poem sometimes?

THE DEATH OF AN AIRTRAFFIC CONTROLLER

Mulhouse, between Switzerland and

Germany, France; narrowing the focus,

say airport, then control tower, its tight-

knit network of offices, cubicles, paths

of least resistance erupting like a flower

whose stack of blooms is each another floor.

A corner office, maybe, or the one

across the hall from the one

he really wanted: its windows only

catch the light between noon and one

and the secretary attached to it always

reminded him

of the girl he loved in high school, in

the way she looked up with her lips

parted slightly and her hair all dark

and nearly brown but red, really, red.

Small consolation it may have been—

to see how effortlessly his blood

matched the color, to be reminded of her

as he bled out at eight in the morning,

the sunlight creeping in already,

lapping at his face.

no title poem, too tired for titles

poem under revision

poem poemy poem

THE THING ABOUT HOME

The thing about home is
that it has never
existed. The four walls you
hung your posters or post
cards or letters or whatever
on were only ever walls. In-
stead, it is a place cobbled from
the minor and the mundane:
the scuffmark beneath the window
from your shoe as you exited, the
one you scrubbed until it was light
but not gone, and the pockmarks
from pins and nails, and there
was the corner you faced every
night as you fell asleep, all
built on the floor from a different
house, with a door from a house
you can't remember--

only the light from beneath
as you lay in the dark. Home,
then, is the feeling. It's the gas
expanding to fill the space.

poem pome pmoe mpoe

Waking up in a rainstorm on
the Utah freeway is like waking up
a glass coffin: the water rushing
thick like dirt on the windshield, each
thwmp of the wipers another shovel-
ful heaped up until

there is no land deep enough
for such a grave unless I
am some mountain's seed
and in the sun I will bloom.

poem a this time

poem under revision

poem a sometimes, i guess

I HAVE CONFLICTING FEELINGS ON THE SUBJ.

Sleep, after all, is a kleptomaniac

who steals moments and hours,

hoarding them until the time is right--

when it can appear from behind the couch

shouting SURPRISE, and saying that after all

this time, it has learned the lesson:

a life is for all cycles of the sun and moon. But

every time the room is empty, the last light

turned on with a timer to make-believe

someone is home to ward off the burglars, the

ne'er-do-wells, and you

who will never return

have gone. Or else, less often,

you and sleep sit across from each other,

the bags under your eyes darkening

as you look at the opened present on your lap

realizing that you had asked too rashly,

that you never really wanted this. Wondering

how long it has been since you both ran out

of things to say and

when you get

to open that other, really big present.

poem a man i should be sleeping

THERE IS NO WORD IN ENGLISH

And at the end I have only one

word that my life has com-

pressed between its slight layers so

it shines now pearlescent now

muffled like the last word

in a phrase bit back (i

t would have shed some fresh light

in the dark corners, where the

lamplighter of our conversation never tread) but

I have never been to Portugal and

time tips ever onward so I can say only

saudade, softly, saudade--

feeling nothing so sharp but longing and

let it be my last word, that I love you,

that you are lost.

poem a harglefagofh

PACKING A BOOK BOUND FOR POCATELLO

Packing a book bound for Pocatello;
it's been years since I was there. When,
after eighteen hours on the road, I
found the cheapest motel in its winding
avenues, passing a group of kids playing
baseball in the park at 10 pm, all their parents
watching from the stands while a block over
the pink neon outline of a woman flashes
flashes. And I slept on top of the covers,
waiting to fall alseep, half-watching a show
where a cougar dances among a throng of
younger men, her legs flash like headlights
coming through the narrow crack of the blinds,
and their faces animal-hungry for the chance
to return, to be back next week.
I was on my back,
wondering if my car was safe.

poem a day or so

THE WORLD'S SMALLEST MAN

The world’s smallest man has a face like Don Knotts--

all big teeth and bulging eyes, a weak chin and

the kind of cheeks children draw on animals –

his neck looks impossibly long beneath such a face,

his arms too seem long, but they must be to do what his height cannot.

His skin everywhere looks tight, knuckles showing their joints

like each one is a ring he wears and cannot remove; yes, I am

small now, it says, but I remember what it was to be smaller,

smaller than I am now,

smaller than I may ever be again.

poem an almost twice today

GOD! GOOD!

Each of us carrying off the other

like a thief in the belly of the night

and in the morning we find the thing

we stole and had stolen was the same

so like mirrors reflecting themselves

we grow darker as each reflection compounds

and by stealing we have made the thing

more solid still.

Perhaps alone we may have called it

into being but only together could

such a thing survive.

poem a today

MOOREEFFOC

Dickens called it mooreeffoc,
when the mask of the world slips
and its true face is glimpsed between
those frantic, fluttering fingers, and
we have all struggled in reflections;
so what is the word for calling true
that which cannot be? for seeing mooreeffoc
and saying coffee room?

poem a whenever #something

TWO POEMS

I have two poems
And neither is wholly mine
Because I carried away lines
And phrases whole from you.
God, god, they were good—
Which is why I had to have them.
The annals of things
Which I have forgotten are already
Too full to add these few more; so
I have two poems

poem?

Does each choice branch away
from the bough of the one I made
so that by squinting into the distance
can I see, just over there and
faintly, the shadowy, bright, brilliance
of the life my life could be?

poem a sometimes

ON WATCHING A VIDEO OF A RUSSIAN WOMAN SMASHING BOTTLES IN A STORE

Oh, ceaseless fury,
slipping along your lake of spirits
and wine, your feet are pocked
by broken glass your hands rain down.
What systems created you?
Whose high pressure pressed up
your low? And upon which shore
will you land, vapor-drunk,
buffeting against
the mountains until
you disperse, are dispersed,
and wail no more?

poem an occasionally

and, god, how
she dances. once she
said it was the spirit,
and now, in the wind,
you can almost see hands
saying dance in the way she moves her wrists,
how her knee knows to bend.

and you hate the world for conspiring against her;
that, once at rest,
the spirit leaves.

poem an occasionally

THE ISLE OF THE DEAD

In China, Shanghai, they call it the isle of the dead.
Not that it ever was surrounded by the gentle rubbing of water, but
it is an island now, an isle, and the lights
from the city around work
hard all day and the not-quite-dark
at eroding it until
finally

there is only one building
on a graveyard of thousands: easier
to topple just one.

And no one here ever speaks of ghosts--
They have all left to the city's bright heaven.

sadaspojf

EACH PASSING MOMENT

now now you locks shining
in the sun framing each shining
star and the pearls of your laugh shining
in the cold new day all the air shining
each time before along the necklace shining
in almost the same way but now shining
darker or lighter but still
and now now you
in
and
always

poem a blahdyblah

_____________
the word tumbling syllables down
to bounce across your ear drum
you turning and there has only ever been
one word between us
how quoting you spoke phrases
which were like but not
what you were looking for like
oh but they were close and
into a more violent sea and
in remembering your face is so beautiful
and if i could have a word for it
i would speak that word forever

poem a sometimes #something something

ON SEEING A PICTURE OF A MUSHROOM CLOUD, AFTER THE INITIAL BLAST

How the head of it just
floats away, only tendrils
of radiation, smoke, connect
it to the base unfurling like my
neighbor's flag on Memorial Day
snapping in the wind.

These are the things we cannot escape.
The blast, just another
choice made in an unspooling,
knotted sting. The space between
before and after is so thin

the men in the bunker just outside the blast
barely have time
to hold their breath
but already their chests are tight--

already they have forgotten how to breathe.

poem a day #something something

and from the way she
holds her foot when
her legs are crossed (how
the line from her leg to her toe is one
long, straight stroke) you
wonder if she is a
dancer,
if she has danced.

poem a day #...14? 13?

COAL

Oh. My black-bodied, boastful bundle
you have returned again, bringing once again
a body, a barely-bloodied bunch
and declaring in the tongue I
will never understand that you have killed it,
that you have brought it, and
that because you caught it and carried it
it is mine. It is mine.

poem a day #12

HAND, fig. 1

Detached, it is a seamonster's skeleton,
a mess of bones pushed together
by some well-meaning Victorian
who kept piling them in there just
because they seemed to fit. Ah,
but how it would move.
One, arthritic, is called
a different species, a herbivore,
its bulbous joints made it slow.

poem a day #11

SWimING
And.
When we talk we
are in the black Atlantic, your back
to the sandy finger of land and mine
to the waves, so
when I disappear I have been swallowed whole
and have to fight my way back
with my breath tight in my chest, the
memory of what I was going to
or should
say ballooning in my ribs, wanting
to escape and spoil in the salty air
and when I do surface
you are farther away, nearer
to the shore,
cresting the waves
and calling my name.

poem a day #10

PASSERIDA AT MIDDAY
Birds on a telephone wire like
periods when you fall asleep at your computer
buffet away, singing. Theirs
is a world seen from on high, where
shining cigarette cases whiz along
the flat, black, inedible worms. "I saw
a whole line of them today," a finch might say,
"Their many points of light like the sun
upon the water, and I became sick
sick with their beauty and song
I had to fly or sleep and did both."
And no one listens to the finch, so easily struck
by beauty where there is none,
so eager to find song where there is
only the variable hum: the horizon
shuddering.

