.

Anyway, trees and the music that exists beneath the grass. Are the moles making it? Are the ants making it? Are the worms making it? Is that why the music is there?

I'm just not sure.

I'll think about it. And then maybe blog.

Amelia

2009-08-18T09:23:00.000-07:00

It's Amelia's birthday. Or was. It was. But it is, in a way. It's nearby. Her birthday is nearby. That's a thing.

That's a thing that can be. It can be nearby Amelia's birthday, and we can all say: Hey, Happy Birthday.

And then when she says, It's not my birthday. It was my birthday, we can then all reply like: Hey, hey, it's nearby, right? We're near it, aren't we? A Happy Birthday salutation is like a improvised explosive on a roadside, we can say. It hits all sort of things that are merely nearby.

Like you, Amelia, and your birthday! It blows that totally up! It blows you totally up with wishes for a happy day even if that day isn't any longer the day that is your birthday.

Hey, how about we make a cake or something for Amelia? I have an apple tree in my backyard. In my basement, black mold grows on the little windows that look out over the lawn. In the attic, I think there is probably a squirrel that has died.

Let's put them all together and make a joyous birthday cake for the one and only Amelia:

shred newspaper and put it in a bowl
scrape mold from the windows with the edge of a paint scraper and sprinkle it into the bowl
add water

make wheat paste:

one cup of hot water
three table spoons of flour with enough cold water to make it liquify
pour them together and bring to a boil
when it thickens, allow it to cool

fold wheat paste into moldy newspaper

remove dead squirrel's heart
place at the center of a cake pan
cover with wheat paste/newspaper mixture
place into freezer

while waiting for cake to freeze, eat apple

Isn't that easy? Let's take the frozen cake to Amelia's and leave it on her doorstep. Let's ring the doorbell and run away. Let's watch from behind a bush. Let's admire the way Amelia roots through the frozen cake with a pair of scissors. Let's see if Amelia can find the heart.

Happy nearby Birthday, Amelia!

***

My book A Jello Horse will be around again soon. Since Publishing Genius Press is being enthusiastic enough about the book to reprint it, I feel I should work hard to promote it so they can make back their printing costs.

Would you help? Maybe? I could maybe answer your questions if you want to interview me. I could maybe guest blog on your blog. I could see that you get a review copy if you want to review.

I could do those things.

***

A brief Open Letter to Mark Doty (who will likely never read it):

View Larger Map

Last Thursday, I was walking to a used camera store to see about finding an old Polaroid SX-70, and I was listening to a Radiolab podcast where Robert Krulwich read a little piece from one of your books, and the piece was about someone very close to you dying, and at the corner of Brooklyn and Campus Parkway there I got a little shaky and felt my eyes get wet and I really felt like crying. Right there where that person is standing, talking on a cell phone. Kind of was overcome.

Thanks.

***

That's me at 17. Kind of like that kid.

Anyway, so I really liked Dead Kennedys when I was young—younger than that photo kid up there. And where I lived, people were sort of unfamiliar with punk. "What kind of music you like?" they'd say and I'd say I like punk and they'd ask what that was.

And I'd try to explain, but it wasn't easy.

Then one day I had a Dead Kennedys tape with me at school. Plastic Surgery Disasters. And during a break, some people were standing around a boom box in the corner of the room, and they were listening to Judas Priest. I had my tape, right, and someone said, maybe we should let him put in his tape and we can hear what its all about.

If you know Plastic Surgery Disasters, you know that side two opens with a song called "Riot." That's this song:

The song with the long, talky intro. The long with the tense opening.

Well, for fuck's sake, the song didn't really even start before someone pulled it out and said it sucked.

And I was never popular.

I blame Jello and his talky opening. Jello ruined high school for me by not just getting to the rocking fast enough.

Boom

2009-08-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

I went to this movie and I noticed in this movie that throughout this movie the boom mic kept slipping down into the shot. You know what that looks like? Like this:

This is considered a mistake, this sudden appearance of a boom mic in a shot. But it happened so often in the movie, I thought maybe it wasn't a mistake.

So I decided to call Hollywood. (It was, you see, a Hollywood movie.) I called Hollywood and I talked to a very nice person, and told her I had seen this movie and in this movie the boom mic kept slipping down into the shot and I asked if maybe I could speak to the person who was responsible. She said sure and she transferred my call to the boom mic operator.

Here is a transcript of our conversation.

Hi. I saw your Hollywood movie, and I noticed that the boom mic kept slipping into the shot. Were you the boom mic operator for this movie?

Yes, I was.

What's your name?

I would rather not reveal that. Call me Boom Mic X, please.

Oh. Kay. Hi, Boom Mic X.

Hi.

Was the boom mic slipping into the shot some sort of accident?

No. Absolutely not.

Don't movie directors generally NOT want the boom mic to show up in a shot?

Yes. They generally object to the sudden appearance of a boom mic. I would say that that is an accurate statement.

So, doesn't this make the appearance of the boom mic in your Hollywood film an accident?

In this case, no. The director of the movie most likely thinks it was an accident. But, for the record, I did it intentionally.

You did?

Yes. You see, I am an activist.

An activist?

Yes. I am a reality activist. I work with an organization that objects to the willing suspension of disbelief. We believe that all fictional projects should be morally bound to reveal to their audiences that they are fictional projects. They must never be ambiguous about it. So we infiltrate the creation of works of fiction and we make certain to show in the consumers of fictional media to the fictional nature of the thing being consumed. We call it "cueing."

By lowering the boom mic into a movie?

That's one technique, yes. It's one of our most common ways of cueing in film or television. We also show up as extras in films sometimes, and break the fourth wall. We look into the camera. It's subtle, but people notice and it reminds them that they are not watching reality unfold. They are watching a movie.

You said "fictional media." So you do this for more than simply film and television?

Oh, yes. Music, for example. Now, you may not think of music as a "fictional medium," but it is. Any form of storytelling creates fiction. Music was always very tricky, but a few years ago, we managed to solve music in the hip-hop genre, at least. One of our operatives managed to popularize the use of the word "real" in hip-hop. He did it virally, of course. Language is viral. He started it, and then, soon, hip-hop artists were talking about "keeping" things "real."

The brilliance of this cueing technique is that while the artists use the term in order to mask the fiction they are creating, because it is antinomous to fiction to call it "real," they undercut their own project. They produce fiction and try to insist on how "real" it is, but because the term "real" is a primary category, it is more powerful than their attempt to appropriate it to qualify their fiction. They explode their own project from within.

Wow.

Yeah. Stunningly simple, isn't it? The guy who came up with that one was rewarded with his very own private island.

Novels can be tough. You know, a bookstore has this place where it shelves its fiction, so at point-of-sale, one is already made aware of the un-reality of the work. This, of course is true of film and television, but a good novel is one that immerses the reader in its fictional world. The problem for us is never point-of-sale. It's that moment when one gets "lost" in one's fiction. When the brain is suddenly transported. When one forgets the nature of the work one is consuming.

