Paper Bullets

New site.

2010-09-28T22:54:00.003-04:00

Hey. I'm going to shut this blog down eventually. Everything is migrated and being cleaned up over at my new website, s hawnandrewmitchell.com!

Two Possible Approaches to Writing

2010-05-27T19:31:00.003-04:00

Method # 1 (Philippe Halsman's Dali Atomicus): Leap, trust in your subconscious.

Method # 2 ("Man Has Marble Addiction", via TheRumpus): Let your marbles roll down the track, see which one (who) wins.

Rivertown Reading Tonight in Paducah, KY

2010-05-22T11:41:00.008-04:00

I'm reading tonight alongside recent SIUC alum and all around raconteur Travis Mossotti in Paducah, KY at the Rivertown Reading Series. The reading starts at 7:30 (Doors at 7) at the Yeiser Art Center. Promises to be a good time. I might even be sober.

Little Grassy Literary Festival

2010-04-22T11:23:00.002-04:00

Looking forward to our 2010 Little Grassy Literary Festival here in Carbondale, IL, today April 22 & 23, 2010 (sponsored by the Graduate Writers Forum SIUC MFA Program in Creative Writing)

The Lineup:

Thursday, April 22, 2010:

3-4:30pm Readings by Todd Hearon and Jennifer Richter
Morris Library, John C. Guyon Auditorium

6:30-8:30pm Readings by Ben Percy and Drew Perry
Morris Library, John C. Guyon Auditorium

Friday, April 23, 2010:

10-11 am Writers Panel Discussion: Morris Library, John C. Guyon Auditorium
Carolyn Forche, David Clewell, Ben Percy, Drew Perry

11am-12pm Reading by David Clewell
Morris Library, John C. Guyon Auditorium

12-1pm Book Signing and Reception
Morris Library, 1st Floor Rotunda

1-2 pm Reading by Carolyn Forche
Morris Library, John C. Guyon Auditorium

Reading Tonight in Columbia, MO

2010-04-15T10:28:00.004-04:00

I'll be reading tonight at 7:00pm at Top Ten Wines in Columbia, MO along with my friends Mark Jay Brewin, Jr, Travis Mossotti, and Rick Pechous, as part of the Writers on the Road exchange program. Should be a heckova good time.

I made quite the MS paint drawing for it.

Finish Him (Month 3: March 2010: 3 Books: 10 Total)

2010-03-08T15:09:00.006-05:00

It is not so much that I'm not reading, but that I can hardly get myself to read a whole book straight through, and I've been reading a lot of individual short stories and short shorts.

The Last Lonely Saturday by Jordan Crane: Tearing someone's heart from his or her chest hasn't been this romantic since Mortal Kombat.

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Dandicat: Catastrophe has rarely sounded so boring and pretentious; I believe you should be able to enjoy a book while reading it, rather than feeling an obligation to do so in retrospect.

Summer Blonde by Adrian Tomine: "Graphic short stories": coming to an MFA program near you.

My Father's Balls (Month 2: February 2010: 3 Books: 7 Total)

2010-03-04T15:56:00.002-05:00

(Music video for "Breaker" by Low)

These are the books I finished reading this month. I'm only up to 7 for the year. I should really read more. I'm a bad MFA candidate. I'm partway through several more, and I read a lot of individual stories and articles, I suppose.

In the Valley of the Kings by Terrence Holt: I particularly enjoyed "My Father's Heart"; look for my forthcoming story: "My Father's Balls."

The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan: "'Supper's ready, you hungry monster killers!' The Hawkline women smiled at Greer and Cameron. 'You need energy if you're going to kill a monster.'" 6 books by Brautigan.

The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson: It's like, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and I just can't, and you can't judge a book by its cover, and I just can't, but when in Rome.

(5 Minute Presentation on Brautigan, featuring the sound of him removing his clothes)

Torpedo in EBook Format

2010-02-15T12:12:00.003-05:00

Torpedo is now available at the Amazon Kindle Store, and are only $2.99 an issue! Future issues of the magazine will be in the EBook format exclusively. I have a story in Volume 4, the Brautigan issue.

A Scout Is (Month 1: January 2010: 4 Books: 4 Total)

2010-02-07T17:55:00.002-05:00

After reading Blake Butler's post about reading 106.2 books in 2009 over at HTML Giant, I felt bad about myself. I didn't count last year, but I definitely didn't read 106.2 books, and I'm in an MFA program. So I set a goal to exceed 52 books this year, a moderate goal that I should be able to pass. Here's what I finished reading in January (I'm always partway through 5+ books at a time, so for consistency's sake I'm just going to post about ones I've finished, and give a sentence or so response):

What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us by Laura Van Den Berg: In Greek mythology, the cypress tree, which appears repeatedly, if casually, in this collection, is tied to Artemis, goddess of "forests and hills, child birth, virginity, fertility, and the hunt," which more or less sums up what the characters are going through in these stories.

Revenge of the Lawn by Richard Brautigan 1/2^: I'm all out of Richard Brautigan short stories to read for the first time and I'm shuffling around my studio apartment like a turd sewn to a garbage can lid.

Six Memos for the Next Millenium by Italo Calvino: "Lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity"; I probably like this because I said the Scout Law a lot while my brain was still developing; "trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent."

The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme: I couldn't really get into it until I got high, watched eighty-two minutes of Christopher Walken, ---, ate honey pretzel twists from Wal-Mart, and skipped to the part about fathers' penises.

Also, apparently I am better at blogging while I'm not in the middle of a semester / am in Missouri sitting around on the Internet for hours at a time. I will try to do better this semester.

PS: I think I just found the librarian's new outfit:

Let's All Hold Hands

2010-01-27T14:31:00.004-05:00

"On Tuesday Tom Rothman, a chairman of the Fox film operation, said the global success of “Avatar” carried a lesson beyond economics. “It tells you all of us on the planet have more things in common than we have dividing us,” Mr. Rothman said." - NYTimes

Peoples worldwide love pretty neon images and don't care about interesting or original plots. Truly uplifting.

Here's an Avatar/Fern Gully mash-up, via.

8 to 1 and the Birds of Time

2010-01-09T14:59:00.002-05:00

Image via a Laughing Bird Gallery

"Hawks circle in the sky like the lost springs of old railroad watches looking for correct protein wandering somewhere below to swoop down upon and devour chronologically." - "Sand Castles" by Richard Brautigan

"A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, only I grow old, a pale softball of death swelling inside me. Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work fulfilling their appointed rounds." - "The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women" by Haruki Murakami

"I liked to read Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan while I was a college student. They had a sense of humor, and at the same time what they were writing about was serious. I like those kind of books. The first time I read Vonnegut and Brautigan I was shocked to find out there were such books! It was like discovering the New World." - Murakami on Brautigan

I just finished rereading parts of Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn and reading the stories I hadn't read before. There are 62 very short stories in it. 55 are in first person and 7 in third. Some of the first person stories are really framed short tales, but still. 55 and 7. Around 8 to 1. But the third person stories, "The Weather in San Francisco", "An Unlimited Supply of 35 Millimeter Film", "The Scarlatti Tilt", "The Wild Birds of Heaven", "Ernest Hemingway's Typist", "Homage to the San Francisco YMCA", and "Greyhound Tragedy", all stick with me, maybe more than some of the 1st person stories. Especially Weather, 35, Birds, Homage, and Greyhound. I'm not sure why.

Collage

2009-12-27T21:47:00.003-05:00

Nintendo collage by Chris Lange

David Shields's Reality Hunger, excerpted at Knee-Jerk Magazine, via:

"These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Cyril Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave. Eduardo Galeano’s The Book of Embraces. Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America. Sven Lindqvist’s A History of Bombing."

"When plot shapes a narrative, it’s like knitting a scarf. You have this long piece of string and many choices about how to knit, but we understand a sequence is involved, a beginning and an end, with one part of the weave very logically and sequentially connected to the next. You can figure out where the beginning is and where the last stitch is cast off. Webs look orderly, too, but unless you watch the spider weaving, you’ll never know where it started. It could be attached to branches or table legs or eaves in six or eight places. You won’t know the sequence in which the different cells were spun and attached to each other. You have to decide for yourself how to read its patterning, but if you pluck it at any point, the entire web will vibrate."

Lists

2009-12-26T19:06:00.008-05:00

"Women Make Lists" by Joan Snyder

Umberto Eco @ Spiegel Online International via The Elegant Variation:

"We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die."

Two things you might like besides what Eco likes: "I like lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia. People have their preferences."

A possible argument against listing things out in order to define yourself in online profiles: "I would be a fool to answer that; it would mean pinning myself down. [...] If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot."

Speaking of pedophilia: from p. 1 of Lolita, a list of names: "She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita." Nabokov begins the novel by cataloguing Dolores. Google Books says the word "list" appears ten times in Lolita, and Nabokov wrote, I think in the postscript to the novel, that one of the key moments in Lolita for him was the list of Lolita's classmates at the Ramsdale School.

I think, too, that Italo Calvino was advocating for the list, the catalogue, "encylopedism," or "collectionism," when he discussed "Multiplicity" as one of his six aesthetic principles in Six Memos for the Next Millennium. It's a means of encompassing all things.

This is all very heavy on the Italians. But I'm immediately reminded of Whitman's cataloguing of "America!" and the long stretches detailing whaling in Moby Dick. The list or catalogue is a very American tradition too. Not that we should only be influenced by American traditions. I'm saying it's an international tradition. 1,001 Arabian Nights. The 10,000 things.

I love me a good list.

Letters and Sodas

2009-07-20T14:57:00.004-04:00

I'm not sure why I didn't add this to the sidebar sooner. My friend Matt is blogging over at Letters and Sodas about book publishing, music videos, the South, the North, and places and things in between.