And I would be like the finch, I
would be life-drunk and woozy
if I could reduce life to a patchwork
of light. But the telephone line is black
and the birds are always dark in the day,
those flittering periods.

poor excuse a day #8,404

NOTE: It is harder to write a poem about Andy Warhol eating a hamburger than you may think. I will return with my results TOMORROW.

poem a day #9

DO YOU KNOW WHEN THE MONGOLS RULED CHINA?
Two dudes, to pass
a test, ask questions by Mecca:
The Circle K.

DON'T FORGET TO WIND YOUR WATCH
When faced with that
which is most truly awesome
always proclaim "Whoa!"

poem a day #8

RECALLING

In Thailand I am standing
on one flat riverboat packed
with the hot jostling of people and
my father is on another, departing,
pulling away. The water is black,
oil-slicked; churning from the way
they pass so close by like bodies
releasing from an embrace. I
know he must have been calling me
because I jumped and I don't remember
the other boat, only
the lip of the right boat:

How the rubber coating had
worn away from other feet
in other shoes, landing. The wood,
water-warped, exposed.

And it is often like that. Nothing recalled
exactly how it happened; only
one moment in transit: a mold
waiting to be cast.

poem a day #7

FORGETFULNESS

In the moment the phrase
--at least I think
it was a phrase-- seemed
so perfect, so memorable,
that it could never be forgotten,
not even for an instant.

But now, trying to remember
something about the way
leaves part around my footfall
or maybe it was the sun on her
kitchen tiles all those years ago or
the feeling that the world literally rushing by
has had at least one person on it
to plant the telephone pole, is
impossible.

Something that rhymes with
Maryland. Something that
sounds like people down the block
hammering. Or
something without a rhyme,
something
that has never cast a shadow,
never had someone call it by name,
never wanted, so sorely,
to be somewhere else.

I would fill a book with those words
if they would reveal themselves,
crawl from their hiding place
on the tip of my tongue.

poem a day #6 (happy halloween!)

RISEN

It hasn't been more than two
or three minutes since I collapsed--
one hand to my neck trying
to stop all that blood and
the other reaching for the door.

And now I can almost hear
you telling me
there are things more delicious than brains
brains
and I wish I could believe
you but

I'm sorry

Were you saying something let me in

please

poem a day #5

THINNING

You are on a balcony, you say
over the phone, and it has been almost a year
since I have heard your voice so
its cadence, the path it used to frequent is over-
grown with bramble and brier and
is snagged and tugged out of shape.
I wish

I could say I had kept it clear. That,
in remembering, it could dance, freely,
down. But that gardening demands
four hands and have only two, too
few. Again, and it is easier: Such
are the fruits of my labor,
such is the mercy of time, of pruning:

How the heading-back shapes the bush.

poem a day #4

ON SEEING A DRAWING OF CONJOINED TWINS

Wondering now
if they should be called "twins,"
for though there are two
heads and two brains, and
four arms, their faces
face each others; always
will they have one with whom to speak, never
will they sleep alone, unloved.

Their rib cages like many
parentheses, transposed. And
I could never live without you
and there is no word
for a life without loneliness,
I will never need a shadow
for you are with me. Our two
feet holding us up,

another foot, useless,
hanging like a tail.

poem a day #3

PASSENGER

The small town where we stopped
for one night years ago runs
in reverse now that I am driving the other way.
I think about
stopping, the grapes
on ice beside me, for a few minutes.
I will never pass this place again.
And it's past. And the night we walked barefoot
for a pizza, past.

I am mist, I am
his hair in your fingers, hers,
I am the sun on your face in that memory:
I am past.
I am passing.

Also, I'm writing this on the work computer and mine is (again!) iffy. Since tomorrow is my day off it might not be until Thursday when I will resume.

poem a day #2

MANOS RISING

I'm trying to find the word
for the kind of desperation no one wants:
It should have Germanic roots,
the kind that wedge themselves
between rocks and the black earth
where no light will ever reach, three
syllables or more and ending
on a soft stress
because it wears you out
to speak it.
But all I can think of is
time remembers meaningless gestures and
your goodness will not be forgotten
while I am still alive.
And I regret putting them in the
situation, making them
suffer so.

poem a day #1

I THOUGHT I SAW AN ANTEATER

Driving in the dark
I thought I saw an anteater
in the dusk my headlights made.
Its snout drooping to the
macadam, its four paws ant-
rich, nimble. And closer
it was a man with both arms
out, a baggy coat, no legs.
And closer still it was one
deer then two; each watching
my car as I swerved into the other lane,
wary of the way they had transformed,
wary of the way they are
so often willing to risk their lives.


Poem a day for a while. You know you want to do it too. :)

in which i geek out and complain about things

SPOILER ALERT! FOR THE MOVIE, NOT THE BOOK, OBV.

I love David Yates. I think he's great. I think the cinematographer is great. I think all of the actors are great now (I do not want to stab Emma Watson for having to speak with her mouth open as wide as possible). There's Lots of Love for the people who worked on Half-Blood Prince.

I hate the screenwriter with a fiery passion. I was not aware one could adapt a book without reading it and with reading it at the same time. There are some really great things about the movie, Daniel Radcliff on Felix: HILARIOUS. And let's start there, that scene has some things about the screenwriting I find so infuriating:

-The potion isn't gold. I know it's a little thing, but COME ON. Is it really that hard to make it gold? Why is it in a Christmas ornament? INFURIATING THING ONE: Changing little things for no reason.

-Harry drinks it all. I thought why is he drinking it all how will he give some to his friends at the end of the book so they stay alive?

-Oh snap that doesn't happen. INFURIATING THING TWO: Making the characters seem weaker by taking away their motivation and then not putting anything in its place. If they don't fight, how can Harry be shown to be a leader, someone the other students look up to not because he's famous but because he gets shit done? Death eaters in the castle? No one will notice.

-Which brings me to the lack of petrification. Here's the thread: Harry isn't at the Dursley's (why would he be why would that even be really important in the last book) so Dumbledore never sends him a letter so Harry is never told to have his cloak at all times and the prophecy is never addressed (why would that be important, come on viewing public) and so he doesn't have it at the end and so he just watches Snape kill Dumbledore and so he just looks weak and cowardly. Also: If Dumbledore is at death's door and he can apparate into the grounds and "there are perks to being [him]" why wouldn't he apparate into Snape's office? Agh.

-No Defense Against the Dark Arts classes are shown. Wasn't that kind of a big deal that Snape got to teach them and oh goodness look how possibly evil he is?

-Dumbledore never explains his theories about the Horcruxes to Harry. How does Harry even begin to find them? Dark magic leaves traces? Harry has an ultraviolet light but for dark magic now?

-Wait, Harry and Ginny are going out? Are you sure?

-Don't worry, we've read the book so we know what Inferni and all of Voldermort's tricks are without having to see the giant posters supposed to be plastered all over Diagon Alley, you can rest about that one.

-Olivander is gone! Oh noez! Thank goodness no one is really freaked out about that, surely it will not have lasting consequences.

-Destroying a footbridge with visibly no one on it means two things: That hundreds died as a result (thanks, The Daily Prophet) and the dementors are out of ministry control.

-Going to cut out stuff about the Gaunts and other important information? THEN DON'T DESTROY THE BURROW WTF.

-Tonks calling Lupin sweetie was way more confusing than if she hadn't said anything in part because they are supposed to be at odds.

Gah. I am going to stop now because I should be working. It was a similar reaction I had to seeing the third one after no mention is made of who Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs are and what that means and that it would have taken TWO SENTENCES. Gah.

Finally: How are they going to make the seventh and eighth movies make any sense with the groundwork they've laid here and in the other movies?

Finally finally: When either Ron or Lavender says "It looks like this room is taken" because Harry and Heromine are on the stairs it must be because he or she often confuses rooms with HALLWAYS. Gah.

Quantum of Solace

I have seen Quantum of Solace only once, months ago. So why shouldn't I review it?

Quantum of Solace is a direct sequel to one of my favorite movies of the year it came out, Casino Royale. I believe it is the first direct sequel that the Bond series has produced? Anyway, I loved Casino Royale, and was prepared to love QoS, especially after the awesome trailer(s) came out.

QoS picks up in the middle of a car chase wherein Bond's clearly very expensive car gets pretty well trashed. One of the doors gets blown off or torn off. Then Bond gets to M and silent guard and we find out he's been carrying Mr. White, the guy Bond shot in the leg at the end of CR, which, I don't think I have to remind you, was awesome. Anyway, they question Mr. White re: Who? Why? and he tells them that he is a member of Quantum, a super-secret super-evil group of guys who are "everywhere." Including, it seems, the silent guard, who Bond kills. But Mr. White escapes and he either dies or is never heard from again.