There are multiple people involved in film and television. We can sneak our cues into that.

So what are you doing to cue readers?

Well, first, we are a very powerful group of people. I'm not bragging. I'm just saying it. We have a lot of money. So we have put that money behind popularizing really lousy novels. Novels that NEVER immerse the reader. If you think the quality of popular fiction is deplorable, now you know why.

Second, we have editors filling books with subliminal messages. Acrostics. THIS IS FICTION. THIS IS NOT REAL. Spend some time with a book and a highlighter. You'll find messages all over.

Third, in that stronghold of readers who refuse to allow themselves to read inferior works of fiction that by virtue of their lack of virtue are constantly ejecting readers from story and making it impossible for them to forget that what they are reading IS fiction, we have popularized post-modern, meta-fictional techniques and frames by taking over academia.

Should I be happy that you have done this?

Thank us for your grasp on reality, yes.

***

Justin Sirois reads from MLKNG SCKLS here.

Rider

2009-08-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

This week, I would like to direct you to check out an essay I wrote on Diff'rent Strokes and Knight Rider on HTML Giant.

Here's an excerpt:

"Fictional KITT (DS) is, like fictional KITT (KR), is a super-intelligent, wise-cracking computerized car. But fictional David Hasselhoff (DS) is the actor who plays a character named Michael Knight in Knight Rider."

For the rest of the week, I will post something small here every day.

***

Tomorrow night, you can go to Neptune Coffee and see Amelia Gray, Evelyn Hampton, and Lotte Kestner. I will be hosting. It will be great.

***

A couple of days ago, I read Justin Sirois's book MLKNG SCKLS. It's a remarkable little book—a series of excerpts, in fact—from a novel he's working on about an Iraqi escaping Fallujah.

The language is not dense, but it has a deep and impressive lyricism. Sirois has a gift for lyrical writing that in no way seems forced. The alliteration and internal rhymes that occur in the well-constructed sentences work in ways they don't in a lot of prose lyricism. He is restrained, picking the right spots to deploy a rhetorical figure to advantage.

The books two main characters are walking through the Iraqi desert, journeying from Fallujah to Ramadi, one recording it all on a laptop with a slowly draining battery. It has its Beckett precedents, but instead of Beckett's surreal, placeless place settings, MLKNG SCKLS is played out on the great contemporary American misadventure of our war in Iraq. Absurdity and tragedy collide every day in that Middle Eastern country, and Sirios recognizes and reveals it all well.

A favorite scene of mine features a man uncooking a meal, a task as seemingly impossible as, say, unringing a bell; or uninvading a country because of faulty, cooked intelligence. The characters manages his task. America, though, won't.

Looking forward to the novel, Justin. It's a great honor to share a publisher.

Snapshot

2009-07-27T16:41:00.000-07:00

Like last week, I'm going to use my blog post this week to do another "Job Interview." That is, an interview with someone who has a job. A job that you—the reader—may not have been aware existed. A job that you—the reader—might consider looking into in this lousy, lousy job market.

This week I talked to a Freeze Framer.

Here's the interview.

What's a Freeze Framer?

I work in the television and Internet industry. Often times in the television and Internet industry, someone will have an opinion about someone else. When that someone has an opinion about someone else, and that opinion is a low opinion of said other person, and they decide they want to go ahead and express that opinion, they need an image that serves to help with the expression of that low opinion. When that happens, they call me and ask me to find one.

Instead of taking picture after picture after picture after picture of the person, I find a video tape of the person, and I go through it frame by frame to find the least flattering image I can find. This, then, becomes the image that accompanies the negative opinion about the person.

So you just look at every frame until you find the right one? That sounds difficult and time consuming and arbitrary.

In fact, though, it's not. It can be time consuming, sure. It can be somewhat difficult, yes. But it is not arbitrary.

I must first familiarize myself with the opinion. When I have read the opinion, I put it into one of a half-dozen or so categories. ("This person is stupid," for example. Or, "This person is a sucking black hole of evil." That's another one. A popular one, too.) Once I have decided what the opinion's major category is, I must open up my file of subcategories. "This person is stupid BECAUSE they don't know what I know." "This person is stupid BECAUSE they choose to associate with other stupid people." "This person is stupid BECAUSE they have never seen a particular film, read a particular book, heard a particular recording." (The subcategories, you see, sometimes have their own subcategories.)

The major categories and subcategories are all assigned letters of the alphabet, and the opinion is given a two to six letter classification called an "Identifier." I use it's Identifier to find another file that gives me some very specific instructions about the proper image to go with the opinion. Freeze framers have spent many decades—since long before digital media, in fact—identifying the proper combination of elements on a face for each Indentifier.

Can you give me an example?

Absolutely. Recently I was given an opinion about the man who hosted a reunion of a reality TV show that we will not name. I read the piece, and it was a classic "This person is an idiot because they are asking me to care about and pay attention to a group of people who do not deserve my attention." The Identifier for that sort of piece is BDCLE. (I've done quite a few of those recently.)

Here is the proper image for a BDCLE:

Elements include:

• slightly "inturned" or "crossed" left eye with a straight-ahead right eye
• head cocked to the left at a less-than 45 degree angle down from normal
• grin where only the top row of teeth are showing and where it appears that the teeth on the right side of the mouth are larger than the one's on the left
• no more than two brow furrows
• darker interior to left nostril

There are a few others, but I think you get the idea.

Is what you do "ethical?"

I reject the notion that ethics have anything at all to do with my job. I provide the image, yes, but I do not post it. I am a practitioner of an art form, not a participant in the consequences of that art form.

How does one become a Freeze Framer?

There are lodges in most cities in America. You simply have to go to one, meet a member or two, show them that you have the skills, the temperament, and the discretion to do what they do. You then become an apprentice.

The apprenticeship is two years, usually. After that, there is a ceremony.

What's the ceremony like?

I am not allowed to talk about it.

Should you be talking about this at all?

I would rather not respond to that question.

Is this interview an act of disloyalty on your part? Was it authorized by the Freeze Framers Lodge?

I will only say that I am a loyal Freeze Framer. But there is misinformation about us out there. I agreed to the interview to help dispel some of the myths. But, no. This interview was not authorized.

I will keep your identity a secret, then.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you.

***

There it is. A Freeze Framer. Something else you could be.

***

Readings scheduled:

Pilot Books on July 30 with Brandon Scott Gorrell.

Literary Death Match in Seattle, Jewelbox Theater, The Rendezvous, August 13. Facing Ryan Boudinot, Matt Briggs, and Peter Gajdics.

Also, come see Amelia Gray, Evelyn Hampton, and Lotte Kestner at Neptune Coffee in Greenwood on August 3, 7pm.

Also, come see Mary Miller and Jonathan Evison at The College Inn Pub, August 5 at 7pm. Aaron Burch will be there, too, to read from the brand spanking new issue of Hobart!