Libarian 56212, could you add that to the sidebar?

Sure thing, Mr. Mitchell.

Thanks, Librarian 56212.

Shouldn't you be writing a story instead of posting to your blog? Or even writing a full blog entry instead of posting about an addition to your sidebar?

Did I ask you?

No.

Just because you share traits with my mother doesn't mean you have to act like my mom. May I have my earl grey now?

Get your own, Mr. Mitchell.

Look Skyward, Moron

2009-07-15T12:43:00.005-04:00

This is a cover of Beat Happening's "Indian Summer" by Luna.

I moved out of Brooklyn and back to the Midwest. Upon reaching the trees in Pennsylvania, I felt a sense of relief, but once the road trip with my buddy Colin was over, I just felt odd. I made this playlist for a friend who left New York six months or so before me. She came through Independence this past weekend with her boyfriend, on the way back to California from a wedding in Chicago. They were running low on cash and happiness and they crashed on my parents' couches. We sat in the kitchen waiting for their laundry to get done, drinking Boulevard. My parents stayed up til 1:30am and we ended up being the ones that wanted to go to bed first, not them. It was like my New York life came swinging through my Independence past.

"Be Where You Want to Be"

1 - "New York Telephone Conversation" by Lou Reed
2 - "Living Waters" by Silver Jews
3 - "Sideshow by the Seashore" by Luna
4 - "Stars of Leo" by M. Ward
5 - "Writer's Minor Holiday" by Calexico
6 - "Bukowski" by Modest Mouse
7 - "So Far Around the Bend" by The National
8 - "This Year" by The Mountain Goats
9 - "When You Wake Up Feeling Old" by Wilco
10 - "Lived in Bars" by Cat Power
11 - "The Golden Age" by Beck
12 - "Junesong" by Talkdemonic
13 - "Windows Blues" by Band of Horses
14 - "Old Movies" by Mock Orange
15 - "11673_nmgproduct_L_train" from The Free Sound Project

I found an apartment in Carbondale. It's a little studio that looks kind of like a dorm room, but it's a grad only building and it's only two blocks from the rec center and a few blocks from the building where I'll be teaching and taking classes.

Substitute "Home" for "Drum" and this is maybe how I feel this month:

(I should say that Joe Villella showed me this skit when he was subletting from me, or he'll gripe that I steal his cool to impress ladies)

Back from Dodge City

2009-07-04T00:34:00.003-04:00

"I can't work and hang around New York because I never learned how to do it. When I hit New York it's like somebody coming off a long cattle drive in the old days into Dodge City."

--- Hemingway via, image via

A Complicated Banking Problem

2009-06-22T00:35:00.007-04:00

It's been rainy here in New York lately, which makes my friends complain that they feel like they're in the Northwest, so it feels like a good time to be rereading Brautigan. This time when I came across the story "Complicated Banking Problems" in Revenge of the Law n, I was reminded of Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain". Some parallels:

Brautigan's "Complicated Banking Problems"

- Set in a bank.

- Series of people are annoying in line. An old woman who wants to deposit "the shadow of a refridgerator filled with sour milk and year-old carrots." Siamese twins, one of whom is withdrawing all his money while the other makes a small deposit. A man who wants to deposit 237 checks.

- "I look up at the ceiling of the bank and pretend that it is the Sistine Chapel." - Brautigan's tendency to insert the classical or religious into the everyday.

- The presence of death: the human skeleton the narrator found in his back yard clutching an old coffee can filled with rustdust material.

- Take away one-liner: "His checks completely cover the counter like a success snow storm."

Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain" is about a complicated banking problem too.

- Set in a bank.

- The teller and then the two women in front of the narrator (Anders) annoy him.

- Where Brautigan gives two one-liners about imagining the ceiling is the Sistine Chapel, Anders is forced to look at the ceiling and then can't help but criticize the mythical Greek scene painted there, which is his downfall.

- Death.

- Take away one-liner: "She looked at me with drowning eyes."

Different stories, Wolff's ends up being heavier maybe, but the basic parallels are there. I'd heard Wolff is a Brautigan fan. And then there's this scene in Wolff's "Mortals" where the narrator brings up Brautigan but Givens hasn't heard of him. When I think Wolff I think realism or "dirty realism" as most people do, but there's an element of Brautigan's sprung whimsy (and melancholy, for that matter) in his stories that I see now that I'm reading them with an eye for it. Looks like someone has already written a paper about that, in a way.

And then there's Wolff's story's title, and how towards the end of his life, Brautigan was no longer smiled upon by most book critics. The whole thing resonates.

We'll Always Have Random House

2009-06-19T09:38:00.003-04:00

Little Midwestern Boy

2009-06-16T17:42:00.002-04:00

"It was as if all his fiction described a big dance to which he had taken, as he once wrote, the prettiest girl ... and as if he stood at the same time outside the ballroom, a little Midwestern boy with his nose to the glass, wondering how much the tickets cost and who paid for the music."

--- Malcolm Cowley, quoted describing F. Scott Fitzgerald in the biographical note to This Side of Paradise

@shawn_mitchell is a twit

2009-06-14T20:19:00.004-04:00

I joined twitter.

Not sure if I'll update much, or just follow people like John Roderick of The Long Winters.

Veganism and Healthiness

2009-06-13T14:26:00.002-04:00

My friend Carolyn is blogging over A Lotus Grows in Brooklyn, on healthy things that sound better for me than the slice of pizza I eat every other day. Unnammed Librarian, please add that to the blogroll.

Sure thing, Mr. Mitchell

Save Paste

2009-05-16T10:51:00.005-04:00

Paste is having some financial trouble. If you donate some money, you can d/l mp3's from John Roderick, She & Him, Thao, the Decemberists, Ben Folds, Neko Case, Of Montreal, Passion Pit, and more. I did it. It felt warm and fuzzy.

Also, Sparklehorse + Danger Mouse + David Lynch = Wow.

The Fiction Advocate

2009-05-08T13:42:00.005-04:00

My friend Brian is blogging over at The Fiction Advocate! About fiction! Recently, he was taken to task by Tom Bissell for trying to trash talk DFW! ROFL OMG!

Resident Librarian Lucille, could you add that to the blogroll please?

Sure thing, Mr. Mitchell.

Thanks, Lucy. Hey, wait a moment. Lucy is my grandma’s name. That’s all kinds of creepy, that I’ve been calling you that. I’m going to call you Cindy.

Sure thing, Mr. Mitchell, but that’s your mom’s name.

Oh.

And she’s a librarian.

Oh my.

Uh-huh.

Oh dear. Could you bring me my afternoon earl grey now, please?

Sure thing, Mr. Mitchell.

Oulipo and Shawn Michaels

2009-04-16T12:24:00.013-04:00

I think I'm cute
I know I'm sexy
I got the lorry
That drives the glamour wild.

N + 7 applied to "Sexy Boy", the Shawn Michaels WWF Theme Song. I am retiring the photograph of Shawn Michaels from this blog post. This is guaranteed to reduce site traffic by 95%.

A couple weeks ago I got to attend two events at the Oulipo in New York festival: the big reading at the New School on April Fools, and the smaller reading on the third at the Pierogi Gallery in Williamsburg. Good times.

I enjoyed the round robin reading they did of "Thirty-Five Variations on a Theme from Shakespeare" by Harry Mathews. If I remember right, he read it when I saw him at St. Mark's Church a year or two ago, and it was funny then too. Mathews wasn't at the festival, unfortunately.

I bought two books at the second event: The Form of a City Changes Faster, alas, than the Human Heart by Jacques Roubaud (creepily enough, the copy that Roubaud borrowed to read from) and Out of Bounds by Harry Mathews, a slim book published by Burning Deck, which I took to mean it was rarer. I already had a few of his novels anyway.

Quote that sticks in my head, muttered into the ears of a girl on a porch in one of the chapters of Hervé Le Tellier's "The Sextine Chapel":

"The sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space." - Georges Bataille

Where To?

2009-04-08T10:21:00.005-04:00

I ordered this book via the free book ordering program at work.

A High Ridge

2009-04-03T09:50:00.004-04:00

"Query: can anyone draw something he knows nothing about? Does there not exist a high ridge where the mountainside of 'scientific' knowledge joins the opposite slope of 'artistic' imagination?"

--- Vladimir Nabokov, "A World of Butterflies" via

I found out I was accepted into UNCW's fiction program as well!

Coffee

2009-03-28T13:53:00.007-04:00

"They say in the spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love. Perhaps if he has enough time left over, his fancy can even make room for a cup of coffee."

--- "Coffee" by Richard Brautigan in Revenge of the Lawn

Playlist that I never got to give to someone, titled "Where X = Miles, 1000X = Happiness":

- "Wonderful Rainbow" by Lightning Bolt
- "At the Zoo" by Simon & Garfunkel
- "Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed" - by Silver Jews
- "The Magic Bus" - by The Who
- "Truck" by The Octopus Project
- "Hey Bulldog" by The Beatles
- "Vega-Tables" by Brian Wilson
- "The Garden at Night" by The Clientele
- "When the Sun Grows on Your Tongue" by Black Moth Super Rainbow
- "Sundialing" by Caribou
- "for the trees" by Matmos
- "Crickets" by Akron/Family

Yes, I title my mixes. I vow this will never become a Live Journal.

Three Months Later, Good News

2009-03-20T13:29:00.005-04:00

I haven't blogged since Christmas! I also haven't written hardly anything since Christmas! I think these are related. I've just received two bits of good news, though, so maybe I will do more of both soon.