Then Bond is all I Have to Avenge Vesper's (the Bond girl from CR, she was totally hot and is now totally dead) Death By Taking Down Quantum Because Her Boyfriend Was Involved With Them and M is all Whoa, Step Back. So Bond goes Rogue. He finds Vesper's boyfriend and stops the new Bond girl (Olive-Skinned Brunette) from being given to a big ugly dude who clearly would rape and then kill her by driving a boat really fast and throwing a hook in the other boat because Daniel Craig's Bond is badass.

It turns out that the CIA (played by bearded LeVar Burton from CR and Phillip Seymor Hoffman from Charlie Wilson's War) is in dealings with Vesper's boyfriend, who, I should point out, is totally scrawny and kind of looks like a wet puppy or someone whose books were pushed from his hands ONE TOO MANY TIMES. And so the CIA lies to M about knowing who he (the boyfriend, now called Wet Puppy) is and what he is up to. What he's up to is stealing water and/or oil from impoverished nations and making them pay for it or making the US pay for it or something through his Evil corporation called Green Planet or something. So Bond goes to his fundraiser and meets O-SB and it turns out the guy who she was going to be given to killed her family and she's pissed Bond stopped her from killing him. Then they go to South America and meet LeVar Burton who wants to help Bond and also they meet Gemma Atkinson doing her best Christina Hendricks impression and she dies after Bond has sex with her because he possesses within himself Horror Movie Cliche Syndrome. LADIES IN BOND MOVIES! DO NOT HAVE SEX WITH BOND! is the message here. Wet Puppy drowns her in oil apparently and then puts her on the bed or drowns her while she is on the bed via Localized Drowning. This upsets Bond.

Bond and O-SB go in a plane and crash right next to this compound Wet Puppy has set up where he controls all of the water and is now a dictator or has put the guy who was going to rape and then kill O-SB in power. All of the points are coming together? There was also an opera in there somewhere, but all Bond does is identify who the people Wet Puppy (Dominic Greene! HaHA, I rememebered!) was working with are and we never see them agian. Anyway, Bond blows up the compound and captures Greene, but not before O-SB kills the guy and has a flashback and is unable to do anything but Cower and Weep so Bond saves her. Then Bond takes Greene to the middle of the desert and gives him a can of oil to drink if he gets thirsty because remember that girl who was in the movie for like five mintues?

Then Bond goes and kills Vesper's boyfriend. The end!

QoS is way shorter than CR and makes no sense. I don't know why, after people said CR was like the best Bond movie Evah, they made the sequel way shorter. People will watch more than two hours of Bond, Movie Company. That way you don't have to introduce characters and then expect us to care for them when they are killed minutes later. Controlling the water supply is interesting, but one village thirsting for water does not a compelling argument make. Yes, even when that village at first appears to be unconnected from the rest of the movie. Agh, way to disappoint me, QoS. Way to not fulfill your promises for a mourning Bond, driven by grief. Way to make Quantum of Solace mean Quantum the HUGE EVIL THING. Way to go.

Consider my expectations exceedingly lowered for Daniel Craig Bond #3.

Two sad Bonds out of five.

in which i don't say much and still manage to freak out a smidge

It has been more than two months since I posted! Unfortunately, not much that is not boring has happened in my boring life! My computer is still giving me issues. I am graduating on Saturday, which is madness made flesh. My muffler fell off today because Spokane has the World's Worst Roads^tm and I made the mistake of driving on the right side of the road last night immediately before my driveway. These are the annoyances which compose my life. I wish they could produce Hilarious Anecdotes instead of Boring Sentences?

I am probably possibly maybe going to be moving forward with Top Secret Project: Micro-Press in the late fall/winter. I am considering moving for it, but have not yet decided. It is a big life-changing kind of thing to take on! Or at least it seems that way. I would like to do it not alone but have not ruled out doing it by myself. Interested parties may apply in the comments.

I was thinking: Tilt Shift Press: Publishers of Fine Poetry and Short Fiction Since 2009.

Except for at least the first year it would just be poetry.

And I still have to think of a title for the contest which is not ridiculous. The Agh! Poetry! Award for Poetry lacks gravitas. Suggestions? Comments!

to make up for my silence, somewhat, a poem

It needs more, another stanza at least, but here it is so far:

THE ALLIGATOR MAN IS DEAD

The alligator man's widow, dressed
in plain clothes, dark, as near to black
as she has, is this year framed
by the world's fattest woman, and Henry, whose
twin slopes headless from his chest. The
bearded lady keeps looking at her, their
bunks, I have seen, are neighbors and
Major Mite says they talk at night and
I have separated them.

sneak peek

This page marks roughly the half-way point. I just colored it today and am pretty pleased with how it turned out, although I couldn't use phancy photoshopping skillz to make it look more comic-y. Alas. The figure in the upper left is Captain Butler, the official superhero of Butler's Fruit Pies ("Taste the tastesation.") and the figure in the lower right is Heli-Boy. Oh, the excitement!

prepare to be lame poop joke'd

When I was younger and when I would go to my cousins's house in Montana we made movies. I remember our first one was about our stuffed animals (a walrus whose stomach had melted into rock-hard abs named Chester and a velveteen rabbit named, well, Velveteen) who fought crime. They could fly, I seem to recall. But their main intent was crime and fighting it. As far as I know, this movie is now lost to the mists of time.
Over the years we became more ambitious, although fewer and fewer projects were seen all the way through. Part of this had to do with the fact we usually only had a week or half a week to film them and the other part was because we didn't have the technology to make a full-scale velociraptor. Also, it got harder and harder to talk everyone into working on them. Such is life.
But about four years ago we decided to make another one. No script. Filmed in order. No editing. The music would be supplied by a CD player and a pair of headphones perched atop the camera. The result was Wrinkled Wrath, the story of an old man who just wants to be left alone. The only editing is the brief instance of slow motion. Oh, is it worth it.
The old man is played by my cousin Kyle, my most frequent collaborator (who do you think moved Chester's string?) and was the person I could always count on to want to film with me. Red-headed kid is my little brother Evan. And Blonde kid is my cousin Kevin. They did it because, hey, their older brothers were doing it. James, who is older than both Kyle and I, and Joel, who is my sister's age, sat this one out. I think James was at Basic Training? Joel, I'm pretty sure, didn't have an excuse.

I really hope this is half as funny to you guys as it is to me (I'm pretty sure half of you have seen it, but it's worth another look, I think).
Wrinkled Wrath (29mb)

Perfection Wasted

by John Updike

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market-
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

more or less useless new year's resolutions

Because it's the new year (woo![?]) and making resolutions is something people do around now, here are a few things I'd like to do or improve upon in the coming year. The list is in no particular order and is off the top of my head:

1. Finish more stories. I was going to put "write more" but that part is okay, I just have issues with the completion part.
2. Update more. Whatever I have to update, be it a blog (did you notice my posts seem to halve every year? Not 2009!), a comic (which shouldn't be too difficult), or...something else. I think those two things are my only updating responsibilities.
3. Who wants to exchange poetry via postcard? I just thought of that, but it sounds like it could be fun? Until we get tired of it, of course. (Flash fiction is also possible here.) I've also wanted to try my hand at a collaborative story. Yes, even before this.
4. Graduate. This one is fairly terrifying, but it looks like it'll happen. Eeek!

Well, that's about all I can think of right now. Do you have any new year's resolutions? Do any of them involve listening to as many live MG shows as is possible?

Oh! 5. Finish The List. I actually haven't worked on it for a few days or a week. I hope to finish it.

Happy New Year!

this is taking much longer than i thought it would?

Because I was interested to see how this would turn out, here's my version of the MEME Mary posted:

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?
Bring Back Pluto (Aesop Rock)
That actually kind of makes sense? Aesop Rock features J.Darnielle on one of his songs, so you can't go wrong.

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Blue Veins (The Raconteurs)
Wealthy?

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
Falling Out of Love at This Volume (Bright Eyes)
Well that's fantastic.

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Island Garden Song (The Mountain Goats)
I guess it's that "My garden will grow so high (2x) that I will be completely hidden." Or "I will jettison all dead weight."

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
If You Stay Sober (Shearwater)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Bright Future in Sales (Fountains of Wayne)
A bright future in sales isn't quite correct. I do like the idea of getting my shit together though.

WHAT IS 2+2?
Hotel Song (Regina Spektor)
Hello, obligatory question with no chance of a correct or semi-correct response.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Take a Dance With Me (St. Thomas)
Man, I'm kind of a dick in this song. The thrust of it is fairly accurate, I suppose?

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE
Dance Music (The Mountain Goats)
Apparently, "You're the last best thing I've got going" and "I don't want to die alone."

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Infiltration (Sam Phillips)
That sounds about right.

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Shadow Song (The Mountain Goats)
This song always reminds me of the very end of No Country for Old Men.

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Hook, Line, and Sinker (Jon Brion)
I am beginning to suspect the results of this may be random.

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Boy's Best Friend (The White Stripes)
I'm not sure how to feel about this:
I just don't fit in this place
Their thoughts cast me out of here
Their home has run out of space
My mind's already out of here
Won't you come along, dear?
Won't you come along?