***

The best news I've heard in a while: Spike Jonze optioned the film rights to LIGHT BOXES by my friend Shane Jones. I loved LIGHT BOXES. You should buy it.

Also buy SCORCH ATLAS by Blake Butler.

Also buy AM/PM by Amelia Gray.

Also lots of other things by Sam Pink, Mike Young, Brandon Gorrell, Matt Bell, Ellen Kennedy, Jimmy Chen, Barry Graham, Evelyn Hampton, Justin Taylor, Chelsea Martin, JA Tyler, Katherine Regina, Mary Miller, Aaron Burch, Elizabeth Ellen, Monkeybicycle, Dzanc Books, Featherproof Books, Rose Metal Press, Magic Helicopter, Greying Ghost Press, Open City Books, Mud Luscious Press, Underland Press, Future Tense Press, and about a thousand other small presses and people.

Here's a new one:

Year of the Liquidator.

***

Other wonderful things here.

RIP Merce Cunningham.

Picnic

2009-07-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

I thought maybe that because of the bad economy and the high unemployment rate here in the nation of the United States of America, it would be good for me to take a week or maybe two out of my nonstop schedule of entertaining in blog form—or, my nonstop schedule of attempting to but never really being able to entertain readers with a blog here on the internet—to instead use my nationally accessible forum to help out with the education of the people who are reading this and might also be unemployed.

Isn't that nice? Isn't it nice of me? I think sometimes that I am nice.

Anyway.

So I thought I could maybe use this blog post to highlight a possible career for those that are unemployed and maybe looking to find for themselves some kind of gainful and satisfactory employment opportunities.

Let's start by looking at a picture of this man:

This man has a job. This man is a Regional Picnic Endorser. That is his title. That is what he does for a living. He lives in a region—the Pacific Northwest—and he attends many picnics in this region. He attends the picnics and evaluates them by following a six point rubric. He rates the picnic according to the rubric. And then, if the picnic scores a certain number of the six possible points, he endorses the picnic. And he endorses it by appearing in photographs making the "thumbs up" gesture.

This is his job. He is paid very well to do this job. He has benefits. And not just regular benefits. He has HEALTH benefits, which are, I think you know, some of the best kinds of benefits to get. People really covet health benefits.

He gets them because of his Regional Picnic Endorser position.

I interviewed him.

How did you get your job?

I sort of fell into it. I was at a park on a Saturday taking some photos and I saw a picnic. The folks who were putting on the picnic were very friendly and they gave me a hotdog with mustard. It was a nice stone ground honey mustard. I ate the hotdog and enjoyed it, and I gave the host the "thumbs up."

A man who was attending the picnic approached me and asked me to make the "thumbs up" sign again. I did so. He told me I was a natural. He gave me his business card and told me to call him Monday about a job. I was hesitant, but then he told me about the health benefits.

How long have you been doing this job?

Six years now. It's the longest I've ever held any job. I love it. So many hotdogs!

Tell me about the rubric. What are the six things a picnic must have to get the full six points?

I'm sorry, but I am not allowed to tell you. The six points are a closely guarded secret of our agency. If I told you, then everyone who was hosting a picnic would follow the six points specifically, but not try to innovate. It is important that Americans continue to innovate and shift the picnic paradigm internationally. We must remain Exceptionalists, re: picnics. We can't fall behind the Chinese or, say, the Brazilians.

How can someone get a job endorsing regional picnics?

You can stumble into it, like I did. Or you can go to your local government website. There are usually positions open, even if they are not listed. If you don't see one on the government jobs site, I would suggest calling Parks and Recreation directly and asking. Often, the person who answers the phone will pretend like the job doesn't exist. This is a test. Keep pressing them and eventually they will say, "Congratulations! Your persistence has earned you an interview!"

How many hotdogs have you eaten?

Many, my friend. Many.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

***

Blake Butler's Scorch Atlas is available for pre-order. Get in on dat shit.

DESTROYED!

Scorch Atlas (destroyed) by Blake Butler from featherproof books on Vimeo.

***

Readings scheduled:

Pilot Books on July 30 with Brandon Scott Gorrell.

Literary Death Match in Seattle, Jewelbox Theater, The Rendezvous, August 13. Facing Ryan Boudinot, Matt Briggs, and Peter Gajdics.

Also, come see Amelia Gray, Evelyn Hampton, and Lotte Kestner at Neptune Coffee in Greenwood on August 3, 7pm.

Also, come see Mary Miller and Jonathan Evison at The College Inn Pub, August 5 at 7pm. Aaron Burch will be there, too, to read from the brand spanking new issue of Hobart!

fisheye

2009-07-16T15:31:00.001-07:00

I have been away from my desk.

***

A new Happy Cobra eBook is coming soon. It's by Kendra Grant Malone and Tao Lin.

***

Readings scheduled:

Pilot Books on July 30 with Brandon Scott Gorrell.

Literary Death Match in Seattle, Jewelbox Theater, The Rendezvous, August 13. Facing Ryan Boudinot, Matt Briggs, and Peter Gajdics.

Also, come see Amelia Gray, Evelyn Hampton, and Lotte Kestner at Neptune Coffee in Greenwood on August 3, 7pm.

Also, come see Mary Miller and Jonathan Evison at The College Inn Pub, August 5 at 7pm.

Mayor

2009-07-06T15:00:00.000-07:00

File this under SOME OLD BULLSHIT. This is something I wrote in 2003 or 2004. I found it in a file somewhere. It's about my cat:

If Emmett were the mayor, I'd play a game of listening improvisation whenever he gave a speech. As he spoke, relaying whatever it was he wanted to relay, maybe something about the budget, maybe something about traffic, I would sit in a seat in back and play with the form. I could change his cadence by tapping my foot, pacing or confusing his tempo. He might suddenly speak polyrthymically, or stick with a simple 4/4 beat. I could rustle a few papers to stir the air and affect his pitch ever so slightly. I might cover an ear with my hand, listen to the way his voice changed when the sound is caught by only the left or the right. I could turn my head from side to side, listening to the difference in each angle. I'd open and close my hands around my ears to condense the sound waves into smaller spaces. Turn my head quickly (little doppler effect), making little rippling ponds, splashes of noise.

I might cover one eye to change my perspective, tilt my head to the side. Nod or shake. Squint, smile too hard, strain the muscles around my eyeball to squeeze it. Use my hands as blinders, press my thumbs to the sides of my face, making little trails of blue light, or green grids.

But, I don't think I'd mess with the content. Not at first. Just style and presentation.

If I taped Emmett's speeches, though, I could allow myself to mess with them. I might substitute words using homonyms, changing his meanings. I might transcribe entire speeches without vowels, or verbs. Cut up the text, put it in a hat, pull random bits and sort them into a new speech, studying that. I could intentionally mishear him. I could randomly add footnotes, or tangents. Or, I could fundamentally change the way I understand what Emmett says. I might try to override the hardwired pathways in my brain, forcing information through unused synaptic links. Or, perhaps I could make the pathways fire back wards? Parallel? A speech about the budget could be reconfigured, reassessed, and reinterpreted as a speech about divorce rates in ant colonies, or it could taste like limes and raspberries.

