SPRINGROLLS AND HOISIN SAUCE

LANKS

2011-10-31T02:14:00.001-04:00

Best write up of Watch the Throne I've read so far

Seems like a cool writing collective

Been really listening to Jawbreaker a lot and writing some bad poems

An Interview w/ Andy Frazee

2011-10-19T20:48:00.000-04:00

I interviewed Andy Frazee who won Subito's book contest last year. He talked to me about Ted Berrigan before I had actually read Ted Berrigan, but now I've read Ted Berrigan.

What if the entire interview had been done in sonnets.

oh this thing

2011-08-28T14:51:00.000-04:00

John Brandon (writer of Citrus County and Arkansas) is writing for Grantland. They also had Colson Whitehead writing about poker earlier this summer. Awesome.

I finished my first week of teaching an intro to creative writing class and love it. I found out the "Golden Rule" of teaching: insult then assault.

Does anyone else wish they would have just downloaded Frank Ocean instead of paying cashmoney for Tyler the Creator's Goblin? I mean, my mom paid for that CD. But she could have kept the money. I thought since I couldn't get into his songs (other than Yonkers) that I could just listen to them enough that the uncomfortable feeling would turn into awe (which is how I usually end up liking poetry). Never happened. Oddly, it did happen with Kanye West's album. Though I think the feeling of discomfort was different.

When I play basketball I usually tell whoever is guarding me that I'm really into horticulture. I want to be underestimated so when I start dunking all over that person he/she thinks, "what the hell, I thought he just loved gardening, not dunking." Problems with this: 1)I can't dunk (yet!) and 2) The college kids at the rec center don't know what "horticulture" means (yet?).

I haven't slept yet.

Blog Post

2011-07-24T19:24:00.000-04:00

I decided to build a website for the creative writing class I'm teaching in the fall. I drew some pictures and asked K. what she thought. She said "good, as long as you don't want the students to respect you. Looks like Mario mountains."

I thought, "damn."

So I decided to use the images for the robotmelon about and submit pages.

I also put a link to submishmash for robotmelon, which I've had since submishmash existed, I just never used it. It was a secret.

I've been learning a lot about html and css and applied to a few jobs, and they laugh at me because I don't know much about php.

I wonder how much a teacher makes versus a web programmer versus a crack/cocaine dealer.

A bootlegger would have been a cool occupation.

The domain "robotmelon" was chosen by me and another guy because we thought it would be easy to type, since the letters mostly alternate which hand is being used when typing "robotmelon." I don't think many people know that.

New Robot Melon Hos

2011-07-19T17:08:00.000-04:00

issue Eleven

Read them word. I've done it.

Facebook Fight 1: What's the Problem with Common Sense

2011-05-11T20:54:00.000-04:00

I like Facebook. Not as a way to network, but as a way to communicate when I'm feeling lazy. Mostly I love status updates from people I haven't spoken with in years. I don't read the news anymore, at least not often. I did for a few years but it becomes black-hole-ish. I hear the occurrences of the world either way, sometimes by way of Facebook, like today. A person posted an update that showed disgust about Common appearing at the White House for Poetry Night. Would it be mean to quote it here? It seems mean to quote something like that, but oh well:

The rapper 'Common' who the Obama's are inviting to Poetry Night at the White House called for President Bush's assasination and for the killing of cops. Yes, Poetry Night. It is really UNREAL what our current President gets away with...

All kinds of problems, but let's start small. Common is used here as an appositive. It needs a comma before and after instead of the single quotation marks, unless the scare quotes are meant to poke fun at the name Common. Still needs the commas though. "Obama's" is meant to be plural here, not possessive. But I know, Facebook updates are done quickly, grammar be damned.

The content. "Yes, Poetry Night" and the subsequent sentence implies that the idea of a poetry night is ridiculous. This implication stems from the larger idea that the arts are unnecessary. I think that's a stupid thing to even imply, so stupid I don't think it deserves a counter-argument. But for the sake of backing up what I'm saying, here is an excerpt from William Deresiewicz's recent article in The Nation:

But it is not enough to create the future. We also need to organize it, as the social sciences enable us to do. We need to make sense of it, as the humanities enable us to do. A system of higher education that ignores the liberal arts, as Jonathan Cole points out in The Great American University (2009), is what they have in China, where they don’t want people to think about other ways to arrange society or other meanings than the authorized ones. A scientific education creates technologists. A liberal arts education creates citizens: people who can think broadly and critically about themselves and the world.