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Winter (Josh Radin)
Fitting. Although I was really hoping it'd be Elijah by The Mountain Goats.

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon and Garfunkel)
Lovely.

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Propinquity (The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band)
Hmm.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Song of Our So-Called Friend (Okkervil River)
High five, random shuffle button.

WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Better (Regina Spektor)
Actually, I wouldn't mind things getting better.

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Lightness (Peter and the Wolf)
Sad song.

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
San Bernadino (The Mountain Goats)
Man, there's a lot of MG on here.

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Rhythm and Soul (Spoon)
Although I enjoy Spoon, they generally don't make me laugh...

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Rowboat (Beck Cover) (Johnny Cash)
That sounds about right.

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Old Dream (Darren Hanlon)
This song seems to say yes, but I'll be sad and poor.

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Family Happiness (The Mountain Goats)
It doesn't scare me, but it would've been pretty sweet if this one came up one song ago. It would also point to a strange marriage, however. I do love the song.

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Peace (Weezer)
Answer hazy, try again.

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Bit Rate Variations in B-Flat (Beck)
Why yes, I would rock out more.

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Revolution in the Heart (Ed Harcourt)
That doesn't link to the song. It links to a video I found when I was trying to find the correct one. It is a video of pure madness. And I'm sure that's really him in that suit, check out this one for his history of strange strange endeavors.


I've got to tell you I had to try really hard not to cheat. I did cheat on the last one because a live recording of This Year came up and I had already used the album version. So, yeah.

in which i say nothing (but freak out a little)

It is becoming increasingly apparent I will probably most possibly, that is to say "definitely," be graduating from COLLEGE in like, six months. WTF. I have, however, seen the other side in my friend Ben. He graduated last year and recently got a job directly because of his degree (Computer Science, I believe) and has not yet burst into flames. This is comforting to me. He's engaged to his girlfriend, which I just remembered. This is less comforting because it reveals one thing about this period in our lives which I had been hoping to ignore for a while longer: Real Life presses upon us.

I knew Ben back when he was singing about pigeons on a bagel being spread like butter during a down time while we were filming P.I. (an entirely different story altogether). Granted, I also knew David Forsythe back when he was just a little kid with a broken arm and he's now been married for a year or so, I guess I shouldn't be so surprised re: Real Life. These things happen. It's just weird.

Also: I'm going to need to get some health insurance when I graduate. Gah.

WTF, man. WTF.

barack obama left a comment on your blog

This evening I made my last donation to Barack Obama's campaign. Afterward, I was directed to write something down if I wanted to and send it along (to the campaign, I guess?) and I felt moved to do so. I was planning on writing something about this on my birthday, but I think this captures how I feel pretty well. And it's already written. So that's another plus.

I first donated to the campaign back early in the primary season, when Hillary was, I felt, being excessively negative to Barack. It wasn't much, but as he won more and more states I felt proud that I had donated and had in a small way helped his cause.
I donated a few more times during the primaries. And as he moved into the general election season I donated a little more. It became important to me to continue my support because I really believe America will be a better country with Barack as president. I've never understood why people dismissed him as little more than empty words and high retoric. If you would listen, I thought, you would understand that he's not just talking about hope and change, but he's talking about how to bring about change and how to renew hope.
Back when I made my first donation I was afraid he wouldn't win the nomination. But I saw that he and the people around him had thought through most of the paths their campaign could take and had chosen the right one. When Barack won the nomination, I was happy but still afraid that there would be something to take away his chances at becoming president.
Now I'm allowing myself to hope. The election is four days away and in two days I will be 22. Four years ago I voted for George Bush. It was a mistake I will not make again.

I don't know if you will read this, Mr. Obama, but if you do I want to say thank you. Thank you for being the canidate I hoped you would remain to be all those months ago. It means a lot to me, personally.

Thank you.

a quick one

Hey all, it's been a while. I'm fine, thanks for asking. And yourself? Oh, I've been keeping busy, mostly with school, but I can't complain too much about that.

I've been thinking about Things. (NOTE: This will not be a long heavy post, don't fret.) It hardly seems fair that college is almost over, especially since it seemed to take much less time to get through than high school did. I'll just end that train of thought right there. That train of thought can be difficult to articulate and I am too tired to do so now.

How about a joke? I don't remember where I read it...

What's the difference between Barack Obama and John McCain?

One of them offers you change, the other offers you a dish of hard candy.

Oh, ZING! Tip your waiters and waitresses.

thought(s) on the VP debate

gaioshfisahgh everytime I hear the word "maverick" I feel like someone is poking me in the back of the head asdsadasgahgops.

While she's rebuking Biden on his Afghanistan response, she looks like she wants to throttle him. He pissed. her. off. (Or maybe she's really flustered?)

This might be a bit too mean, but I thought it when Palin said John McCain "knows how to win a war": Didn't we "lose" the Vietnam War?

If either of you watched the debate, can you tell me how many questions she's answered? I haven't caught one yet.

AGH, stop being so damn folksy. It's like nails on a chalkboard!

"John McCain tapped me and said 'That's where I wantcha.' "

Were you aware Alaska produces a lot of energy?

Maverick twice in the same answer! When Biden was answering the same question he started to tear up. Palin said some talking points. Biden is NOT happy about that.

UPDATE: David Letterman has some special messages from Governor Palin which, I think, should not be missed. They clear several things up:

from work!

Ah, yes, the smell of cigarette smoke wafting down the stairs and from guys whose pants have not fit them for a long time. Now I remember why I liked it better why we had shows outside of the store.

Walt Fact #917

I really really liked Casino Royale. I thought, and it's been a while since I've seen the others, that it was the best Bond movie. Not only that, it was an awesome movie by itself. With that out of the way, I think Quantum of Solace (and yes, I like the title, I think it makes sense) looks even better:



When they both fall through the glass ceiling at 1:25? AWESOME.

no one knows where we go

I keep meaning to go to bed sooner, and failing. I think "oh, I'll just check this one other site to see if there's anything new" and then it's an hour later and I'm still tired. And the worst part is that none of it ever really changes, the new Macbooks are still unannounced (and probably won't be until early October) and Sarah Palin is still, well, not helping McCain (which is fine, but I'm still worried he can somehow turn it all around).

Fuck.

Fuck.

I'm going to bed.

"i am a werewolf."

For any and all interested parties, the Reading Rainbow version of When the Wolfsbane Blooms can be found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?dgmymy0gmcm
The picture is pretty decent for what it is at the standard resolution and is passable (barely) at full-screen resolution, but it was the best option I was given that didn't make the file size prohibitively huge.

a horribly hilarious story FROM THE PAST

If you meander over to hobbescomics.net you'll see that I've finally updated the site with some new (really old) content! I wrote the story 13 years ago, probably fairly close to the day, and it really really shows it. Or at least I hope it does.
There are a great number of misspelled words. And a great number of silly illustrations. If you look at page five, you'll notice that someone is SO frightened their hair, teeth, eyes, and glasses are popping off of their round, smooth skull.
The copy I have is, as far as I know, the only copy left and even that is not the original. Anyway, check it out, it's pretty entertaining.

making that subtitle inaccurate since 1986

Hey. So. It's been a while. I've been working on a story that I'm probably going to be putting in the save for later folder because it's just not happening. I have ideas for it and I have some sentences I really like, but overall it's been fighting me every step of the way. I recently started reading a book called U & I: A True Story about a writer who is obessed with John Updike. I can relate. The man is nothing if not prolific and has remained well-respected into his later years (which other author can you say that of?) and listening to him speak, the sentences seem to pour out of him perfectly formed. But moving on.
The story started out being about a man and wife with their infant daughter waiting for a bus in a small town and became about the same couple with the same child seeing a man get hit by a car (tapped, would be a better word) and get in a fight with the driver and started being more about the man meeting someone he hasn't talked to in a long time and being confused and unsettled by the ways they no longer match his memory. And then he goes back outside to the bus stop where his wife and daughter are waiting.
I'm not sure why I'm so facinated by the motif (if motif is the word I want) of that sort of family. I have neither wife nor daughter. But they keep popping up. I just need to move on and come back to the story later.

I'll have something more interesting to say later, I'm sure.

EDIT: I love Dylan Moran. He's hilarious! This is from his show "Black Books"

i mean, like, seriously. ew.

Dear Lady Who Immediately And I Am Not Exaggerating People Started Trimming Your Fingernails After You Asked If We Had A Book,

That is NOT socially acceptable. At all. And when you didn't even sweep your clippings away, I was flabbergasted that people even did that. Please never come in the store again.

Thanks!

Walt

write or else

I spent about two hours over Friday and Saturday in the dark. This was something I had planned. During those two hours, give or take, I listened to a man speaking with a gentle accent, a sort of rolling of the vowels, a rising and falling of stresses, as he occasionally shifted from foot to foot, tapping the toe of his shoe to keep time. He smiled and laughed and peered into the darkness over his small glasses to either proclaim or jest. It was, by turns, hilarious and thoughtful.

I'm talking, of course, about Thomas Lynch.