***

Later, we all found out that the center of the galaxy tastes like raspberries.

***

Here's a photo of Emmett about to teleport away.

Emmett has powers.

***

Two from Seth Pollins:

In Defense of Self-Portraiture
The Dr. Mario Champion

***

Some more old stuff:

stuff i thought about today at work

• i practice no organized religion, but i do read strunk and white's "elements of style" nearly every day.

someday, i might start writing it like this: str-nk and wh-te.

• if you come to my bookstore, i'm the guy at the kid's info desk with the temporary strega nona tattoo. don't point and laugh.

• the results of today's books-in-print olympics are as follows: garfield gets the gold with 312 results, ziggy the silver with 41 results, and jonas salk, the man who cured polio, gets the bronze with 32 results.

Penny

2009-06-29T17:22:00.001-07:00

More later...please stand by.

***

This is my record review of the new record that I received in the mail and it only cost me a penny.

(And also, it cost me two more pennies for two more records, sure, but mostly I just got this one record for a penny and then the others for the other pennies were sort of like bonus gravy.)

The penny that I spent on this record that I got in the mail for a penny was well wort the copper or whatever that it is made from or out of. (Someone told me that inside a penny is bread for some reason. They said that if you take a penny and cut it in half, inside is like this old stale bread.) (But that is neither here nor there.) This was a penny well spent, much like because the penny was made from when I went out and did the lawn with the mower, it was also a penny well earned.

(The lawn really, really, really, really, like really needed doing.)

I see on the cover of this penny-costing record is a big blue word and some people in a photograph that is under the big blue word which is probably very likely the name of the band or the album. I like it very much when things are plain and straight ahead and no one has any trouble with the way information is conveyed to them, so I like it when a band or musical solo artist does me—and the public!—the great service of going ahead and putting their own name on the cover of the record. I am also very much in favor of a picture of the band itself, or the musical solo artist himself, or the musical female solo artist herself on the cover for ease of identifying the nature of the person performing the music on the record.

(Girls can make very fine solo musical artists, and I swear I was not trying to diminish the excellence of female musical solo artists by putting them last.)

The record itself is round in the manner of record albums in time immemorial. (That means from before you were born to remembering.) It is black and made of some sort of polyvinyl. There is a label on the center of the record and if I could read I would tell you all about the artist.

(And now you say, how is it you are giving me this record review in words if you yourself are unable to read words. The very interesting thing about me as a person is that I am unable to read, but am perfectly capable for whatever reason of writing in any sort of words I want, including words in languages that you don't know. Like, I might if I want say: watashi wa biru ga daisukidesu. Which is a lot of Japanese person talk.)

I do not have a record player of any sort so I cannot tell you if the music is any good. I hope that in the next few years I will be able to make enough money to buy a record player and then I will listen to the record and tell you about it. And then I will blog about it, but I can't now because it is impossible.

***

A review of A Jello Horse.

When the book is reprinted in August there will be some review copies. Send me an email if you would like to review the book. I'm at

happy
cobra
books

at

g
mail

dot

com

***

I check my book on Goodreads a lot, and every time someone adds it, I get a little short of breath and giddy. You and all your friends could do a sort of practical joke on me where a whole bunch of you add the book while I am asleep, and when I check the Goodreads site again and see a bunch of people have all added the book, I might faint. Someone could get that on tape.

***

You will love this book. I loved it. You will, too.

***

Pillage

2009-06-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

Two small stories at Spork this week. (Forever after here.)

***

What have you, though? Yes? We pillage.

Why now maybe? But then, all right. We pillage.

So says this not then. But all for real, and though. We pillage.

Crazed of all, my when this well. She is, under. We pillage.

Frank is lost, well, such though when. It can't time so. We pillage.

This under then so now I'm yes. Right to then be, so what is now. We pillage.

Crap in though yes. For what you why? I'm then oh, sure. By mine, by yours so yes. We pillage.

Creep under then, so yes why now. True then by heart. Ate one and two. Reap sewn no what. So time is in. We pillage.

Shit was, then on. It makes by now. You make by now. I make by now. Am one heart sun. This day is on. And so and yes. We pillage.

Race horse. Race horse. Race. Horse. Race. Horse. Race horse, race horse. Race horse, race horse, race horse, race horse. Race. Horse race. Horse. We pillage.

No blog. No blog. Pillage. Pillage.

***

I'm mad at parades.

(More of the photos from that parade here.)

***

Glenn Gould talks about The Idea of North:

And other things.

Here's a dramatization of The Idea of North:

Shellac has a song called "The Idea of North." It's on [Shellac] At Action Park. I couldn't find it anywhere, but I found "My Black Ass," which has a great guitar riff:

***

Keyhole 7 arrived in the mail today. Looks lovely. My thanks to Peter Cole.

I'll be in PANK #4 in January 2010.

Notes

2009-06-15T13:37:00.000-07:00

I can't blog because I am embarking on a career as a really, really bad naturalist. Here are some photos I have been taking, and some notes on each.

A plant thought it was clever—very, very clever in fact—and thought that it would sit and wait for me to get very close and then that it would spit on me. I did not let this plant spit on me even though it really wanted to and was sitting there waiting for me to get close so it could spit.

Got you, plant. You were unable to spit on me and instead I got a photo of your awaiting to be spat spit.

BEE! This stupid bee got into my shot when I was trying to take a picture of flowers! Stupid bee! Leave me alone, stupid bee!

Bees are very angry creatures, and are often referred to by people who know as the "jerks of the animal kingdom." One time I was riding down a bike trail on my way to where I do my work, and a bee ran into my chest and stung me. And it was the bee's fault because the bee did not look both ways when it crossed the bike trail. It just went across the trail and I ran into it—because I did not see it and it was not paying attention!—and then it stung my chest.

And then it died. Bees are jerks.

This flower was coming on to me. I don't know why. I was walking by it and it started to change color and tell me through telepathy—or something—that I should take its photo and show it to my friends who read my blog. (That's you!) It said I should snap a picture of it. I did. I snapped a picture and here it is. And I think you can see what I mean about this flower coming on to me.

I have a serious relationship already, flower. I am not attainable by you for the purposes of dating me.

This plant is very full of poison and should never, ever be eaten by me. Never ever again should it be eaten by me because it is full of a strong, strong purple poison that makes me talk about things I don't want to talk about when I am on the phone to my mother. Like, Hi Mom, I ate a bad plant and it thinks I should tell you about all the times I used to take drugs in the basement where we lived. And Hi Mom, I ate a poison purple plant that wants me to tell you about when I used to go to our neighbor's houses and hide under their beds and listen to them get ready for bed and fall asleep, and then I'd get out from under their beds when I was sure they were sound asleep and I would touch their lips really really gently with my index finger. I won't eat this plant again.