First, I've found out that I got into Southern Illinois's MFA program in creative writing (fiction), and they've offered me a graduate assistantship! This could be my home for three years come August:

Possibly equally exciting: I was contacted via my myspace profile to audition for the 23rd season of The Real World. Absurd. I hadn't logged into myspace in a long time. Upon revisiting my profile, I realized the song I have set on there is "Three-Way" by The Magnetic Fields, which might have caused some confusion. I'll be auditioning on Saturday.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T16:39:00.003-05:00

"That voice of Hemingway's can't function in a Wal-Mart, on Christmas Eve, when you have an STD and your uncle is drunk and trying to buy an O-Jay's record to give to his new girlfriend, a speed-freak waitress. Hence the constant necessity for new voices."

--- George Saunders, in conversation with Ben Marcus in The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers.

Torpedo 4 Cover

2008-12-13T15:36:00.003-05:00

I'm back from the netherworld of MFA applications briefly to say: The cover for Torpedo 4 is up now, on the magazine's new blog! Looks good. I'm excited to get my mitts on my contributor copy.

Resident naughty librarian, Lucille, could you add that to the blogroll?

Sure thing, Mr. Mitchell!

Thanks, toots.

Gone Fishing

2008-12-05T15:47:00.008-05:00

Busy with two jobs, a workshop, and graduate school applications. Back in January! Or never! (Wouldn't this be better as a tumblr?)

"Also available in redemption!"

Haruki Murakami: Writing is like playing a video game.

2008-10-18T16:35:00.003-04:00

"Writing a story for me is just like playing a video game. I start with a word or idea, then I stick out my hand to catch what's coming next. I'm a player, and at the same time, I'm a programmer. It's kind of like playing chess by yourself. When you're the white player, you don't think about the black player. It's possible, but it's hard. It's kind of schizophrenic."

--- Haruki Murakami @ Berkeley, via The Millions

Pressure From the Internet

2008-10-14T11:33:00.006-04:00

GoodReads says to me, "You started reading What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories 8 days ago. Share some new books with your friends!"

So I says to her, "Lay off me GoodReads! I'm taking my sweet time on these books. Next you'll harass me for not having written anything new recently. Then you'll tell me to stop eating so much ramen. Then it'll be all 'Why can't you get a job, you bum?' Lay off me."

Spotlight on the Browser: "Ron Burgundy Exclamations"

2008-10-07T16:53:00.006-04:00

Someone from Edison, New Jersey got to my post regarding the exclamatory sayings of Ron Burgundy and the Supreme Executioner from Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America by searching Google for "Ron Burgundy Exclamations." It's on the second page of results, at the time of this post.

It was probably this guy:

I doubt he went out and bought a copy of the book, but let's pretend? So, now people get to my blog when looking for Ron Burgundy or Shawn Michaels.

Feels Better

2008-10-05T20:50:00.002-04:00

"It seems to me it's the whole purpose of art, to the artist (not to the audience)--that rare feeling of control, illumination--life is all right, for the time being."

---Elizabeth Bishop, in Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

via

Of Jellyfish and Bromance

2008-10-03T15:20:00.007-04:00

"From nearly microscopic tinkerbells to golden giants whose bells loom larger than beach umbrellas, you couldn't dream of more exotic jellies than already exist."

--- from the website for Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Jellies: Living Art" Exhibit

Oh, yeah? Is that so? What about ...

The Great Pirate Jellyfish of the Open Waterways of Salt Lake!? Have you dreamed of that one??????? No???? Yeah, that's right.

My short short story / flash fiction piece / "Brautigan" titled "It's Not the Heat So Much as the Jelly" will be appearing in Volume 4 of Torpedo, a lit mag based out of Australia. The issue is a tribute to Richard Brautigan and coincides with the 25th anniversary of his death. It will be published on his birthday, January 30th.

Further reading on jellyfish: The New York Times and Slate.

Woody Allen Doesn't Understand Me The Way Stephen King Understands Me

2008-10-02T15:14:00.003-04:00

"You know, it wasn't as though I picked out some kid from the Midwest who's a churchgoing barbarian." --- Woody Allen in this week's New York Magazine, which smells very nice, interviewed by Adam Moss

I was that kid.

Stephen King Understands My Needs

2008-09-30T01:02:00.005-04:00

" [...] men like to imagine going to war against an army of bad guys with a Beretta, a blowtorch, and a submachine gun (grenades hung on the belt optional)."

" [...] saving the damsel in distress has been a satisfying part of good manfiction since the days of old when knights were bold and ladies fair went without their underwear."

--- Stephen King @ Ew.com (via via)

No More Readings Listings

2008-09-28T22:39:00.005-04:00

Because time spent blogging is not time spent writing, because I'm tired of spending time each week doing the post, because I don't go to many anymore, because I'm no longer doing the post for TRACE Magazine, because no one read it, and because I suspect it is done more comprehensively and better in other places, I'm no longer going to do a listing of readings every week.

Red Ring of Death

2008-09-19T21:14:00.004-04:00

At a time when I have little money to do much besides read and play video games or watch DVDs, my Xbox 360 fails me. It's the "Red Ring of Death" that we all come to some day. Although mine is just the one red light variety.

There's plenty of information about it online. This bit from a GameSpot Forum is my favorite though. One "BredForWar", gamertag "alex execution" (what allegorical fun!), asks the forum about the error code E 74 with one red dot. He deeply wants to play the games of the forthcoming season and is upset that his machine has failed him in his time of need. When no one responds quickly, he says "bump ... someone." Then follows a chorus of "I've seen that"s and "Just send it in"s and "it sucks but tough it out"s.

He says back: "thank you ... im going to keep trying ... i guess theres nothing to do ..."

"I can't go on, I'll go on."

NYC Readings 9.15.08 – 9.21.08

2008-09-15T21:34:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, September 16, 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Mysterious Bookshop (58 Warren St.)
Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics

The launch party tomorrow for Akashic Books’s Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics is on Tuesday. The editor Lawrence Block and contributors Donald Westlake, Susan Isaacs, and Geoffrey Bartholomew will be on hand to celebrate the release. Paco I. Taibo is in from Mexico City and will be at the party. Also: free beer, wine, and hors d’oeuvres.

Thursday, September 18, 7:30pm
Housing Works Used Bookstore & Café (126 Crosby St.
I’m Not Jim’s You Are All My People

From the website:

A concert and record release party for You Are All My People from I'm Not Jim. I'm Not Jim is a collaboration begun between novelist Jonathan Lethem (You Don't Love Me Yet) and singer-songwriter Walter Salas-Humara (The Silos), who met and wrote eleven songs in two days. They later added several spoken word pieces, as well as the production duo the Elegant Too (Philip Hernandez and Chris Maxwell). Doors 7pm, Q&A and signing after the performance. Free.

Thursday, September 18, 7:30pm
Word Books (126 Franklin St. in Brooklyn)
Amanda Petrusich, It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music

Oscar Wao: Not a Gamer

2008-09-13T16:23:00.003-04:00

"(If only he'd been good at video games it would have been a slam dunk but despite owning an Atari and an Intellivision he didn't have the reflexes for it.)"

p.21 of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

NYC Readings 9.8.08 – 9.14.08

2008-09-07T18:05:00.005-04:00

Wednesday, September 10, Doors at 7:00pm, Show at 8:00pm
Happy Ending Bar (302 Broome Street @ Forsyth)
Happy Ending Reading Series

Amanda Stern’s Happy Ending Reading Series starts its new season Wednesday. Readers are required to take one risk and musicians have to play a cover song and try to get the crowd to sing along. Andrew Sean Greer, Hannah Tinti, and Darin Strauss will be reading. Music from Moby.

Wednesday, September 10, Doors at 7:00pm, Show at 8:00pm
The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
NBCC: Merging Genres

From the website:

The National Book Critics Circle and The New School Writing Program present the second of a two-panel discussion: Merging Genres. Peter Straub, prolific multiple Bram Stoker award winning author and editor of Poe's Children: The New Horror and of the Library of America's, moderates a panel on the ever-shifting nature of genre. Panelists include Lev Grossman, book editor, Time magazine; Geoffrey O'Brien, poet, editor in chief, Library of America and frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and Robert Polito, director, The New School Writing Program, and editor of the Library of America editions Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 1940s and Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s.

Sunday, September 14, 10:00am to 6:00pm
Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza
Brooklyn Book Festival

I wouldn’t really know where to start in listing all the events at this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival. Just be there. The schedule is here.

NYC Readings 9.2.08 – 9.7.08

2008-09-02T09:52:00.004-04:00

Wednesday, September 3, 7:00pm
Union Square Barnes & Noble (33 East 17th Street)
Slavoj Zizek: Violence and Steven Lukes: Moral Relativism

Thursday, September 4, 7:00pm
Union Square Barnes & Noble (33 East 17th Street)
Junot Diaz: Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Friday, September 5, 6:30pm/7:00pm
Pianos (158 Ludlow St. at Stanton St.)
One Story Cocktail Hour & Reading Series / Superhero Costume Contest

The One Story Reading Series kicks back in Friday. Owen King edited the new anthology of superhero-inspired fiction, Who Can Save Us Now and in honor of it, there will be a Superhero Costume Contest coinciding with the reading. Owen King, Kelly Braffet, & Stephanie Harrell will all read. The drink special ($3!) is Kryptonite. More here.

Sunday, September 7, 7:00pm
KGB Bar (85 E. 4th Street btw 2nd and 3rd Aves.)
Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum & Gary Amdahl

From the website:

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum’s first novel, Madeleine Is Sleeping, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2004. She was recently appointed head of the creative writing deparmtnet at the University of California. She lives in Los Angeles she reads from her book, Ms. Hempel Chronicles “This story of a love affair is pure pleasure to read. Ms. Bynum can move you in one sentence from wit and hilarity to desperation and wrenching loss. She’s really good.” Jonathan Franzen
-
-
Gary Amdahl lives in Los Angeles,and is the author of Visigoth, about which Thomas McGuane said, "American wrath here puts on its several seductive faces and native charm, suggesting our worst side has grown as comfortable as an old shoe." He
reads from his "darkly ludicrous" and "bitterly sophisticated" pair of "nihilistic" novellas, I Am Death.