He came to my school on Friday and gave a reading in the recital hall, where he was either accompanied or followed by a piece of music various students had composed for his poetry or essays. The music was often very good, and fantastic at least once and he seemed pleased by it. He read selections from "Sweeney," "All Hallows Eve," the first essay in Undertaking, and one poem whose name I cannot recall.
I went downtown to see him Saturday, my father, a copy of Still Life in Mitford, and my uncle's copy of Bodies in Motion and at Rest in tow. The talk was supposedly called "Undertaking Nonfiction" and was to be about the craft of nonfiction writing. But he didn't touch on that and instead read "Grimalkin" and told its story (a more compact version of which is in the essay of the same name). He read from some articles he had written, some poems I have not read, some essays I have, and talked the whole time about the whys of the writing. When asked, at the end, by some small child "Have you ever cremated an animal?" he answered, laughing, "Not on purpose."
So I went into the lobby, waving to people I know, and had the books signed. He asked me what I did and if I was in the MFA program at Eastern and then if I was going to stay here or go somewhere else for it. In my uncle Tom's book he wrote: "Uncle Tom, Namesake, etc. Best, TL." And in mine he wrote: "Walt- Write or else! TL, Spokane 2008."

Awesome.

you guys.

You guys I love the Mountain Goats so much.



I know that in California, the waves break on the beach
I know that the foam on the breaking waves is as white as household bleach
But can you see that particular white right now?
That's the color of the young star, coming on down
I've got joy joy joy in my soul tonight
I've got joy joy joy in my arms all right
Although you treat me badly
I will love you madly
You really got a hold on me
You really got a hold on me

i am incredibly bored so you get to read whatever i can think of until i absolutely have to do something:

To say that it had been raining long would be laughable. In fact, Rabbit tried it out, and found that he smiled in spite of the sagging in his earthen roof and the fact his whole front was soaked from dumping several pots' worth of water out the door of his burrow. He eyed the roof, tendrils of grass root were reaching stupidly for his rug. If it was still raining tomorrow he'd go out into the forest and fetch some lengths of wood to brace it.
He got word the day before that Rat's home, or at least the part of which he was most proud, had crumbled into the river and that Rat had moved in with Badger and was drinking what little of his store he had been able to save. Rabbit was thinking about all this and wondering if he should perhaps go into the forest tonight when someone knocked on his door. He stepped around the series of pots and opened it to find Hedgehog standing there, her shawl making thin tents on her trembling quills, her eyes wide.
"Rabbit," she said, ignoring his offer to come in, "quick, you've got to help; it's Rat."

And now someone's come in with books, so I'm off...

top five most ridiculous romance titles in a single order

1. Paging Dr. Daddy
2. The Spaniard's Pregnancy Proposal
3. The Italian Billionaire's Pregnant Bride
4. Expecting His Love-Child
5. One-Night Love Child

I've figured out one of the formulas for a romance novel:

The [Profession/Ethnicity/Ethnicity & Profession]'s [Amount of Wealth/Prengnan/t/cy] [Bride/Lover/Secret Lover]

I'm learning so much!

in which i pause for a moment and abandon being self-reflective for at least a paragraph

I've been on Spring Break for the past two weeks, so I've had quite a bit of time on my hands (when my brother wasn't here). I've been spending some chunks of that time playing through Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which, although it didn't get great reviews, is a lot of fun. There is one particular thing that bugs me though:
If I can pick off a covert agent from tens of yards away even if he's run deep into the shadows, you'd think I'd turn if someone opened a door two feet away instead of continuing to walk from one desk to another/smoking an entire cigarette. After that, sneaking up behind someone and then quietly dragging him to the shadows is considerably less satisfying.

That's pretty much it. Stuff about school comes tomorrow, after, you know, I'm done with it.

Also, Tom Nook is a cheap bastard.

walt: a retrospective

Since I've been going through my closet, I've come across many trinkets from my youth. The most entertaining to find again are, of course, the books we put together in class with our various crafts. When I read this I thought it was too funny not to share:

Dear Santa,
I wish my friends were aliends. I wish Grant and I could be robbots. I wish I was stronger than Hulk Hogan. I wish I was strong enough to jump over the Empire State Building.
Your Pal, Walt

Apparently we were supposed to write down our Christmas wishes? The large card its written in is shaped like a reindeer's head...

i think i know who some makeup artist admires

I just wonder if he's noticed.



On the left, Eddie Izzard; on the right, Susan Sarandon in Enchanted.

it will be too late by the time we learn what these cryptic symbols mean

I saw No Country for Old Men today. If you want a movie that watches like a book, this is your movie. I liked it, and the more I think about it the more I like it. The Coens do some brilliant stuff that I realized only after I had thought about it for a little while. It's not nearly as action-y as the trailer would suggest, and it's not as bloody as some reviews I've read paint it (though there is blood), but there are some good action scenes. So yeah. I'd definitely see it again.

In other news, I'm once again redoing the website to make it less of a pain to update (which, in theory, means I'll be updating it more often. Because I haven't. Because it's a pain. Stupid host not supporting php.) and that should be done in the next couple of days.

Finally, did I ever send any of you a snippet of a story wherein I describe the change from summer to autumn in about half of a page? I thought I typed and saved it, but I can't find it and I can't seem to rewrite it. This would be at least a month ago. I know I'm reaching.

Christmas break! Woo!

oh god i should be writing my poetry paper what am i doing

A bit of backstory:
There is a customer who comes in every day with thirty books. He buys books nearly every day, too, though he never goes over his credit amount. He is very old and has some sort of skin condition. He is the reason Kathy bought hand sanitizer. He is also completely oblivious to any cold he might have, allowing his nose to drip more or less as it desires.

We join our tale, already in progress...

There I stood, horrified, my stomach churning before it really needed to, yet transfixed by the drop wavering precariously from the end of his nose. I wanted to hold a Kleenex out, but didn't want him to move too quickly and risk the drop flinging off toward me. It was like a sports movie or an action movie where something is on the very edge of something, ready to fall one way or the other, and everyone is staring at it, willing it to fall the way they want it to.
I just wanted a tissue or his hand or a sleeve to intervene. I wanted a miracle.

But it fell, slowly, dream-like, to the counter. I drew upon every reserve of self-control so as not to visibly shudder. After he had left --still oblivious!-- I wiped it up with a big paper towel and slathered my hands with santizer before running (like Steve Carrell in Little Miss Sunshine) to the bathroom to wash with the hottest water in the whole world.

ewewewewewewewew

warning! poetry! warning!

I'm pretty much on my way to poetry class right now, but I feel like the ol' blog needs an updating. So here are a couple of poems (without the changes suggested by the teacher and class) that were particularly well recieved.

Where the Creek is Shallow

Earlier he had listened to the gravel under his feet;
His dog’s excited, haggard breathing,
Her ears alert, listening too, for everything:
That far away creek,
And the slowly shedding leaves,
Some branch breaking and tumbling down its tree.
And they began, then, toward the copse, that old gate,
That old stump, a fallen tree--
Its roots torn from the ground and spread
Like fingers are spread from a desperate hand.

Later he will go back home, out of breath and shaking,
With his dog, oblivious, proudly trotting behind him,
And turn the sink on hot, plunge his hands in
And use the soap, wring his hands, and stand there washing.
When he was a boy he went fishing in that creek
And noticed each season’s changing leaves.
But in his kitchen he will notice the flesh of his palm,
The hair on his knuckles, all his fingers there and
Working. A blessed thing that Sunday morning.

Still. His dog laps at his hand and he lets her,
Her nose wet, her haunches wet from the spray against the stone.
Yet he would not stop staring at the body drifting in its tomb;
How, like reeds, the slow flow of the stream undulated its fingers;
And there, like a boat finding shore, some fallen autumn leaf
Did strike against and sail along the useless line of its wasted cheek.
A thought crosses uninvited then, against his numbing feeling:
That if the water were just deeper, the body would float away,
And he could look, away, at it-- not dead, but sleeping.
Not floating, but swimming.

My Own Rolled to my Elbows

I have three hours before
She gets back from class
And I’ve spent most of it
Finding this spot.
My bike is leaning against
The tree I climbed earlier;
My hat is just above my eyes;
I know there are clouds
And sea spray beyond that hill.
I know how her sweater will feel
And I wait.

It is not too much longer
Nor too cold.
The taste of apple is sticky
On my lips.