BEE! The same bee is following me and getting into more photos in a subversive manner where you can only just see its stupid, stupid bee colors and I hate it! I hate the bee!

I have nothing to say about this flower because I am still mad at it.

I'm not kidding. I am still mad at it about what it did.

It knows what it did.

It knows.

This is a very nice mold formation. It is swoopy, which is a nice way for mold to bloom, I think.

I think a lot of things about mold. But when a mold is swoopy, I think really clear, happy, and good thoughts about it.

I do.

I am happy about this mold. It makes up for the bad thing that the previous-to-this-mold-stupid-flower did.

I am not a blogger, but I think I am a "budding naturalist" (which is a pun that you might catch if you reread that two-word phrase, folks).

So maybe there will be more notes.

***

I will be reading tomorrow and you can go. (Thanks to The Stranger for the kind words.)

The final hardcover copy will be given away to the person who gets the highest score on one of the pinball machines at The College Inn Pub.

***

I am teaching a class at The Richard Hugo House called The Voices of Anxious Objects. (Last description.) Right now it doesn't have the necessary five students for the class to actually happen. If you are interested, please sign up. I think it will be fun.

***

I sort of knew this guy in college.

***

There will, in a couple of months maybe, be a reprint of my sold-out novella A Jello Horse. As the first batch sold mainly to my friends and relations, the second batch will very likely necessitate outreach to people who haven't heard of me to sell.

Meaning: wanna review the book for a local print or online outlet? Or interview me? Want I should guest blog?

I am happy to become a dancing monkey to help get the book some more attention.

CONTACT ME IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO REVIEW THE BOOK AND WE CAN ARRANGE SOME SORT OF REVIEW COPY OR PDF OF THE FINAL.

happy
cobra
books
at
g
mail
dot
com

Winners

2009-06-08T15:58:00.000-07:00

And the winner is:

Tao Lin!

***

No.

No, not really.

The winners are Eli, who sent this photo:

And Sabra Embury, who sent a multimedia blitz, including a video and these images:

UPDATE

Here's the video:

sportzabar from Sabra Embury on Vimeo.

There are some fine, fine other entries, too, including John Synco's really remarkable, really faithful cover of Lonnie Irving's Pinball Machine, and Ryan Bradley's Shockabilly-esque cover of the same song.

Another good one is this drawing of Street Fighter's Blanka playing a Rocky and Bullwinkle pinball machine. It's by my friend Griffin:

And this video, sent by Laura Ellen Scott, of her spouse's high score dance:

All four will be receiving runner-up prizes.

Finally, here's an image from a coworker:

She's playing pinball at The College Inn Pub in Seattle's University District. I will be reading at said establishment on Tuesday, June 16. After the reading, I am hoping people will play some pinball with me and the other reading attendees. High score gets the last of the hardcover copies of the book.

Thank you to everyone who entered. I was really touched with the time and care put into the entries. All of them.

***

A story of mine is in the upcoming issue of Keyhole.

***

I reviewed Mathias Svalina's chapbook Play here. SPOILER ALERT: I liked it a lot.

***

Next week I will actually write something for this blog! No more tedious self-promotion!

Well.

Not as much tedious self-promotion!

Also, buy my book before it sells out!

What people on Goodreads are saying about it:

Blake Baby: "It's been since certain modes of David Foster Wallace that the sincere-turned-weird felt this fresh. Memory as a map meets roadtrip as a hallway, all in Simmons's singular and truly heartening, funny, moving ways of phrase. Loved."

Mary Miller: "I read this book about a week ago on a bus from Ann Arbor to Chicago. It made the trip a whole lot better. I keep remembering certain things, like how the narrator calls himself a "carcinogen to women." I love that. The book is really cute, too, and I like that Matthew signed mine. I wish it were longer, but that's only because I would have liked more."

Evelyn Hampton: "I finished the book at work and loaned it to a co-worker and said, Read this!"

Justin Dobbs: "I learned about Jackalopes."

Running

2009-06-01T09:12:00.000-07:00

First, a story:

THE DAWN OF THE AEROSPACE AGE

As the rest of us waited in back, pulling at our laces, and thinking about our next meal, she walked confidently out onto the stage. Applause flooded the areas behind the curtains, hurting our ears. “What must it be like out there?” we wondered. "Loud," we figured.

She began with simple tricks, pulling Arbor Day treats from the air, spinning silken webs to capture the worries of the folks in the front rows, floating off to the ceiling to retrieve a helium-bulged stuffed cat for a youngster in the middle. “A plant. Obviously a plant,” we thought, but we were jealous and wrong.

The Dawn of the Aerospace Age moved into the meat of her act. A projection screen dropped behind her, and a film began: the wonders of the modern world, explained.

“A flashlight works like this,” she said. “The battery is crowded with wild light horses. When the button is pressed, they spring out, and run full boar, straight ahead, as the crow flies, direct to what you want to see. The clomp along the water molecules in the air.”

“A toaster works like this,” she said. “The bread is inserted, the button is pressed, and the filaments crowd around and tease the bread for its softness. It is embarrassed. It tries harder. It hardens itself to the cruelty of filaments. It heats from the inside with self-righteous anger, and that's why the butter melts.”

“A baby works like this,” she said. “You buy one at the hospital. It has been spit out, like a watermelon seed, by the baby machine seen here. It grows in a glass of water on a windowsill. That's why hospitals have so many windows. Babies do not need food. Babies do not need water. They are self-contained. Anyone who says otherwise is quite likely mad.”

“A treefrog works like this,” she said. She did not speak. She let the film speak for itself. The audience marveled at the steam engine, and the bellows.

“The aerospace age,” she said, “is a marvelous time to be alive. Look at all we have.” And she showed all we have on screen. It was over in less than an hour. “Thank you,” she said, and left the stage.

We waited for the applause to die down, and took our positions. As she walked by me, I stared at her. Marvelous her. Wonderful her. How I loved her.

She smiled at me, and I thought maybe it would be nice to live in the here and now, in the present, the two of us together, a baby machine baby drooling in the corner.

And then, I returned to my position, ass-end of a juggling horse costume. Spot, the dog in our dog and pony act, waggled his butt as she tickled his back.

She was good to animals.

The Dawn of the aerospace age wore a man's shoes and slacks onstage. She wore a white shirt, suspenders and a bow tie. Burgundy. The tie and suspenders were a deep burgundy.

I wore the back of the horse.

“How indoor plumbing works is this,” she said. “The pipes dig down, down, deep down to the freshwater ocean at the center of the world. Plumbers are required to be both expert spelunkers and expert deep-sea divers. They have the most dangerous job there is. That's why they go to school for nine years, are paid so well, and are thought of as heroes.”

The front end of the horse, Lopez, did all the juggling. We lumbered onstage, and I lifted him onto my shoulders. I tried to move a bit, but Lopez discouraged most forms of tap and soft shoe dancing. He needed to concentrate, he said, because it wasn't easy to see through the horse head.