Shawn Mitchell, VP of Commications at WWF International

2008-08-29T10:05:00.008-04:00

A lot of people talk about their googlegangers. It's navel gazing, but I do it anyway, as there are a lot of Shawn Mitchell's, alternate universe Shawn's illustrating what I would have been had I become a priest or Republican Senator, and I find it entertaining.

According to this zoominfo profile, Shawn Mitchell is the VP of Communications at WWF International. The WWF that forced the wrestling WWF to be WWE. Sean Michaels wrestled for the WWE. I have been mistaken for him previously.

Here is a video montage of the best WWE moves ever:

Here is a video of kittens mewing:

George Orwell Blogs

2008-08-26T15:57:00.003-04:00

The Orwell Prize is serializing George Orwell's diaries as a blog, here. (Via "Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits" and everywhere else)

He wrote on this on my birthday, 70 years ago. (I was born in 1984, too)

Several days past uncertain weather, rainy & sometimes hot. Most of the wheat & barley now cut & stacked. Children picking more or less ripe blackberries two days ago. Saw a white owl two nights ago – the first in about two years. Also in the distance another bird probably a little owl. Horse-chestnuts full-size but not ripe yet. Hops about the size of hazel-nuts. Yesterday went to the Zoo* again. Another litter of lion-cubs, which are a bit bigger than a domestic cat & spotted all over. Those born just a year ago are about the size of a St. Bernard dog. The ration of meat for a lion – I suppose its only meal in the day – seems to be about 6 or 7 lbs.
The Sardinian mouflon sheep¹ has a large udder like a goat & would probably yield a pint or more. I notice that the zebra’s hooves, at least the front ones, are quite
perpendicular, but those of the ass-zebra hybrid are like those of a horse. The hybrid has very slightly larger ears, otherwise so far as the shape goes almost exactly
like the zebra.

*ie. near Maidstone [Orwell’s own note].

NYC Readings 8.25.08 - 8.31.08

2008-08-24T17:10:00.008-04:00

There are a lot of moths in the south, right? There were in Missouri.

Monday, August 25, 7:00pm doors and 7:30pm start
The Bitter End (147 Bleecker Street between Thompson and LaGuardia)
NY Moth StorySLAM

$6 gets you in the door at The Bitter End for The Moth about Reading series Monday. The theme is “Secrets.” A lot of people read, groups in the audience judge, and a winner is picked.

Thursday, August 28, 2008, 7:00pm
Housing Works Used Bookstore & Café (126 Crosby just South of Houston)
ZZ Packer / New Stories from the South
From the website:

An evening with ZZ Packer, guest editor of New Stories from the South 2008. Maud Newton will emcee a reading and party with trivia, door prizes, and food from Mara's Homemade and Acme Bar & Grill. Suggested donation $5, all proceeds will benefit Housing Works and KARES Presented by Algonquin Books and Paste Magazine.

I Turned 24

2008-08-23T20:35:00.008-04:00

On Saturday, August 16, I turned 24. The day prior to that, at my temp job, there was a birthday party for someone that worked there. The department I'm helping with invited me to join them. Before we started the song, the birthday woman asked "Who are you?" I said "I just come here for birthday parties" and we all laughed. I didn't tell them my birthday was the next day.

I made a second unemployment playlist shortly before starting this temp job. It goes like this:

1 - "A Big Fan of the Pigpen" by Guided by Voices
2 - "The Beach" by Dr. Dog
3 - "Great DJ" by The Ting Tings
4 - "Mister Jung Stuffed" by Man Man
5 - "Fools" by The Dodos
6 - "Leyendecker" by Battles
7 - "Cobwebs" by Animal Collective
8 - "I Just Wasn't Made for these Times" by The Beach Boys
9 - "Darkest Night" by Sea and Cake
10 - "Don't Wake Me" by American Analog Set
11 - "Wishful Thinking" by The Album Leaf
12 - "WavesOnBeach" via The Free Sound Project

On the same day as the birthday party, a supervisor approached me with a stapler and said "You're a man. Can you fix this?" It was jammed so I fixed it with a pair of scissors. That was the only thing I did for work that day. I've come far in life.

Ft. Greene Park Summer Literary Festival Saturday

2008-08-21T16:08:00.003-04:00

I forgot to mention one literary event this week. Saturday at 3:00pm is the Fort Greene Literary Festival in Fort Greeene Park, featuring readings from Amiri Baraka, Quincy Troupe, Louis Reyes Rivera, and Hal Sorowitz along with younger people from the free workshops held in Fort Greene Park. Laurie Cumbo will be the MC, and there will be a performance from the Indoda Entsha Percussion Ensemble. More here.

NYC Readings 8.18.08 - 8.24.08

2008-08-18T10:09:00.011-04:00

Four competing events on two nights this week.

Tuesday, August 19, 7:00pm
192 Books (192 Tenth Avenue at 21st Street)
Paul Auster, Man in the Dark

Paul Auster will be reading from his new novel, Man in the Dark. Seating is limited, and their number for reservations is 212.255.4022. From their website:

Man in the Dark is Paul Auster’s brilliant, devastating new novel about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us. A retired book critic, recovering from an injury, imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the twin towers did not fall and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts the story of his marriage Passionate and shocking, Man in the Dark is a novel of our moment, a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.

Tuesday, August 19, 7:30pm
Barnes & Noble Lincoln Triangle (1972 Broadway)
Daniel J. Levitin, World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature

I loved Levitin’s last book, This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, and I’m looking forward to this new one.

Wednesday, August 20, 7:00pm
McNally Jackson (52 Prince St. between Lafayette and Mulberry)
Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories

At one of the L Magazine Flash Fiction contest readings this past year, Ben Greenman reported that one of the judges worried the “superhero thing might be overdone,” but I still like it, and this new book from the Free Press sounds great. Editors Owen King and Jonh McNally have gathered literary writers and asked them to create new superheroes and villains, with an eye to how superheroes would function in today’s world. The editors will host a reading and discussion with contributors Kelly Braffet, Laure Grodstein, and Scott Snyder.

Wednesday, August 20, 7:00pm
KGB Bar (85 E. 4th Street just off 2nd Ave.)
Fantastic Fiction Reading Series with James Patrick Kelly and Jeff Somers

From the website:

James Patrick Kelly has won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for his fiction. His new story collection, The Wreck of the Godspeed, has just been published by Golden Gryphon. He narrates fifty-two of his best stories on James Patrick Kelly's StoryPod on Audible.

Jeff Somers is the author of The Electric Church and its sequel, The Digital Plague. Jeff's story "closer in my heart to thee" was recently published in the Spring 2008 issue of Greatest Uncommon Denominator (GUD) magazine.

* Mobile Libris will be selling books Wednesday August 20th, 7pm at KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)

www.kgbfantasticfiction.org

NYC Readings 8.11.08 - 8.17.08

2008-08-12T09:41:00.005-04:00

Originally appears on TRACE Magazine's blog.

Wednesday, August 13, 12:30pm – 1:45pm
Bryant Park Reading Room
Tommy Chong, Cheech & Chong: The Unauthorized Autobiography

If you happen to be free or work near Bryant Park, Tommy Chong will be reading from his book there on Wednesday afternoon. The reading will be hosted by Josh Gilbert, director of the documentary, aka Tommy Chong.

Thursday, August 14, 7:00pm
McNally Robinson (52 Prince St. between Lafayette and Mulberry)
Indie Press Series: Tin House

Literary magazine and book publisher, Tin House, aims to “salute the artistic edge but remains rooted in the tenets of the classic storytelling tradition.” They’ll present two of their authors on Thursday. LA author Jim Krusoe will read from Girl Factory and Lucia Nevai will read from Salvation.

NYC Readings 8.4.08 - 8.10.08

2008-08-04T12:15:00.003-04:00

(Originally appears on TRACE Magazine's blog.)

Many reading series in the cities are on summer hiatus, and the political discussions are heating up. Two readings with a global bent this week:

Monday, August 4, 2008, 7:00pm
KGB Bar (85 E. 4th Street btw 2nd and 3rd Aves.)
The Future of the Global Environmental Movement

Authors William Powers and Glenn Hurowitz get together today to discuss “the future of the global environmental movement.” Powers has worked in development aid and conservation, written for numerous publications, and is the author of of Blue Clay People: Seasons on Africa’s Fragile Edge and Whispering in the Giant’s Ear: A Frontline Chronicle from Bolivia’s War on Globalization. Hurowitz is the author of Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party and has also written for numerous publications and worked on many environmental and electoral campaigns.

Thursday, August 7, 2008, 6:30pm
The New School, Tishman Auditorium (66 West 12th Street )
Bringing Down the Great Firewall of China: Silenced Writers Speak on the Eve of the Olympics

The Olympic Games open on Friday in Beijing, while many of China’s writers and journalists remain in prison. PEN American Center and The New School present this reading of their work by a who’s who of famous PEN members and writers. They’ll include Edward Albee, Russell Banks, Philip Gourevitch, Jessica Hagedorn, Hari Kunzru, Rick Moody, and Francine Prose.

Supreme Executioner as the Original Ron Burgundy

2008-07-30T16:10:00.005-04:00

The Supreme Executioner who kills the trout with port wine in Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America says: "Giraffe races at Kilimanjaro!"

Ron Burgundy says: "By the hammer of Thor!"

Supreme Executioner says: "Bee races at Mount Everest!"