And that's it. I also wrote a villanelle, but I'm not sure how I feel about it, no matter what my classmates said.

this was probably a bad idea

I had quite an adventure last night, let me tell you. I had just finished closing and, being hungry, began to drive to Safeway. Before I go any further, I've got to give you the lay of the land: The bookstore is in the middlish of a largish shopping center, with a main road as the crow flies from the front door and a considerably less main road to your right as you face the main road. So I don't have to deal with traffic, I usually take the less main road when I go to Safeway, and just drive in the back way. The less main road stops at the end of the back of the shopping center, where it meets what is, for all intents and purposes, a residential street. There are no stop signs on any of the three meeting points, so you've got to be careful when you turn.
Now, I pulled up to the residental street and saw there was a car coming to my left (the way to turn to get to Safeway), and I waited. Once that one passed, I saw another one coming to my right, but since it was at least a blockish ways away, I turned left.
No sooner had I turned left that the car zoomed up and almost hit my tail. The driver, irate for whatever reason, turned his brights way way up and continued to tailgate me like a bastard. I considered stopping, but decided that damage to my car was not something I wanted. Besides, I thought, it's only a short distance to Safeway, he'll continue on this road to the main road up ahead.
No such luck. When I turned onto the back drive to the parking lot, he followed. I hoped he was just going to the store, but to be on the safe side I pulled all the way to the third row of parking spots instead of the first. I parked. He was still in front of the store, his lights on, his car on. I was not about to walk in front of him. Then he swerved into a parking spot, got out, and slammed his door closed.
I am not familar enough with Mr Gandolfini's performances in The Sopranos to make any real comparisons, but if he grew a goatee, he'd probably look something like the man who was glaring menacingly in my direction.
I got out of the car with my bag (containing the chicken I had intended to return [2 weeks past expiration though I bought it that morning]), reasoning that I could run inside or at least escape into the night with my car unharmed.
"Learn to drive, asshole," he shouted helpfully.
"The speed limit's 25 on that street," I pointed out at equal volume.
"Hey, fuck you," he replied.
"Oh, fuck off," I countered, not to be outdone.
We exchanged more pleasantries in this vein, and I began to make my way to the store. I watched him carefully because although he hadn't come any closer, he was clearly still very very angry with me. He was also following me into the store, but through the doors closest to him. Once inside, I walked quickly to the customer service desk with my chicken and got a refund.
When I went back outside later, visions of my wrecked car floating before me, everything was fine. None of my tires were slashed, nothing was in the exhaust pipe, no windows were broken. He was gone.

my submission is in the running!

Please vote for it! (A high score would be nice too)

EDIT: As you may notice from that handy little banner, the voting period is over. Now we wait and see if it gets chosen to be printed. I didn't get quite as many votes as I was hoping to (slightly more than 2,000) but I think it was still a good show. I'm not sure when they'll say what the score was, probably in the next couple of days, but I'll let you know when they do.

Thanks for voting!

haHA

For any of you who remember my brush with fame, the movie I was in came out on DVD recently. I didn't watch it, but my dad did and he assures me it was horrible. I watched only the scene I was an extra in. My dad was not in it, though he was at the filming.
HOWEVER. 28 minutes in, I AM. I apologize for the poor picture quality.
Click the picture for a larger view!





I'm apparently doing my best old man impression. But I'm in it! Now I can say that I shared the screen with Jessica Biel on my resume.

Awesome.

input, please

I was wondering what you thought about the (probably?) final design for my Threadless shirt. Specifically, the astrerisks. Were they better how they were before? Etc.
Also, my S button seem to not work conitantly. Thi i going to be a problem when I write my paper later today.

EDIT: My original version is not a high enough resolution. Frick. I'm going to have to redo it before I submit it. Frick.

You know when you need a new laptop battery...

...when the maximum charge is 20 minutes.

My Ten Songs of the 90s (why yes, I'm a Creative Writing major, why do you ask?)

(Note: This list was complied mostly after making a smart playlist of 90s songs, but includes others that I only remember hearing in that decade.)

In response to Claire's blog (and comment on my own), here is my list of 90s songs in no particular order. The titles are linked to youtube videos (if I could find them). Please remember that I spent just about half of the 90s in Saudi and so have very little idea of what the Youth Culture was at that time...

1. Undone (the Sweater Song) Weezer: This is the first song of theirs I heard about. I didn't actually hear it for a while, but I remember riding in the back of a van and my friends laughing and singing it.
2. Hello Operator The White Stripes: The video is from an old old performance, some of the lyrics are different. Elephant was the first actual CD I bought, and I liked it, but when I bought De Stijl and heard this song (the second on the album) I was sold on the whole red, white, and black thing.
3. Real World Matchbox Twenty: You'll recall that earlier I confessed to liking Matchbox Twenty, well, this was probably my favorite song from Yourself or Someone like You. Yes, I still sing it whenever it comes up on shuffle and on the radio. Damn straight.
4. Chop Suey System of a Down: So it turned out I lied. This was probably the first album I bought, I had forgotten. And I know that it came out in 2001, but I did hear their first album until after this one and I didn't like it as much. Erik Davis introduced me to System, and I still like this song, so here it is.
5. Stranger than Fiction Bad Religion: In middle school and high school I hung out with Chris Suter, who loved Bad Religion almost as much as he loved mountain biking. He burned me a bunch of CDs, of which this was one of them. The CD that this is on was my only Bad Religion CD, and I listend to it over and over in my ancient "portable" CD player that I had to keep perfectly level to prevent it from skipping.
6. Californication Red Hot Chili Peppers: I'm cheating again. This came out in 2000, but the Red Hot Chili Peppers have been around forever. I first remember seeing/hearing this song while staying at my uncle's house after we had watched monster movies. It was very late and I was very tired and this song came on MTV and I thought it was the greatest thing ever.
7. Amish Paradise Weird Al: I first became aware of Weird Al when this album came out. I still think he's awesome and the concert was one of the best I've been to, although I don't own any of his CDs.
8. One Jump Ahead Aladdin: This was my favorite song from the movie soundtrack. I'm pretty sure I used to act it out. This is not as embarrassing as...
9. Bad Michael Jackson: I know, it came out in 1987. But the number of days I danced around to this album in my youth should make up for it. And since I have a song from two years out of the 90s, with this song three years before them, it comes out as a decent average. I like to think that my dancing to MJ amounts to more than a full-body dry heave.
10. Frank Sinatra Cake: This is not the first Cake song I ever heard. That would be The Distance, which I heard in the back seat of Erik Davis' girlfriend's car, driving to some restraunt with all the windows down, Erik shouting about how awesome it is and for her to turn it up. I really like this song though.

Well, that's the list. I hope you approve enough not to ostracise me forever and remember that if you make some 90s cultural refrence and I stare back blankly it's probably because I missed huge gobs of the 90s. And because I haven't seen that episode of I Love the 90s yet.

EDIT: While looking at Claire's list, I was reminded of one thing that I would be remiss to leave off of mine: This awesomeness.

on headphones and...no, i don't have any american lit writing to do, why do you ask?

I learned a lesson this morning, after I put my headphones on and heard music exclusively through the left earbud: Don't skimp on headphones.
This all came up about three weeks ago when my ancient iPod headphones finally gave up the ghost. The wire was fraying down at the jack and the sound wasn't all that it used to be and it only played music out of one earbud, but I thought that they could stick it out a little longer until the day I put them on and no music came out. So that afternoon I went to the local RadioShack (it being right next to work and all) to buy new ones.
I bought the cheapest ones. Because, I figured, what was the difference, really? When I used them the next day, I found out. They wouldn't stay in my ears! In order to use them I had to stay perfectly still and if I wanted to listen to music while walking I had to keep my head perfectly level and stationary, like some strange combination of Eliza Doolittle and Dr. Alan Grant. If I wasn't completely still and did something stupid like turning my head or yawning pop! out would come one (or both!) of the earbuds. Oh, I wanted to tear the headphones apart. I came this close to throwing them into the wild blue yonder on several occasions.

And now they're dead. I'm not going to wait until they stop working completely to get new headphones. I'm going to bury these bastards and buy new ones. And you had better believe that they'll be expensive.

no, i'm not putting off reading. why would you even suggest that?

I have a confession to make. Now, before I tell you, I'd like to say that I hope it doesn't make you think any less of me or any differently. That's right: I like Matchbox 20.

It probably first started in freshman year when Marc gave me a bunch of CDs he had found and didn't like. Most of them were of bands I didn't like or were so messed up they wouldn't work. A lot of them didn't have cases. However, there was one I was intrigued by; its case was cracked, but still good and the CD wasn't too scratched. That CD was Yourself Or Someone Like You.

I'm admitting this because the other day I was in my car, listening to the radio and this song started. I thought "This sounds familar" and "I really like this." It wasn't until the song was almost over that I realized it was the new Matchbox 20 song. Maybe I felt that I had to get this secret off my chest because I hope that, in some deep and shameful place, I would totally like to go to a Matchbox 20 concert. It's possible, they have a new CD out. But if I do, I hope that I won't have to make up a different concert to say I went to. I hope that you can understand.

I hope we can still be friends.

If I can quote Matchbox 20, "I know it's wrong, that's the problem." Thank you.

stuff!

Hey, some stuff's been going on!

Check out my Threadless submission HERE!

Check out my thoughts on the completely awesome Weird Al concert tomorrow! Probably!

My website has been updated, kind of! The news page!

paging teddy kaufman, please dial zero

I'm in Las Vegas. It's a different part of the airport than I usually fly into; which is nice, for a change. I've had dinner, after waiting FOREVER for the girl at the front of the line to (a) decide what she wanted and (b) find her ID, and am now sitting behind a column at the crossroads of Burger King, Sbarro, and Carvel. I can see my gate from where I'm sitting (I scored a totally excellent "A" grouping for my boarding pass), my plane is supposed to be on time, and I'm listening to "Store" by the Mountain Goats (thanks, Mary!).