Our act was not popular. It was not easy to follow the Dawn of the Aerospace Age.

But, she suggested I learn to ride a unicycle with Lopez juggling away on my shoulders. She said she knew how, and could teach me sometime.

I wanted her to hold me in her arms, and tell me about air conditioners and mass transit, but this would do.

“How the cure for cancer works is this,” she said. “You swallow a live Australian tumorphage centipede, and let it work. To keep it happy, you must stay drunk while it searches your body for food. The alcohol loosens your muscles, and it doesn't have to struggle so on its hunt. Scientists were amazed to find how easy it was to cure cancer after all the work they'd done, and issued a formal apology by handwriting letters to everyone on the planet. You probably got one.”

She had her own unicycle.

“How friendship works is this,” she said. “Two people meet, and they purchase a ‘friendship’ crucible. They each remove a lock of hair, and burn them together, and must keep the fires going for as long as they intend to remain in the contractual agreement called friendship.”

And when it finally did happen, when we finally spent long, tangled moments together, I asked her questions, and she answered. And it wasn’t perfect. And it was better for not being perfect.

The act was never perfect, but Lopez and I put on the horse costume, jumped on the unicycle, and did our best. And she would wait for me.

I wondered how motorcycles worked. I wondered how the moon worked.

***

I have put that story up on the blog every June for the last couple of years. It originally appeared in the journal Reinventing the World.

I wrote it for someone who meant a lot to me. That person is no longer with us.

If you can, please donate a little to my Race for the Cure page.

***

Pinball contest winners announced Monday. Thanks to all who entered.

***

Sorry that many recent updates have involved you spending money: my book, donate to breast cancer, play pinball. Very soon I will stop bothering you like this.

Entries

2009-05-26T09:49:00.001-07:00

Here are some contest entries. You still have five or so days to enter the pinball contest.

First, this would be my entry, if I could enter. I, however, am not eligible.

Next, one from Ken Baumann that makes him look like a member of Shields and Yarnell.

Here's a fine entry from Sabra Embury. She also sent a video.

Finally, here's an entry from my friend Amy.

Entries are for this contest. The prize is a hardcover copy of my novella, A Jello Horse.

Each entry has been given a number. The number corresponds to the number of chances (slips of paper with the entrant's name on it) that the entrant has to win. Everyone gets one for entering. Additional chances are subjectively assigned based on how much I like the image. (Or song. Three people have submitted covers of Lonnie Irving's song Pinball Machine.)

For example: Amy gets one for entering. Amy gets another for playing pinball at work when she could get in trouble for playing pinball instead of working. Amy gets one for the shoes, which are pointy. Amy gets one for the photograph of the drowning child. Amy has four chances.

And just so you know the extent of the competition, this is the entry from my friend Eli, who is mentioned in the original post about this contest.

Eli does not fuck around, people. Eli came to play.

Observations

2009-05-19T10:50:00.000-07:00

UPDATE:

I love this song. Here's to you, readers:

***

Back from Ann Arbor. Some things I learned.

• Elizabeth Ellen and Aaron Burch live in a house that is almost exactly like Pee Wee's Playhouse except it also has lots of bourbon and a really fine collection of books. The furniture talks. The secret word is almost always: Keystone Light, Barry? (Actually, that's a phrase. But you are supposed to scream when someone says it.)

• Blake Butler ejaculates words all over you when you meet him. And then he sits down and also does so all over himself. And sometimes he sings Tom's Diner. Also, Blake is taller than I think he is.

• Mike Alber's favorite fast food place is Long John Silvers. And yet he is married and she seems completely normal and together. She (Julie) spent much of her time getting people to all walk in the right direction.

• Barry Graham prefers to read by the light of a Golden Tee video game machine.

• Bud Light cans a Bud Light and Clamato juice beverage. If you find one in a store, buy it and send it to Adam Robinson.

• Joseph Young recognizes a photo of Graham Nash when a room full of people can't identify Graham Nash.

• Matt Bell is the Alice Munro of Barrelhouse. Matt Bell is also the Alice Munro of your party, if you invite him to your party. Invite him to your party.

• Mary Miller's southern accent kind of makes me swoon a lot. She'd say things and I would sort of feel a little faint. I'd have to steady myself on tables.

• There exists in Ohio a person named Benji. He seems nice.

• Jensen Whelan doesn't know how to properly pronounce his own last name.

• Julia Wertz can swear around my mother, and my mother thinks its okay and she laughs it off because it seems cute and charming, but when I swear around my mother she looks at me and says my name in a weird, emphatic way that makes me feel bad about myself.

• Sam Pink just appears places, as if by magic. Sam Pink is probably magic. I'm pretty sure. But, yeah.

• I told the pizza guy he could come in the house and wait a minute while we got his money, but the pizza guy preferred to stand outside, and then I told the pizza guy that the people inside were nice and none of us would pull his pants down and make light of his genitalia, but still even though I assured him of that, he still wouldn't come in.

• Sean will have a side of sausage gravy with his steak and eggs, thank you.

• Dan Wickett was there. I forgot to mention that. Thing is, everything sort of orbited around Dan Wickett. Like the sun. Dan Wickett is almost exactly like the sun, and sometimes in the shuffle, we forget that were are all just enjoying the benefits of all the things the sun does for us.

• We could maybe play ping pong later.

• I guess I snore pretty loud.

• All the folks mentioned above are amazing.

***

Readings this summer still yet to happen. You could maybe attend:

June 15 or 16 @ somewhere with a pinball machine or two. Sponsored by my employer, University Book Store. I will likely give out a hardcover at this reading to the person who gets the highest score at pinball that night.

June 11 @ Elliot Bay Book Comany with Joe Meno and Ryan Boudinot.

I will try to read something different each time.

In August I will be teaching a seminar at the Richard Hugo House.

The Voices of Anxious Objects

The age-old dilemma for a writer: how do you say something about a character without coming right out and just saying it? There are many options. We will discuss a sometimes forgotten method of character building in fiction—the use of inanimate objects. Examining the technique of close observation of objects in four writers (Nicholson Baker, Lydia Davis, Ryan Boudinot, and, just for the heck of it, Proust) we’ll discuss the benefits of things as fetishes, totems and mirrors—and practice using these objects or others to build characters of our own. Writers will leave with a new tool for bringing characters to life.

Instructor: Matthew Simmons
Meets: Saturday, August 01, 2009 - Saturday, August 01, 2009
Saturday, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM

It costs $95 to sign up for it. Right now, the introduction to the class begins with kinds of lettuce and then some of Moby-Dick. And then all that stuff above.

UPDATE:

Arundel event canceled.

***

The book is selling well. Thank you to everyone who has purchased a copy. Add it on Goodreads, maybe?

Influence

2009-05-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

In the middle of Kansas, there's this place called The Garden of Eden. It's in Lucas, Kansas. The town has a population under 500 people.