Ron Burgundy says: "Spiderman's balls!"

I went into another temp agency today. This one was under construction. The receptionist was angry, the testing room was being assembled by a frustrated man in khakis, and the door to the phone switchboxes was open, the wiring gutted. My contact there told me things are slow right now. I heard someone say it would all work out.

NYC Readings 7.28.08 - 8.3.08

2008-07-27T22:28:00.005-04:00

(Originally appears on TRACE Magazine's blog.)

Monday, July 28, 2008, 7:00pm
The Half King Bar & Restaurant (505 W. 23rd Street at 10th Ave)
George Motz, Hamburger America

Filmmaker and hamburger expert George Motz will be at The Half King Monday to celebrate his book, Hamburger America. Go have a burger, a beer and wax nostalgic with the author. More here.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008, 7:00pm
McNally Robinson (52 Prince St. between Lafayette and Mulberry)
Eddie Campbell, The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard

Cartoonist Eddie Campbell, author of The Fate of the Artist, and co-author of From Hell will present his new graphic novel, The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard (First Second Books), which is based on the acrobat who made the leotard a big deal.

Thursday, July 31, 2008, 7:00pm to 10:00pm
Central Park Summerstage (Enter at 69^th Street and Fifth Avenue)
Richard Price and Charles Bock

It’s LES meets Vegas Thursday at Summerstage. (This makes it sound like a WWE event). Richard Price will be reading from Lush Life, his most recent novel, and Charles Bock debut novel, Beautiful Children, has received a whole lot of attention. Go check the two of them out Thursday. More on both here.

Regarding Divisions of Genre

2008-07-27T13:12:00.005-04:00

"Divisions of genre serve a purpose somewhat like a scaffolding: useful as preliminaries but in the end to be discarded."

(From Irving Howe's introduction to Short Shorts: An Anthology)

Mark Sarvas is busy over at The Elegant Variation exploring the topic of how much of an author's oeuvre a critic needs to know in order to properly review a new work by the author.

When I was reviewing video games ever so briefly, I actually had the same thought. "To review Guitar Hero III and Rock Band, do I need to have a working knowledge of the previous titles in the Guitar Hero franchise?" I never really came to a conclusion.

There's a glimpse into my foolish head.

Dork on Dork

2008-07-26T14:54:00.005-04:00

I just realized a dude I know, Dave Mosher, blogs for Discovery.com here at "Space Disco." He recommends some space books to read, here. As soon as I'm done with The Cloudspotter's Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, maybe I'll pick one of those up.

Lucille, please add that to the links on the sidebar

Thanks, Lucille.

Stories about Testicles and Suicide

2008-07-25T13:11:00.006-04:00

I went to that First Line reading I mentioned. It was a reading by three of the authors chosen for the anthology, The Best of the First Line. I only caught the first two of three before I had to go, but they were good.

I'm lazy and can't remember the exact first lines, but M.M. De Voe's was something about a character leaving behind a fishing pole, a copy of The Wind in the Willows, and a box of playboys. The resulting story of suicide and the surviving brother was depressing and funny.

Matt McHugh's first line was "There were five of them, which was two more than I'd been expecting." and the resulting story of a potential circus freak, or "oddity," a man with five balls, was definitely more hilarious than depressing.

After reading Mary Robinette Kowal's bio, "Mary Robinette Kowal is a professional puppeteer who moonlights as a writer," I wish I would've stayed for her reading. I do like beer and puppets.

The First Line's next deadline is Aug. 1, 2008, and the sentence is: "Roy owned the only drive-thru funeral business in Maine." McNally Robinson carries physical copies of the magazine here in New York and the website says where it is available elsewhere.

NYC Readings 7.21.08 - 7.27.08

2008-07-21T12:35:00.006-04:00

(Originally appears on TRACE Magazine's blog.)

Tuesday, July 22, 2008, 7:00pm
McNally Robinson (52 Prince St. between Lafayette and Mulberry)
Jonathan Segura Occupation Hazards

Segura is the deputy fiction editor at Publishers Weekly, and this is his debut novel. It’s a newsroom thriller about a burnt out reporter who discovers a crime syndicate that might involve his employers. Is there a crime syndicate at PW? I don’t know, but the website says “wine will be served.”

Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 7:00pm
Housing Works (126 Crosby south of Houston)
Darin Strauss & A.M. Homes

Darin Strauss (More Than It Hurts You) and A.M. Homes (The Mistress’s Daughter) will be doing a reading, Q&A and signing.

Thursday, July 23, 2008, 7:00pm
KGB Bar (85 E. 4th Street between 2nd and 3rd Aves.)
The First Line Magazine

The First Line is a literary magazine with a simple but grabbing premise: a first line is assigned for the issue, and all the submissions must begin with this line. They’ll be celebrating their 10-year anniversary at KGB on Thursday with readings from authors in the new anthology, The Best of The First Line: Editor’s Picks 2002-2006, and share some insights from writing for the magazine. The readers will be M. M. De Voe, Matt McHugh, and Mary Robinette Kowal.

NYC Readings 7.15.08 - 7.20.08

2008-07-15T09:04:00.004-04:00

(Original appears on TRACE Magazine's Blog)

July 18-20 (this Friday-Sunday) is the 10th Annual Harlem Book Fair. For a full list of events, go here.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008, 7:00pm
B&N Tribeca (97 Warren Street)
Michael Ian Black: My Custom Van

Michael Ian Black will be at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble Tuesday to read from (or discuss, or make fun of, or something) his new collection of essays, My Custom Van: And 50 Other Mind-Blowing Essays that Will Blow Your Mind All Over Your Face. Sarah Silverman says it’s “Fun to read while you’re pooping.” That’s good enough for me.

Wednesday, July 16, 7:00pm
B&N Tribeca (97 Warren Street)
Grandmaster Flash

Two B&N events this week because they’re so good. Grandmaster Flash has a memoir out, Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats, and he’ll be at the Tribeca B&N Wednesday. Do I really need to say more than that?

Thursday, July 17, 7:00pm
McNally Robinson (52 Prince St. between Lafayette and Mulberry)
Dzanc Books and Friends

Dzanc Books is an upstart indie publisher. On Thursday Aaron Petrovich of Hotel St. George Press will host a reading by the contributing authors of Best of the Web (Dzanc Books), including Garth Risk Hallberg, Cara Hoffman, Sarah Sweeney, Justin Taylor, Tess Taylor, and Claudia Zuluaga. Joshua Kornreich will read from his novel The Boy Who Killed Caterpillars (Marick Press) and Peter Markus will read from Bob, or Man on Boat , published by Dzanc Books.

A Purpose for Paper Bullets?

2008-07-14T10:56:00.005-04:00

Ed Park linked to my drunken detailing of his reading on his blog. Hi!

I'm in the midst of shifting Paper Bullets more into the realm of lit blog and away from the realm of "crazy run-off from other things that Shawn is writing for other places," though there might still be some of that.

I was cleaning off my desk during my newfound free time, and found the domain "boogiewoogieflu.blogspot.com" on the back of my old business card. I'd forgotten about that. I met Ted Barron, the guy that runs it, at a New Year's Eve brunch at a loft out here in Bushwick. That I just found this card tells you something about the state of my desk and mind recently. He gets the fever for a record, he goes a-rootin' for it, and then he posts some goodness as mp3's on his blog. Good fun.

I got the mp3 of Bo Diddley's "I've Got a Feeling" for my new summer muxtape, paperbullets.muxtape.com, at his blog.

"The Spread of Boogie Woogie" from nonjohn.com

No Longer Almost Almost Famous

2008-07-12T08:38:00.007-04:00

“Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this.” – Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

(The quote I was looking for was something the new assistant at my old job said McCarthy said, about how each decision closes a door on something else, but this was all I could find, and I found it here because I was too lazy to find my copy of the book among the stacks of shelfless books here in my room. This line is said before someone gets offed, I think, so I hope things go better for me.)

The literary agency I worked at specialized in music writing. I would sometimes refer to my job as “Almost Almost Famous.” I don’t work there anymore. I feel tired. I’m taking next week off, only job hunting in the mornings, and then I’ll have to begin temping if none of the jobs I’m waiting for are offered to me. I’ve had a number of interviews already. There are a lot of "I's" in this post. Not sure I like that.

How long until these listings disappear and the queries stop?

Google Not a Good Judge of Literature

2008-07-12T07:34:00.006-04:00

"We Googled all kinds of short-shorts and found most entries were for "sudden fiction." Could this be right? True, it had been around longer than some of the others. We checked our finding against the number of Google pages for recent New York Times best sellers. "Sudden fiction" beat out several of them, including those made into movies—even some chosen by Oprah. As a final check, we tested the first phrase that came to mind ("armadillo sex") and found this too out-Googled the New York Times and Oprah. We concluded Google wasn't necessarily a good judge of literature."

(From the Editor's Note by Robert Shapard and James Thomas in New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stores from America and Beyond.)

Uh-oh. I'd better change my approach.

“It can do in a page what a novel does in two hundred.”—Mark Strand

My workshop starts this Wednesday. I need to resume writing so I don't start off cold.

Ed Park & Leni Zumas @ St. Mark's Bookshop Reading Series at Solas 7.10.08

2008-07-10T23:46:00.011-04:00

I actually went to one of the readings I recommended @ TRACE Magazine's blog. Crazy, I know. Rest assured that I got drunk during it, too. One must multitask.