It's actually going pretty well.

In another two hours, give or take, I'll be in Tucson. We will have to hang out, though I doubt we will tonight. But at some point before I go back up north. I don't have much to say right now, and it probably woudn't be a bad idea to go to my gate, at which the plane boards in about ...20 minutes. People seem to line up quickly.

See you soon!

WARNING: this blog may contain spoilers. but i have not written it yet, so i don't really know.

I know it's been quite a while since I updated the ol' blog, so I've thought of some stuff to write, handily, in a little list format:

-The New Harry Potter Book: As good as you hoped it would be? Or not?
-Oh Man, Do I Hate Perspective: Why Brian the Zombie will now be set in a windowless room.
-Flying to Tucson: I am looking forward to it.

HERE BE SPOILERS (MAYBE? I'LL TRY NOT TO BE TOO SPECIFIC, BUT I PROBABLY WOULD BE IN THE COMMENTS SECTION IF SOMEONE WAS TO COMMENT)!
I liked the last book, overall. I did have a few qualms with it, mostly with the Hallows part (which really should have been longer or at least more developed) and with how many characters she killed/the need(?) and time given to their deaths. When Sirius died in Order of the Phoenixxx, it made me really sad to say the least; because here was a character that I had grown to know and when he died I felt the emotional impact on Harry. I cried when Dumbledore died, too. But for the most part, when she was busy killing the characters that she did, I didn't feel too bad about it. (Except when a certain tennis-ball-eyed fellow was killed in one of the most cliched ways in all of books and movies. [See: The Matrix Revolutions or any other thing where you think someone is okay until PSYCH! they're dead.]) I completely missed that a certain Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and his wife died until Harry's March to Certain Doom. I thought that killing Hedwig was just so she didn't have to worry about what to do with her. And the ears-free-of-being-shorn-twin was more or less pointless. But the lamest thing was that we barely have time to register what has happened to these characters before she's on to her next thing. I'd bet that her publisher was breathing down her neck to finish it and these problems would have been addressed had she been given time to go back and fix them. I was disappointed by Snape's death, how anti-climatic.
I know it sounds like I didn't really like it, but I did. It was as good a way to end the series as I could have asked for and she answered all of the questions I had.
END SPOILERS!

I hate perspective, and that's pretty much all I have to say about it. You'll see what I mean tomorrow.

I'm also looking forward to flying down to Tucson, and I hope I won't be too delayed. We'll have to hang out at some point, it's been forever.

i hope your workplace still has air conditioning because mine sure doesn't

Hey, guess what. That's right. My website is more or less up and running. I've still got a couple of links to fix, but it's usable.

Let me know what you think or if you have any problems.

this is the sort of day i had at work:

A little set up: this guy came in to give us ten thousand books. I told him, calmly, mind you, that we don't do that and if he wants to do that, there's a Goodwill drop off behind the grocery store.

Angry Customer: I thought I'd do you a favor!

Me: Well, you can do Goodwill a favor.

Wow, yeah, so that was fun.

and the (hopefully) conclusion

Apparently Kevin, Troy, and Travis Wilkinson are involved in a legal dispute with Ford Motor Co. and so Ford garnished what they probably thought was the above's bank account on Friday. But, as the previous post made clear was that it was my bank account.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I have my money back and the attorneys in the Wilkinson v. Ford case are being contacted.

the good news first and then horrible awful very bad news: or stupid ford motor company, those bastards

Good news first. I bought my tickets for this summer, and will be down in Tucson from August 8th to the 21st. I suggest we hang out at least a couple of times? Also, I did indeed start a Marion/John Wayne in an airport story. It'll probably be not gloomy at the very least, but I'm shooting for funny and happy. So there's that.

Bad news now. After I bought my tickets yesterday, I checked my bank accounts to see what sort of damage they dealt and to my great surprise I saw: Nothing. Well, not exactly "nothing." I did see "-235.60" which is, I suppose, an absence of nothing. But nothing in my savings and the above in my checking.
Which was, clearly, EXACTLY what I was expecting.
Two calls to Wells Fargo later and I've got to contact the Wells Fargo Legal Department on Monday. Because all of my money has gone to Ford Motor Company. Ford. Motor. Company. I don't know how. I certainly don't know why. Maybe they're vindictive that I drive a Camry? Apparently, and I'm not positive that this is what the lady said due to my head spinning, Ford has a hold on my money in a litigation or something or other (which is why I have to contact the legal department).

So I had a very fun day yesterday and I have to open the store in 20 minutes, so today is really looking up.

I'll keep you posted.

i am most certainly NOT blogging from work, thank you very much

This is why the Mountain Goats are awesome times ten.

finally flickr fupdate!

My flickr is finally updated. I'd have put the pictures in a set, but flickr won't let me. I let my pro account die, so if you can't see the pictures because my bandwith is used, I'll renew it.

It's how I roll. Enjoy!

what strange machines we are/ what strange machines we are (3x)

Since it's been so long since I've updated the ol' blog, I figured that, hey, since I have a couple of hours to kill, I'd let all two (or three?) of you know why:
1. Pretty much nothing has been going on. Things at the store are actually not too bad, financially; we were very worried how the construction out front would impact business and it doesn't seem to have too much. We've even had some really good days, and if those keep up enough to get someone to buy the store in the next six months, I'll still have a job.
2. I've been working on this year's Elsie Hooper Art Contest. It's been fairly slow going because I'm working on a larger scale than I usually do (instead of the middle of an 8" x 10", I'm using the whole of an 11" x 16"), and it's turning out fairly well, but I still need to find a larger scanner than I usually use when I'm done. Also, the other entrants won't be able to possibly cheat this year because he has actual judges for the finalists. Which is good.
3. I'm working on another story off and on. This one takes place in an airport, which, aside from being something I've wanted to do for a while*, has a very low likelihood that there will be interspecies erotica.

That's more or less it. Flickr update tonight or tomorrow morning, depending on my speed in getting the yet-to-be-taken pictures uploaded.

I'm pretty sure that I called some previous entry the Most Boring Entry Ever. I'm also pretty sure this one beats it.

*Many of my story ideas have involved airports in one way or another. The Spokane Story originally began in an airport, years after the events of the story's current incarnation, and the characters were drastically different. But I've always (usually) enjoyed airports and would like to write several that take place in them. Just because.

in which i use numbers

So. Classes. Ahem.

1. Eastern Religion and Philosophy is taught by a guy who looks a tad like Steven Spielberg, but with considerably more bow-ties-per-shirt. He seems to know what he's talking about, although it's a bit difficult to tell over the roar of his mumbling. However, I do have that class with Biz and Alexis and so the chances of making through the class are high.
2. Brit Lit 2: The Sequel is taught by a woman whose previous job was being Velma Dinkley and teaching kindergarten. I loathe the class with almost, but not quite, every fiber of my being. Alexis is in that class with me, too, but because it's still illegal to throw up your hands and then leave some sort of backhand smack as a parting gift, I may not survive.
3. Stress and Coping is taught by Andy Richter. A taller and thinner version of him, but still. I have no friends in that class, but the teacher seems fine. As far as psych teachers go.

The chances that I will turn to drink: Slim.

You know what I hate more than customers? Regular customers. With their giant boxes of books. And their relentless demands and questions and complaining about prices. You know, this was far more witty when I thought of it yesterday, and it's not really working now, so I'll jump that ship while I can.

The chances that I will punch someone when they drop a giant box of books on the counter: High.

The chances that this post will continue on to the Special Guest Topic: Low, because I didn't end up seeing Grindhouse tonight. Alas.

khaaaaaaaaaaaan

This was going to be a post, keeping with my theme of essential kernels of knowlege, pretty much as an excuse to link to the short video of Jack White recording a song for the new White Stripes album but is now about how Blogger is a bully.
I clicked on the Old Blogger button, but it kept taking me to the Make Google Account section, and when I tried No, Seriously, I Want The Old Blogger option, it took me to the Ha, You Cannot Access Your Account Unless You Sign Up With Google screen. So here I am, with New Blogger. I feel like the big kid at school made me give him my lunch money, but let me think I had choices.

Jerks.
In retaliation, I'm going to keep using Blogger, just to show them.

And here's the link I was talking about.

And the new Bright Eyes video, because I keep listening to the song over and over.

because i don't actually have anything original to say...