A man named S.P Dinsmoor built a bunch of concrete sculptures around his cabin. He did it in 1888. He did it because he felt like he had things to say about religion and politics and this was the way to do it. He did it because he wanted people to stop and look.

I like people like that. Obsessed outsiders with something to say but imprecise ways of saying it. Grotto builders. Tower builders. Prophets with a little bit of P.T. Barnum in them.

My friend Dan and I took a trip to the Garden of Eden. Here's photographic proof.

At the time, Dan had a zine called Blipvert. He produced an issue about our trip. I helped. It was the sixth issue of the zine.

The old digital files are gone, but Dan kindly scanned the issue. I will be printing a copy or two, and adding them to the pinball contest prizes.

In the issue:

The Garden of Eden
my old band, the nurses
ducks and decorated sheds
the movie WAX: or the discovery of television among the bees
the Dickeyville Grotto
a song about a skinhead who moved to Arizona

***

Getting ready for my trip to Ann Arbor. So I'm updating on a Tuesday.

That happens. Tuesday updates happen. It's okay.

Seven entries in the pinball contest so far. Here's an example so you can get a sense of the scoring.

That's Gene Morgan's son playing Wheel of Fortune pinball. One point for entering—everyone gets that. One point for the camp value of the machine. One point for getting a child into a bar. Three points total. Pretty good.

The lottery will run like this: Gene's name will be in the pot three times.

See?

John Synco sent me an mp3 of himself and a friend playing Lonnie Irving's "Pinball Machine." It's rad and he's getting a bunch of points for it. He even did the spoken word opening. For the record, John Synco rules. Recognize.

***

A Jello Horse is on Goodreads. If you're into that sort of thing. (I am.)

How the book became a book here.

Influence

2009-05-04T12:49:00.001-07:00

That's called Contagion. It's a piece done in charcoal and polyurethane on paper. I found it in an issue of New American Paintings in 2006, and kept it in a file folder. When I wrote A Jello Horse, I looked at it a lot.

The artist is Brian S. Campbell who, like me, was born in Columbus, Ohio. In his artist's statement, he said:

"Through the phenomenon of charcoal and erasure, I apply the architectural fantasies of the Renaissance at the corpuscular level. The drawn epic scenes of perspectival ribbons are highway overpasses and passageways, as well as arteries and veins. The frenzied circuitry is equivalently an excerpt of the internal landscape as it is external."

Please check out more if his work HERE.

Image was used with the artist's permission. He's a nice chap.

A Jello Horse is a road book. But I hope that, like with Brian's work, the journey is both external and internal. Macro and micro. At the center of the book, I think it leaves Midwestern highways and makes its way into the backroads of the subconscious mind.

Now available on Everyday Genius, an excerpt from the book that helps explain the telephones on the book's cover.

***

Don't forget to send me pinball images. You still have plenty of time to enter the contest to win a hardcover version of the book.

The hardcover will be produced by Lulu. I understand there are sometimes kerning issues with Lulu. I apologize in advance if sometimes there is extra space between a couple of the letters in the book.

***

A story of mine about a couple who have run away from society with a stolen mastiff to await the Rapture in a cabin in Upper Michigan will be in the next Keyhole.

I'm really happy about placing this one, as I've always liked it and wanted to find it a home.

Pinball

2009-04-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

In mid-May, my novella A Jello Horse will be published by Publishing Genius Press. This, once again, is the cover:

Those telephones were drawn by Adam Robinson, the man behind Publishing Genius Press. There is a scene in the story that involves a roadside attraction/museum filled with telephones. It was inspired by this place and a place in Kansas called The House of Telephones. The House of Telephones, apparently, is not around anymore.

***

I used to live in Iowa City, and when I lived there I spent a lot of my evenings with my friend Eli having a beer or two. Sometimes Eli would order a Jameson Irish Whiskey with just a few rocks. Sometimes when he did that, I would do it, too. Iowa City gets hot in the summer, and sometimes this would happen in the afternoon. We'd go to this bar that had a lot of tables and lots of cold air blowing around. I had a lot of thin, short-sleeved, button up shirts that I wore during the summer. People cut the legs off their old jeans, right in the middle of the thigh, and left the longish white threads dangling.

Eli held it all together better than me. I've always been fond of indulgence. One night, though, Eli and I both got lit, and on the walk home, Eli repeatedly bumped into me in a way that was aggressively friendly, and I woke up the next day with bruises on my legs. He apologized but I didn't ask for the apology. I sort of liked that the bruises represented that Eli was comfortable with me like a person is comfortable with a sibling. Comfortable enough to be rough with them.

I also sort of like bruises. I have a couple on my forearms right now.

While we were having a beer or two, Eli and I would play a lot of pinball. I never got great, but I played pinball and enjoyed it. I started out just hacking at the ball, just doing everything I could to keep it in play, just reacting to the table. I got better when I watched Eli play and mimicked what he did: catching the ball on the flipper to slow the momentum. Directing shots at ramps and targets by figuring out when to shoot. Putting my hips into it a little. Sometimes a lot. I stand on one leg, and spin and kick at the tables legs now and then. A gentle kick, just to make the ball hop or spin to the flipper.

There's some pinball in A Jello Horse. I dated a girl who liked to stand very close behind me when I played. We were sort of dancing. And sort of not.

When the book comes out, I will be getting a very, very small number of hardcovers made. I will not be selling them, though. I will be giving them away. Let's have a contest.

SEND ME IMAGES OF YOURSELF PLAYING PINBALL. Or someone playing pinball. A pinball image of some sort. Just one of your own. I am going to collect them, rate the quality and ingenuity of the photo and create a sort of lottery. My favorite photos will receive higher scores and more chances to win the lottery and win a hardcover copy of A Jello Horse. I will post the photos (or whatever you do...an image, you know? Drawings are acceptable. Little movies, too) on the blog unless you don't want me to. I will pick winners the last week in May. So send them before that. Provide links to huge files if you have huge files.

There will probably be two winners. I may add other prizes, too, for photos I really, really like. Honorable mentions

That's it. Send them to

happy cobra books

at

g

mail

dot

com

(Remove the spaces from happy cobra books. Just one word.)

UPDATE

Also a possibility: Sing me a version of Lonnie Irving's Pinball Machine. Here are the lyrics

I'm an old hog-hauler, I drove a big truck
I shot the pinball machine, but it caused me bad luck.

Put all I ever made in a pinball machine
I'd get four catty-corners, then I'd miss the 16.

I wish they'd outlaw them old pinball machines
Many weeks they have caused me to live on sardines.

Last time I called my wife on the phone
The first thing she says, "John, when can you come home?"

"I got a load of hogs and they've got to go
I'll see you when I get back from Chicago."

She says, "John, you know I love you, I wish you wouldn't go
Send your babies some money, they are hungry and cold."

The last thing she said and then she hung up
"John, you give up my lovin', just to drive an old truck."