Two highlights from Ed Park's reading:
- He started out by reading a bit from David Berman's actual air, introducing it by relating a cosmic story about how he used to visit St. Mark's Bookshop weekly during his time working near it, and how he had felt compelled to pick up the book earlier during the day and read it over again. He had bought the book at St. Mark's when it came out, and it was published by Open City, the press that published Leni Zumas's book. (I felt a bizarre connection in that a friend is reading that book right now too, I believe, and I only recently fell fully in love with the Silver Jews myself. Also, my first night in New York was spent on the cold tile floor of an NYU dorm near the Bookshop, and if I'm not making this up, I think St. Mark's was the first bookstore I visited in New York. In short, I was buzzed and feeling hyper-connected.)
- While reading the beginning of the novel, he mentioned a recent latimes.com menswear piece that quoted the line "We dress like we don't make much money, which is true for at least half of us" as a means of segueing into current fashions. Apparently this novel is already a cornerstone for men's dress in and out of the office.

Favorite quote from the portions read: "Jack II says that when you feel a tingling in your fingers, it means someone's Googling you. We take to this bit of instant folklore immediately."

Favorite quote from Mr. Park: something like "This is about how I was fired from The New-York Ghost."

I enjoyed Leni Zumas's reading from her debut collection of short stories, Farewell Navigator, too. In another bizarre moment of synchronicity for at least one pb reader, she appears to have graduated from the Amherst MFA program. (And Miranda July gave her a blurb? Nice.) Another moment of correlation: during Zumas's story the mailman, who the narrator's mother finds to be "sluttish", visits the house, and the narrator can't get a word out from being nervous. And this from Park's reading: "The worst is when you turn the corner and you see her and you want to say Hi in a normal way but all that happens is your mouth opens and you make a little croaking sound or make no noise at all."

"Honk If You're Lonely" by the Silver Jews

Shelf Irony

2008-07-06T17:38:00.007-04:00

I have an almost guilty habit of buying and reading books on writing. Today, when I walked upstairs to the "Writing" section at Housing Works, which contains both books on writing and writer's reference books, I found a copy of The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman. Someone mistook it for a sincere reference book.

Some key phrases and subjects in the book, according to Amazon: John Hodgman, George Washington, Mall of America, New York City, White House, Loch Ness, North American, Secret World Government, Benjamin Franklin, Central Park, Jordan Pring, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Joey Stink-Eye Smiles, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Sterling Memorial Library, West Virginia, Chef Billy, Frederick Geen, Great Architect, Great Depression, Red Lobster, Tim Randall

Also, hobos.

New Layout

2008-07-05T15:52:00.009-04:00

Slight blog redesign recently. 3 Columns. Good Reads. Recommendations. Del.icio.us.

There are maybe two readers of this blog except the people that come looking for information on Sean Michaels or Journey. What do you think?

PAPER BULLETS!

Librarian

2008-07-03T19:19:00.008-04:00

"Ramble up the stairwell,
Into the hall of books.
Since we got the interweb,
These hardly get used."

"Simplest of pleasures,
The world at its best."

“Librarian” by My Morning Jacket, live via largeheartedboy

My grandpa read parts of a letter to me over the phone last Sunday. It was an optimistic one that I'd sent to him from here, dated November 17, 2007. He said I'd sounded alright. He began to ask “are you married yet?” when my phone cut out. That was funny to us when I called him back. He thought I'd hung up.

Librarian porn?

Zen Pirate

2008-06-26T13:54:00.007-04:00

I yam what I yam.

I yam not what I yam.

But I was at the Mermaid Parade last weekend.

It’s hard to write when you’re busy rewriting yourself. I’ve had a few interviews, have begun training my replacement, and I have not lost any more weight.

Tap two mountains, earn $10,000 on signing

2008-06-12T18:57:00.007-04:00

The publisher may not; the proprietor shall.

Sometimes book contracts make me think of Magic: The Gathering.

What the Walrus Said

2008-05-31T15:39:00.012-04:00

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

My eighth grade algebra teacher (who had an appreciation for narrative too; he would read us stories about two math-and-mystery solving detectives every Friday) used to recite this verse from “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” by Lewis Carroll when it was time to change seating arrangements.

I was away on vacation recently. I spent a lot of time walking. I went on a campus path every day, under trees and past a large red sculpture that I heard one student refer to as “the tampon” as he walked by talking on his cell phone, as in “I’m just passing the tampon.” Students were moving out of dormitories and milling around.

I haphazardly put together this playlist while there:

1 – “Get Yourself Together” by Daniel Johnston
2 – “One Day Record 1” by Lightspeed Champion
3 – “A Good Flying Bird” by Guided by Voices
4 – “Night Society” by Silver Jews
5 – “Right in the Head” by M. Ward
6 – “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” by The Mountain Goats
7 – “George Michael” by Tapes ‘N Tapes
8 – “Oceans & Streams” by The Black Keys
9 – “Into the Sea” by The Album Leaf
10 – “The Waves at Night” by Phosphorescent
11 – “Advice to the Graduate” by Silver Jews
12 – “Everybody’s Gotta Live (Love cover)” by Les Savy Fav

I gave notice at my job, enrolled in a flash fiction workshop for this summer, and I’ve lost six pounds.

"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.

Cash $$$ for Yo' Exes

2008-04-25T13:19:00.007-04:00

http://exboyfriendjewelry.com/ is:

A) a really depressing sign of our times.
B) something uplifting for the dumped.
C) somehow feminist, whatever that means.
D) something else.
E) a website.
F) a brilliant business idea (I wonder what they're bringing in for advertising from all these women who are reaching a catharsis?)

How's about stuffleftinmyroomthatisometimesstuffedinthebackof
adrawerasakindofsadmementoornotchinmybedpost.com, or, clotheswomenboughtmebecauseihavelittletonofashionsense.com, or musicthatisnowassociatedwithsomeone
i'mnotassociatedwithanymore.com?

Oh....long fake website name humor. Hoho haha. I haven't posted in a long time. I haven't written much of anything in a long time. It was not my best winter.

I should probably stop getting my blog ideas from the Times, but whatever.

Blogs Will Destroy the Universes

2008-01-22T00:21:00.000-05:00

My review of the audiobook of BOOMSDAY by Christopher Buckley is up over at emusic.

Oh, oh Shawn

2008-01-21T17:49:00.004-05:00

So, out of vanity and curiosity I looked at the data for how people get to this blog, and I noticed that the most recent visitor was referred by a Google search for “wife craves sean michaels,” and that he (or she?) did it from a General Mills network apparently. Amazing.

I say, if your wife craves Shawn Michaels, you stay true to that woman. She has good taste, and that’s so rare these days. And if you're a wife looking for Shawn Michaels, I could get into that.

I was once (mistakenly?) listed as Shawn Michaels on the roster for shotgun merit badge at Boy Scout Camp. I didn’t see any reason to correct the instructor when my name was called. I just said “here.”

Ladies: Oh, oh Shawn.

Growling Man: I think I'm cute.
I know I'm sexy.
I got the looks.
That drives the girls wild.

Cover of Shawn Michaels Theme Song via camcomics

YouTube video of clip of his entrance theme.

The Last Rainforest

2008-01-15T17:07:00.000-05:00

There must be some reason that Panda Bear's Person Pitch makes me think of FernGully.

Panda Bear - "Comfy in Nautica" via something via Brooklyn Vegan

Counting Pogs Soothes My Nerves

2008-01-11T13:56:00.001-05:00

"Eleven calls were about people seen counting in the subway, which was interpreted as ominous by some.” Reported by William Neuman @ nytimes.com

Actually, one of the 11 calls regarding counting was not a Muslim person praying. It was about me.

I’m sorry if counting my Pog collection, arranging it in a 16x16 pog square on the Montrose Avenue L train stop, then moving them into a formation resembling the anarchy symbol creeped anyone out. It’s just something I do to sooth my nerves.

Substitute Chicken

2008-01-10T13:53:00.001-05:00

If someone would buy me this fake roast chicken, I would appreciate it. I believe it would help in the weight loss endeavor.

Perhaps fake beer might be better.

Test plate having a thermal test pattern

2007-12-25T21:36:00.000-05:00

“So you can call this a test pattern,
So you don’t have to commit,
So you can change any day.”
--- “Test Pattern” by The Thermals

via http://electronics-cooling.com

“A thermal test pattern comprises motifs of a material having a high thermal emissivity which are provided on one side of a flat substrate. The substrate has a low thermal emissivity. The other side of the substrate is covered with a layer of a material having a high electrical resistivity which is provided between two conductive connection strips. The motifs and connection strips and resistive layer may be deposited by silk screening. Due to the differences in thermal emissivity, a temperature difference occurs between the substrate and the motifs, the motifs being colder, when the substrate is heated by passing an electric current through the resistive layer.” Via http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4549814.html

Quick, Stop Believing

2007-11-29T09:56:00.000-05:00

The full lyrics to the Festivus song, set to Journey's "Don't Stop Believing"

Toss out your dreidel, don’t believe in Santa Clause,
Just take the cheapest flight goin’ right back home.
Time for Festivus, it’s one for the rest of us,
So take the red-eye flight goin’ right back home.

Get yourself a hard metal pole,
One bottle wine and home meatloaf
For a twenty you can have this night
Festivus goes on and on and on.

[Chorus] Dad’s stretching, working out his hernia
His muscles ready for the fight
Agnostic, people, lookin’ just to find a ritual
Searching, ready for a rite

Talkin’ loud to say how I feel,
Everybody’s hearts of steel
Sayin’ everything to clear our minds
This one more night
Some will laugh, some will cry
Some will wish for you to die
Oh, the airing never ends,
It goes on and on and on and on

[Repeat Chorus]

Quick, stop, believing,
Give up on stupid feelings,
Agnostic people, whoaohohhhhhhhhh

[Repeat twice, fade out.]

Journey Midi!