...here's that excerpt I talked about before, from World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War; this is told by a guy who made movies to boost the country's morale. Although the film, Avalon: The Battle of the Five Colleges, bombed initially, it was found to lower ADS (Asymptomatic Demise Syndrome, or Apocalyptic Despair Syndrome) and he made several other movies before the war was over. It's a very good book, I really liked it. So here you go:

"Just outside of Greater Los Angeles, in a town called Claremont, are five colleges --Pomona, Pitzer, Scripps, Harvey Mudd, and Claremont Mckenna. At the start of the Great Panic, when everyone else was running, literally, for the hills, three hundred students chose to make a stand. The turned the Women's College at Scripps into something resembling a medieval city. They got their supplies from the other campuses; their weapons were a mix of landscaping tools and ROTC practice rifles. They planted gardens, dug wells, fortified an already existing wall. While the mountains burned behind them, and the surrounding suburbs descended into violence, those three hundred kids held off ten thousand zombies! Ten thousand, over the course of four months, until the Inland Empire could finally be pacified. We were lucky to get there just at the tail end, just in time to see the last of the undead fall, as cheering students and soldiers linked up under the oversized, homemade Old Glory fluttering from the Pomona bell tower."

Sorry, Mary, they didn't have anything about Stanford.

color me EXCEEDINGLY DISAPPOINTED

The Mountain Goats Show (Is All Sold Out)

Am E Am E Am C G C

Since I found out, last October, that you'd be in my state
I counted the days until the show, I couldn't wait
But it was all in vain
That's been made all too plain
I spent fifteen minutes on hold listening to muzak
And though it got old I somehow still stuck with it
Casting my mind back to the morning
When tickets went on sale without warning

I was unprepared, I admit that now
Why should I have known a date and time?
How should I have known you'd get sold out?
If I could have found a payphone maybe I'd sing a different tune
But there're no payphones from here to Singapore
No one carries change for them anymore
I found a booth buried in the snow on the lawn
Little did I know that the phone was gone

A voice came on and I told her tickets were my want
And oh! I found that all my hope was all for naught
From the desperate waiting list I hope to hear
And make note for better planning, for a cell phone, next year
When the throngs sing No Children I won't be among their number
Though I thought I would, I was sure I would, last October

there's a monkey in the basement. how'd the monkey get there? how'd the monkey get there?

Because it's been a while since I've last posted, I figured it'd be just about time to blow my own horn. Although there's really no saying the horn will be blown, because anyone and everyone who wants can enter and everyone and anyone who enters has exactly the same chance of winning.
You're probably thinking: where's the link? Or explaination?

Right here.

So, yeah.
Actual update later? I've got something from a book I want to share, but the book is at work?

NOTE: Mine is (currently) the top left one. And today's entry title is taken from The Monkey Song by The Mountain Goats. Jus' so's you know.

this is going to be short, because it is late. and i am tired.

AT THE BRAINSTORMING MEETING FOR BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE:

Executive One: Have you seen that Underworld movie? We should do something like that.
Executive Two: We produced it, and I totally agree with you. Let's do it.
Executive One: Well, we've done vampires and werewolves. Vampires are always popular.
Executive Two: I like werewolves more.

THEY SLAP AT EACH OTHER FOR A MOMENT.

Executive Two (panting): I win! I win!
Executive One (also panting): N-uh! I win!
Executive Two: We could just use the same plot as Underworld.
Executive One: Brilliant! And how much should we budget for the werewolf transformation effects?
Executive Two: Nothing! We'll save millions by just using trained wolves and colored contacts!

THEY HIGH-FIVE. AND MISS HORRIBLY, SENDING AT LEAST ONE HURTLING THROUGH THE WINDOW. (It doesn't matter which. And what's with that title? It's gawdawful.)

sounds about right...

In an effort to liven things up, here's my current list of ten (actually 12 because I couldn't just choose one Okkervil River to end it with) songs to take to a desert island in no particular order.

The Fall Peter and the Wolf
Tonight Sibylle Baier
Grendel's Mother The Mountain Goats
If You See Light The Mountain Goats
I Wish That I Could See You Soon Herman Dune
Strange Machines Peter and the Wolf
Fake Palindromes Andrew Bird
Whistle of a Distant Train Ed Harcourt
The Vice and Virtue Ministry Happy Bullets
Song of Our So-Called Friends Okkervil River
The Velocity of Saul at the Time of His Conversion Okkervil River
The War Criminal Rises and Speaks Okkervil River

What are yours?

oy

I've got to make up for last night's depressing post. I'll just give you the URL for the unfinished site? Maybe you could tell me if things are all crazy or illegible or oddly phrased so I could fix them? Except for content, it's more or less how it'll be when it's done. The links should work, which is always a plus?

Click Here!

you see that slogan at the top? ignore it this once.

It's late.

I'm watching Seinfeld, and putting off writing a short story that's actually a rewrite of one I did last year and turned in to my professor (I hated turning it in because it was rushed and I hated out it turned out) so that I can show it to him come January in an attempt to get into a graduate fiction workshop he's teaching. This is the mindset I come to you with.
Just so you know.

Seinfeld, or television shows in general, are weird in that I don't notice the age difference too much: making a sort of never-never land. The difference in real life however, is that ten years seems like a tremendous amount of time. Changes that people go through in half that time can be astronomical. I don't want to get older, I really don't.
I'll know different people, I'll live somewhere else. Maybe even this blog will be a distant memory. I looked at my grandparents the other day --while my Grandma was lecturing me on not having an outline for my life, which did NOT help, faithful reader(s)-- and saw myself in their age. My hands knobbled with age, etc.

But I've got no resolution to this. It's inevitable. On a lighter note, I hope to finish my website around the middle of January. I'd give you guy(s) a link, but I just have an Under Construction page at the URL.
And things will look better in the morning, they always do.

at least the title for the new harry potter is cool

I think that I've missed my calling. I should've been in a soap opera or been a basic cable television judge. I can look shocked. Moreso, I can do it very poorly. I can also pull decisions out of a hat, regardless of any sense of the "law."
Why yes, I have been watching a half hour or so of daytime television.

three horrifying things

1. A "Global Haze" to reduce the earth's rising temperature.
2. The draft possibly being reinstated
3. Zombie apocalypse

already, he's sealed his victory as pop-culture ass of the century

Do you remember, in the Naked Gun movies, how OJ Simpson's character would constantly bumble and get terribly injured usually by fault of Leslie Nielsen? And it was often pretty funny, right? Remember?
And do you remember how he drove home, innocent as he is, very slowly on the highway while being pursued by the police? And how he killed his wife and her lover? And how the glove didn't fit? Right?
Well, most people would happily fade into the farthest part of the collective consciousness. They'd think of their two kids, who still have to go to school with other kids. They most certainly wouldn't create a sketch wherein they try to sell a used Ford Bronco because that would be in terrible terrible taste.

I read something this morning that spurred this post, and all of the above is to get you in the right frame of mind. Or something.

However awful that was, surely (SURELY!) OJ wouldn't do anything on national television. Not during prime time certainly. Because you'd think that deep down, somewhere in a part that wasn't sold to Satan, OJ would think of his kids. This is, of course, assuming that he didn't do it.
Most of all, he wouldn't reconstruct the murders, explaining, step by step, how he WOULD'VE done it. If he had. Which he didn't. No, like Michael "I will not rest until I find the real molesters" Jackson, OJ "I will not rest until I find the real murderers" Simpson didn't do it.
But the fact of the matter is that's exactly what he's doing.
The next thing you know, he'll just dig up his wife with rusty shovels that he's scratched "INNOCENT" into and demonstrate how he would've killed her. But he wouldn't do it on TV. He'd do it in the park, every hour, on the hour.

Because he classy.

just so that when book seven comes out, i can say i said it before it did

R.A.B. is Regulus Black.

easily the most absurd thing he has ever said

There's an annoying guy in my Brit Lit class who, aside from turning around in his seat to stare at whomever is talking, says inane and incomprehensible things. Today he, during a discussion of Shakespeare, suddenly put forth that the Bard was gay to which the teacher (who deserves a medal for not killing him already) replied that those sorts of reports have been made although there is little concrete evidence. He also noted that there were several biographies of late that said similar things about other historical figures; such as Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler. The latter was based primarily on a photograph where he is shown in a "gay" stance, and is thus hardly basis for an entire biography. All of this is set-up for the comment for which this post is named.
So, of course, the kid said that Hitler was gay because "he kept his moustache in such good condition."
Needless to say the class couldn't let this pass as we have for so many of his other comments and people began incredulously talking amongst themselves, which unfortunately made me miss his other reasons.

I was also busy laughing with Steve.

NOTE: I would've found the picture, but I don't really want to type "gay" and "Hitler" into Google Images.

like in terminator 2!

If my hands were hit by a hammer, they would shatter and then melt and reform into my hands. Except they would be on the ground and not on my wrists where they belong. So that would suck pretty hard.
I'm trying to say that I'm outside, waiting for the bus, after getting out of Rosemary's Baby for film class and listening to the Sufjan Christmas EPs. It's very cold.
Today's been about mid-way on the "Crappy?" scale for no particular reason. Just one of those days.
I guess that's about it.
I'll probably blog again later this evening, woozy on needing to sleep. It's the last day of my nineteeth year, which is mind-boggling to me.

UPDATE:
Day=Now going all right. In 20 minutes, I will be 20. I don't really have much else to say. I'm watching Scrubs? Good times there.

EDIT:
I just now noticed the link doesn't work. Well, it does now.