I made my trip on to Chicago
I was gone two months, 'cause I shot up my dough.

When I got home my family was gone
The best friend I had, rung my telephone.

He said, "John, I guess you wonder about your babies and wife?
Pneumonia got your babies and your wife took her life!"

I lost all my friends, I can't sleep for bad dreams
I dream about an old truck and a pinball machine.

***

BTRMLK MTN by Gene Morgan available for a little while for free.

***

I like bright stupid confetti a lot.

Outside

2009-04-20T15:42:00.000-07:00

I took a walk outside.

***

I am bothered by something, but it is none of my business. Oddly, even though this is a blog and I am bothered by something, I am going to take into account that it is none of my business and I am not going to say anything about it.

I consider this a win.

***

I think probably I am pro-Twitter.

***

Running Journal.

To be updated all week. (All totals include sometimes necessary walks for a block or two to catch my breath.)

Saturday: 4.5 miles
Sunday: 5.5 miles
Monday: 4.5 miles
Tuesday: (Off.)
Wednesday: (Off.)
Thursday: (Off. Small injury.)
Friday: (check back later)

Suitor

2009-04-13T17:40:00.000-07:00

(Part one here. Part two here. Part three here.)

But Jesus, is the what and who said that? The phantom finger of the suitor made its way around the sandwich shop, sometimes.

The phantom finger of the suitor could plant itself mid-thorax, and scratch the itch within a sandwich maker. Could plant itself within the brain of a sandwich maker, and cause the sandwich maker to add more mustard than is truly needed. Is truly desired. Is what is wanted. Is what is asked for.

Ask-ed, says the sandwich maker with a finger in his brain. Two syllables. Ask. Ed.

The stink from off the body of the suitor is a fresh, enticing medium rare.

The suitor in a sandwich shop repels and attracts the eaters one and all.

The sandwich maker considers asking him to leave. But then sales go up.

And up.

And, no, the suitor does not have to leave. The suitor can keep his seat, and finish up his sandwich.

This is all about control. Because the burning quietly continues.

This is all about control.

In the winter months, the best of all the kinds of months, there is little to do at his apartment, so he goes outside and rolls in the snow.

The snow fills up his mouth as he rolls in his front yard. The snow fills up his ears. The snow fills up his nose. He inhales deeply of the snow. Of the snow, he inhales hard. The snow sucks into his nose, and into the cavities of his sinuses. It sits in there, a rabbit in a warren. The snow in his sinuses, a rabbit in a warren, does not melt until he stands himself up, and walks himself into his house, and sits himself in a chair, and waits himself seated.

And then the snow, a rabbit in the warren of his sinuses, melts. It trickles down his throat, a rabbit to the stomach of a bobcat.

In the stomach, the snow, melted, stays itself put.

***

My favorite novellas.

Lots of other people's lists, too. Thanks for asking me to submit, John Madera. Nice group.

***

Matthew Savoca's Happy Cobra Books ebook TOUGH! is on Goodreads. You can go and rate it.

Also, Young Revolutionaries is there, too.

***

My novella A Jello Horse will be out in May.

***

Please consider donating to the Race for the Cure.

Reading

2009-04-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

Reading tomorrow in Portland, Oregon with Brandon Scott Gorrell and Gabriel Blackwell as the undercard for the featured speaker, Chelsea Martin. Kevin Sampsell will be in the house, hosting.

She has a new book from Future Tense Books, Everything was Fine Until Whatever.

At The Maiden. 8pm.

Hosting a reading the very next night at Neptune Coffee in Seattle. Chelsea Martin again. And Brandon. And Frayn Masters. Kevin will co-host.

Sponsored by Future Tense and HTMLGiant.

***

I have a book called A Jello Horse. It will be available in May from Publishing Genius Press.

More updates on it soon.

***

This is beautiful.

I Am In the Air Right Now from Greg Lytle on Vimeo.

Poem by Kathryn Regina.

***

This is a ghost:

When I was 16 or 17, I read an article in Thrasher Magazine. I think it was Thrasher. It was an issue devoted to tattooing.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was Thrasher. I remember skateboarders.

There was an article about doing tattoos yourself without a tattoo gun. (Or any talent.) It said to take a needle and wrap thread up to the tip, leaving a little bit of the needle exposed. It said to take India ink and dip the needle in, and let the thread soak some of it up. It said poke sort of deep into the skin. It said that that was it.

One evening I decided I would just go ahead and do all the things that the magazine said. The ghost above is the result.

I will never cover it. I have a few very nice, professionally done tattoos. This is still my favorite.

Movie

2009-03-31T17:29:00.000-07:00

Okay, suitor in two weeks. Busy.

***

One day this guy called me and asked me if I was the guy who wrote this story. I says, yeah, I'm the guy who wrote that story.

Guy, he says, so, I made a movie out of that story. Didn't know how to call you first, so I just made it.

I says, a movie? Cool.

Here's the movie.

The Cold Reader from Scott Nathan on Vimeo.

It's not half bad.

Better

2009-03-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

I heard this song this morning. I woke up early to get to work. Last night, a little gin, some sort of cocktail with vermouth and cassis, a little white wine, a couple of beers. Long, large dinner with friends. So this morning, a little tired.

As you might expect.

A little blurry and all that. Got up early to walk to work. Shades all drawn. Got up and went to the bathroom for one's early morning bathroom things.

There's a little clock radio in the bathroom. One small speaker on the clock radio. High ceilings in the bathroom. Large mirror. Towels on the rack. My eyes were still blurry and getting used to the lights.

The paint in the bathroom is, what? Eggshell. So are the towels. The tiles in the shower. The tub and the toilet a little darker. Not bright, but brighter than a little gin, some sort of cocktail with vermouth and cassis, a little white wine, and a couple of beers. A little brighter than that.

Mostly, then, eyes closed. Eyes half-open.

And my ears, too, a little unprepared for the day.

Tiny speaker, high ceilings, ears unprepared for the day. All that. And the song sounded like it was happening at the other end of a long hallway. Or the opposite corner of a church. It sounded warm and far away.

And man did I like it.

I found it a couple of hours ago and listened to it.

And it's good and all. But it's absolutely not the same.

This is what I'd like. I'd like to have a switch on the back of my head. Or a switch behind one of my ears—the right one, maybe. A switch and a dial. And I want that switch and that dial to allow me to add reverb to things that I am listening to.

I think this is a fine, fine idea. I think this is also much more cost-effective than being continually in the process of preparing myself for my morning with a little gin, some sort of cocktail with vermouth and cassis, a little white wine, and a couple of beers.

Let's all get on this, okay? Okay?

Call me or shoot me an email when you have this ready.

***

The Hype Machine found that song on a website called Mission Freak.

Mission Freak is about "music and life" in Iowa City.

Hi Iowa City. I miss you. Your festival looks like lots of fun.

Send my love to Liberty Leg.

***

Suitor returns next week.