Shopping List

2007-11-28T15:47:00.000-05:00

Things that you might like to buy or read more about if things go awry, according to Google:

Free Oreos
Get Free Chocolate Covered Oreos. Free Chocolate Covered Oreos On Us!
www.oreos.com

Unfaithful Wife
Find out the real reason so many wives today are unfaithful
WomensInfidelity.com

Boundaries At Work
Know The Important Boundaries That Should Not Be Crossed At Work
RevolutionHealth.com

Unfaithful Wife »
Wife Crave Black »
Naval Wife »
Lonely Wife »
Creature from the Black Lagoon »
Angry Customers »
Dealing with Difficult People »
My Wife and My Dead Wife »
I Hope You Dance »

Things that are like buildings, according to some people

2007-11-22T12:35:00.000-05:00

1 - "[…] criticism, to adapt a phrase of Zadie Smith’s, is a broad church, admitting many kinds of zeal.” --- “Among the reviewers: John Updike and the book-review bugaboo” by Wyatt Mason at harpers.org

2 - I just wasted a bit of time looking for the origin of the idea of “the house of poetry,” and think that Wallace Stevens might have been responsible, but I came across it in Paul Muldoon and I think I heard of it first through Billy Collins, though he may have been quoting Stevens.

Apparently Star Wars has a House of Poetry too? Do tell. I can’t seem to find it online. Maybe it’s within the game, in which case it will remain a mythical land of intergalactic Romanticism, because I will not go into that dark cave. (Darth Vader or my alter ego is in it, as well as the dark side of American letters) Is this where Luke composes an ode to the time before he knew Leia was his sister? Where Hans writes a sonnet to Chewbacca’s sister under the pseudonym "Frans"?

3 - “Jack:
This place is like a mansion!
It's like a mansion!
Look at all this stuff!

Meg:
I don't know.”

--- “Rag and Bone” from Icky Thump by The White Stripes

Conclusions:

0.1 - Criticism is a church, poetry a house, and music a mansion (this makes some economic sense, if you think about it).

0.2 - Video games are a theme park.

0.3 - My butt is a one-room shanty.

All I've Got Is These Paper Bullets

2007-11-20T15:55:00.000-05:00

This frame is from the DC Army at War - SGT. ROCK June 1967 issue, in a story called "Paper Bullets." via http://www.psywarrior.com/dissemination.html

Top box:

“Guys like you an’ me – we join a war to fight – right? Okay! So that’s why I frugged off to the Charlie mixup! An’ that’s why I hitched up my battle-dreams to a hot-shot combat copter outfit! But how can me an’ my crew fight when the big-brass loads us up with … PAPER BULLETS!”

Bottom bubble:

“My brother’s copter and every other whirly bird an’ jet job is flippin’ lead bullets an’ steel bombs! But all we’ve got to throw at the Charlie guys are these surrender leaflets – paper bullets!”

PAPER BULLETS!

Slight blog redesign today. Nothing much.

The Future of Fat Funny

2007-11-08T14:02:00.000-05:00

Why does it have to be the skinny and cute nerd? Why Michael Cera and not Jonah Hill?

Dear Jonah,

Jonah, I call upon you to channel the energies of Belushi & Farley, Candy & Black! Not Kevin James though. Please don’t dial that up. And stay away from hookers and hard drugs. Think tea & yoga!

I believe in you,
Shawn

PS – Stick to Cera and avoid Spade!

Blogging on Books

2007-10-16T09:24:00.000-04:00

I'm so white it hurts the eyes, but I'm blogging over at Trace magazine's new blog about books and such.

Little Sisters All Grown Up, Can't Develop Healthy Relationships

2007-10-03T13:02:00.001-04:00

My review of “Bioshock” is up on www.uwire.com now, here.

The ending of the game that I experienced led me to wonder…what would Little Sisters be like when they grew up? Hmm…

Do-da-loo-Do-da-loo-Do-da-loo…

[12:30pm, Friday night, after the show]
Garth: Oh, yeah Roxanne, yeah…
Roxanne: Oh, yeah. Do it more jerky, like you’re a robot…
Garth: What? No way!
Roxanne: Way.
Garth: Ummmm….ok…..Fished in!
[Does the Robot while continuing]
Roxanne (Little Sister #1): Oh, yeah, Mr. Bubbles, that’s it.
Garth: Who? Are you mental?
Roxanne: Nobody, nobody! Don’t stop! Call me Little Sister! Call me Little Sister!
Garth: Little Sister! Little Sister!
Roxanne: Oh yes, Big Daddy!
Garth: Who’s your Daddy?!
Roxanne: Mr. Bubbles!
Garth: Who?
Roxanne: You, daddy, you Garth.
Garth: This is too weird. I think I’m gonna hurl…I’m leaving.
Roxanne: No, wait, Garth, don’t go. Please baby…you’ll be an angel soon.
[Pulls a needle from her nightstand drawer]
Garth: Holy f*! What’s that? Oh my God!
[Door flings open, in come Roxanne’s roommates, Chloe and Samantha, both former Little Sisters, their eyes glowing red. They hold him down while Roxanne extracts his ADAM.]
EXTREME CLOSE UP! AHHHHHHHH!

Exsqueeze me? Baking powder? Did you say Hawaii Five-O reruns? I think NOT.

I guess all that brainwashing, relying on mechanical father figures who they called Mr. Bubbles but were really called Big Daddies, and stabbing needles with corpses didn’t work out too well. Would’ve been a good call to have paid attention to her description of her family at the concert, pal, instead of staring at her breasts and then following her home to her Chicago digs. Should’ve gone for a real woman:

“Schwing! We’re not worthy!”

Also, I was here. Not quite sexy enough for pictures, though. It's a good book. I've, like, read it and stuff.

Literary Pants Party, Party in Kerouac's Pants

2007-08-22T13:11:00.000-04:00

(2000 Chinese edition of ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac, from this website, and this NY Times Slideshow)

Girl # 1: Oh, Dean, you are so hot and tanned. Tell me more about your beatific life.

Girl # 2: Yes, and rub my shoulders with your tough, callused man-hands Dean, now that those gloves are off after a long day of throwing a hammer up and down and walking back and forth and talking without breathing.

Dean Moriarty: I was driving around and working odd jobs and I had these license plates the cops pulled me over they didn’t dig it…

[Girls # 1 swoons and rubs lotion on Dean’s tanned and muscular torso. Dean rubs Girl # 2’s shoulders. Girl # 2 sighs and begins to write a novel on her Apple laptop.]

Girl # 3: Sal, your shoulder is so comfortable in a wooden board kind of way.

Girl # 4: I’m so glad we came to this café by the railroad to drink coffee and rub on each other. Look a sparkling little China-man Sal! Look!

Sal Paradise: Yes, he is America. We are America. There’s a train over there with hobos in the cars. Let’s hop in there and have a literary orgy.

All together: Yes. Yay!!!

[Girls 1-4 break into the Thriller dance and Dean and Sal do the Electric Slide. All six hop into a train car.]

(2004 German Edition of ON THE ROAD)

http://www.myspace.com/aristotle

2007-08-11T19:40:00.000-04:00

With online networking sites, Aristotle was able to keep in touch with those friends of utility much easier. And thank God, or how else would this meaningful exchange have appeared in the collection of his letters?

[Jeremiah adds Aristotle as a friend on facebook.com, and includes the following message, clarifying that they met in a class at Plato’s Academy]
Jeremiah: Dude, it’s been so long! I can’t believe I found you on here! Unbelievable man. What have you been up to?
Arisotle: Oh, not a great deal. I moved to New York and have been tutoring some rich Upper East Side boy named Alexander to pay the rent and buy beer. Reading a lot. Writing a little. Got some positive feedback on some things I published recently. Taking night classes. You?
Jeremiah: Things are so good! Married now. Have one kid and another on the way. Look at my album for some pictures of the runt. Still here in Athens man. Got a job managing a grocery store. How are old Phaestis and Nicomachus? You ever make it back to Chalcidice?
Aristotle: Congratulations on the kids. Mom and Dad are fine. They’re always asking when I’m going to get married and have some kids myself. No ladies right now though. No, I can’t afford to fly back too often. You ever make it to the city?
Jeremiah: No, I don’t. Well, if you’re ever in town, look me up. Bff!
Aristotle: Will do.

Knocked Up

2007-07-25T13:30:00.000-04:00

While discussing Knocked Up, it’s de rigueur to ask why attractive Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) would even consider being with doofy Ben Stone (Seth Rogen), or why Ben Stone and his stoner friends were at that club in the first place. The latter question is inexplicable (chalk it up to lazy writing, or Judd Apatow just wanting to set up the situation as quickly and simply as possible so he could move on to what was important), but the earlier one is much simpler than this comedy of manners makes it seem.

Here to explain is Alison Scott after enough martinis that she’d fuck Horatio Sanz:

Alison: You should have seen it. It was so big. I could actually see it through his Old Navy jeans. It went halfway to his knee. His dick was huge! So big! Monster cock! See that Nantucket Nectar bottle over there? That wide! And that Maglite flashlight? That long! I couldn’t walk for three days.

This explains so much. Now go check out fleshofthestars.com

Cherry Pie

2007-05-23T13:45:00.000-04:00

Tastes so good make a grown man cry.

Dr. Strange and Shawn Mitchell

2007-05-11T13:10:00.000-04:00

Sean C. Mitchell of facebook.com works in telecommunications/sales in Kansas City, MO.

But there are yet more Shawn Mitchell's in the world, including this one, who is an expert in painting Dr. Strange.

So mysterious!

man who r u?

2007-04-27T13:41:00.000-04:00

Shawn Mitchell received a message on facebook.com from Sean C. Mitchell titled the above.

Content: "lol i just had to say somethin cuz we got the same name"

True. Which raises the question, who is Shawn Mitchell?

Shawn Mitchell is a Republican Colorado State Senator representing District 23 who believes in "common sense values for Colorado."

You may donate to him here.

"These are the times that try men's souls." - Thomas Paine

Finding the Way

2007-04-24T13:07:00.000-04:00

From Chapter 20 of the S. Mitchell translation of the Tao Te Ching:

Stop thinking, and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no?
What difference between success and failure?
Must you value what others value,
avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!

On April 16, 2006, two months prior to leaving Missouri for New York City, I took a test to determine how "Indie" I was, and discovered that I was not at all, and by extension wouldn't make much of a Taoist. I have retaken that test now:

i am an indie snob!

How indie are you? test by ridethefader

You're just too cool for school, aren't you? You're pretty narrow minded
and opinionated with regards to music (and probably most other things
as well). But you're allowed to be, because you really are better
than everyone else. You take pride in obscurity.
You probably prefer vinyl too, you elitist bitch.

What hath God wrought?

This description isn't exactly accurate. I don't consider myself narrow minded or elitist. Opinionated maybe. Taking pride in obscurity, more likely. I do like to hear new music all the time, and sometimes this results in me liking something that a lot of people don't yet. But I wouldn't jump ship on Arcade Fire just because they are popular. This description assumes that there is always a morality attached to searching for new music. I could care less if someone else has heard of something or not. I take pride in the exploration, in the process, not in where it takes me.

From Chapter 12:

Colors blind the eye.
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart.

The Master observes the world
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is open as the sky.

1 Turkish lira = 0.742997251 U.S. dollars

2007-04-23T13:12:00.000-04:00

"Every girl I’ve seen since looks just like you when I squint."

101 Reasons to Stop Writing

2006-12-06T14:05:00.000-05:00

Sean Lindsay's website, 101 Reasons to Stop Writing, is pretty anti-inspirational, and I love it. It certainly doesn't encourage me to take back up writing, or blogging, and that's his intent.

A+

I may do so anyway, and I'll just consider this a place for posting the non-adventures I have here in NY. Besides the normal hanging out, the things I do are just career-building activities and events. Those aren't too interesting. Besides that, I do a lot of reading, and that helps me work towards becoming an agent much more than writing will.

But all's well.

Dungen, Garrison Keillor, and Pirates

2006-06-11T18:28:00.000-04:00

I promised people that I would actually keep a blog here in NYC so I wouldn't repeat the same stories. So this one is to catch up.

I've been to Coney Island, Times Square (follow the link for a creepy webcam constantly live), Central Park, and the Met. Seth, Sarah and I got lost in a Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn while looking for Williamsburg. Everyone had the garb on, and their peyos were flowing. I felt displaced temporally.

I walked into Barnes and Noble to work on an assignment for the SPI, and Garrison Keillor was there. I listened to him speak then stood in line to have him sign his screenplay. The end.

Last night I saw Dungen play at Irving Plaza. It was my first live show here in NY. They were Swedish, psychadelic, and smooth. The guitarist for Witch, one of the opening bands, looked like Sabretooth, aka Victor Creed.

There are, of course, a number of people that I've seen on the streets of NY that I'd like to note, but they're really just your assorted crazies. There have also been the expected number of bands playing at corners and in parks, as well as a mariachi band actually in a subway car. But I've yet to find a person more entertaining than the couple I saw at Casey's General Store the day before leaving Independence. They were driving a boat of a car. I was filling my gas tank and noticed the lady had a parrot on her shoulder. The husband came out and he had an eyepatch and spoke like a pirate. I wouldn't have been so surpised had they been here in NYC instead of at a suburban gas station. I don't know what the NYC equivalent would be, but I'm sure there's an American Association of Pirates somewhere here in NY. Here's one for Massive Online Multiplayer Games: The North Eastern Pirates Association.

Paz.

T2: Taoist Indie Mantra

2006-04-16T17:50:00.000-04:00

From Ursula K. LeGuin's Rendition of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching:

In my obscurity
is my value.
That's why the wise
wear their jade under common clothes.

Lao Tzu was so totally Indie. He hates the Decemberists now that the sorority girls got a hold of them. I googled "Indie Test" in hopes of discovering how Indie I am. Thankfully, here was the result:

i am not indie at all!

How indie are you? test by ridethefader

Who are you trying to fool? Just because you own a couple of Weezer albums
doesn't mean that you're uberindie. Indie people don't hear about cutting edge
new bands from MTV. At least the ignorant don't know what they're missing...

Emerson: "The writer needs a basis which he cannot supply; a tough chaos-deep soil ... and this basis the popular mind supplies."

Being disengaged from what is popular or "corporate" means being disengaged from what the zeitgeist cares about. Little good besides pretention could come from that.

Terrifying enough, I have that man's hair, glasses, and shirt. I also wear white undershirts occasionally. Sweet Jesus, help me.

Hoppy Easter!

We're Going to the Chapel

2006-04-07T19:44:00.000-04:00

We're gonna get married.

Today I was accepted to the NYU Summer Publishing Institute. I've talked myself into going, and I've talked to my friend Chip about finding a place to lease together, possibly in Brooklyn.

Skyscrapers like organ pipes.

T1: You're Weird

2006-04-06T20:19:00.000-04:00

Recently I visited with Ashlyn, my eight-year-old niece, about what it means to be human, or at least to not be an inanimate dolphin-shaped hole-punch. She had one of said hole-punches in her possession, and I quickly found joy in punching dolphin-shaped holes in my own notebook’s pages. I asked her what this splendid device couldn’t do.

ME: What can’t it do?
ASHLYN: A lot of things.
Like?
Like talk.
Oh, and?
Do math problems.
Ohh.
Or tell you that you’re weird, but you are.

Furibundo!

2006-04-05T03:41:00.000-04:00

Furibundo!

Don't Stop Believing

2005-12-25T21:09:00.000-05:00

I stopped believing in Santa when I was ten.

I stopped believing in Jesus when I was twenty.

What will I stop believing in when I'm thirty?

Don't stop believin'
Hold on to the feelin'
Streetlight people
---Journey

Prophecies of the End Times Coming

2005-12-09T12:39:00.000-05:00

But what if Noah
Had just said "No sir"
Well we'd all have fins and scaly skins
We'd breathe through gills instead of nostrils
And we'd eat fish food instead of vitamin pills
--- The Main Street Singers, A Mighty Wind

So. If Noah had said no, then the biblical narrative would have been changed so that evolution would have taken over and we'd have developed fins, scaly skins, and nostrils. Which is to say: we'd all live in Kevin Reynold's Waterworld (1995). Or our fingers would have gotten real pruny and we'd never have wanted to eat seafood again. Or we would have drowned, like Leonardo in Titanic (1997), another story about a big ship. Then we wouldn't have to worry about Apophis, echizen kurage, Allen Ginsberg, Al Qaeda, Starbucks, or the Rapture. Then we could just enjoy the ocean's pull.

Waterworld byline:
"Beyond the horizon
lies the secret
to a new beginning"

Couplets for Singles

2005-11-28T19:55:00.000-05:00

I sought through the evening for words to convey,
Wandered through twilight but still nought to say.
Midnight swept past whilst I had yet to find,
The appropriate letters for thoughts in my mind.
Then with the dawn and the first rays of light;
They came and they gathered to answer my plight.
Formations too numerous for one to record,
Flooded my head, yet few stayed aboard!
I heard the dawn chorus, the crash of the sea.
All of natures treasures surrounding me.
Much time I'd spent searching, then a lift of the haze,
And it came simply; you never cease to amaze. xx Jacey xx

I love you too Jacey. In a brotherly kind of way.

I found this gem on an online profile, and not on facebook. It was on www.okcupid.com actually, funny for its tests and good for friends, penpals, and mate locating, if you're into that. I actually don't know a Jacey, and might be better off for it. Though that's a little harsh, seeing as how I too have attempted to express cliched sentiments through poetry, shamefully maybe through couplets at some earlier point in my life. And are cliched sentiments the most true? Am I just trying to complicate things by not saying "you never cease to amaze?" But at least there are shots at something serious here, in using problems in nature to represent problems in life. Then she expresses the popular sentiment that "words can't express how I feel", which is at once lazy and demeaning to language's potential and uplifting for the human spirit and condition.

This tasty lick is more entertaining, straight from Brittany Spears's website and all about her honeymoon, written by none other than herself:

A honeymoon at last, to get away from it all
My assistant Fe gave me the call.

I remember it well, as she was smilin'
She said it was called Turtle Island.

I packed my bags light and quick,
Then grabbed my pink dress & favorite lipstick.

We hopped on a plane and took our flight
I slept really well, all through the night.

As we arrive, I turn and look out the door,
People are greeting us right at the shore.

A meal, a shower and some ice cream
Then I threw my man down, you know what I mean!

Magical nights filled with stars
Silence is golden, no running cars.

Private dinners, romantic fires
Little piece of heaven, whatever your heart desires.

Friendly "hellos" and never goodbyes
When you're having fun, oh, how time flies!

As we sit and prepare to make our part
I thank you, Turtle Island, with all my heart!

Now this is an epic poem, narrative in its core and pure beauty. On her Turtle Island, sweet Spears experienced truth that she had to set down in words. And touching the result is, for truly, we all know what she means.

Does this love for couplets spring from reading too many children's books? Or do we naturally find pleasure in couplets, in having a rhyme completed, as much as we do in having a comedy wrap up its loose ends? And does it say something that while "literary" poetry has long moved past couplets in attempts to "make it new", to keep striving for the best text possible, there are still people who are perfectly satisfied with the old couplets? Or have I been reading too much Chuck Klosterman?

Here's a couplet of my own:

More than the stars in the sky, I love you the best.
Now lay down: I want to squeeze out a Cleveland steamer on your chest.