Yet of course it is precisely China—and Singapore, another great democracy—that the Obama administration holds up as the model to emulate in our new Sputnik moment. It’s funny; after the original Sputnik, we didn’t decide to become more like the Soviet Union. But we don’t possess that kind of confidence anymore.

But a person from Kansas (quoted from the Facebook status update above) can probably make sense of ridding the Arts of state-support; after all, this state's governor wanted to get rid of Arts Endowment.

(Sidenote: Sam Brownback, the Governor of Kansas, is most likely an asshole. I know little about him, but I worked in a library in high school and remember that as a U.S. Congressman he attempted to censor materials in libraries. Mostly "vulgar" music that could be checked out by anyone, including young children. But really? Banning library materials? Come on Sam, this is the 21st century. Why not set up an age verification process or something? There are probably 30 better ideas than banning things.)

Thank the separation of powers that Brownback's legislation didn't go through, the Senate voted against it--though the thirteen that backed Brownback (wordplay) can go get screwed with their pants on. Getting rid of the Kansas Commission for the Arts wouldn't just stop the flow of state money; it would also forfeit nearly 1.2 million total from the NEA and the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Taking away those funds ultimately detracts from cultural development, which would allow technological advancement to outpace culture. The idea is that humanity should walk on one foot instead of two I think. But of course, a person gets farther, more quickly, with two legs. That's why someone said the measure of any society can be determined by the literature they produce (was this Eliot?). Advancement of thought and advancement of technology and science don't have to move at the same pace; yet the attempt to bring the one lagging up to the the other makes more sense than cutting one off for the sake of the other (the nose despite the face thing). Like Deresiewicz's quote above points out, don't we want to have the ability to be the best critics of ourselves, in order to do what we do better?

Even more sad to me is that Kansas has a rich artistic tradition from which to advance. Anyone want to hate on Langston Hughes (Lawrence), Gwendolyn Brooks (born in Topeka), Aaron Douglas (Topeka), B.H. Fairchild (Liberal!)? There are a ton of others, many still working despite the fact that the governor of their state apparently doesn't care too much. I would mention XV, the Wichita hip-hop artist who recently signed with Warner Brothers, but I'm sure my Facebook friend would be upset that I'd mention a person (to quote one of his follow-up comments on that original post about Common) "who also has used negative language against women and uses the N word often."

So I'll move on.

By the way, when that facebook quote went up, it linked this article by Keith Koffler titled "The Obamas Invite Cop Hating Rapper to the White House."

Let me own this article's ass for a second. He opens with this:

What do you think of when you imagine a White House “Celebration of American Poetry and Prose?” A quiet collection of serious minded women and professorial looking men reciting, in tones both dramatic and hushed, carefully crafted cadenzas in a setting of earnest reflection?

What poetry are you reading asshole? All the English Romantics are dead. Your surprise over the current state of "poetry" doesn't only make you look ignorant of the evolution of poetry in the last 100 years. It makes you look stupid too. I know you're trying to create a tone that sets readers up for your video showing all the vulgarities of Common, but it was a stupid opening.

Koffler goes on:

Instead of inviting this person to the White House, Obama should probably be trying to find out if “Common” is serious about his own lyrics. He’s not a poet. He’s a security threat.

You're right, Common isn't necessarily a poet. He's a hip-hop artist, and while both hip-hop and poetry are language arts, they have extrememly different histories and beyond use of technical language devices, cannot be compared historically.

I'm sure you're vaguely familiar with the American tradition of poetry, so let's talk about hip-hop. Certain powers in New York wanted to consolidate the Bronx. The idea of consolidation was developed so that a highway could be built; wealthy people in the suburbs wanted to get to Manhattan without having to pass through the Bronx. So projects were built. You're probably familiar with where this is going. Gang violence gets out of control. Enforcers of the state aren't doing much, because who wants to get shot while doing their job? Eventually the people living in these areas are thinking the same thing, who wants to take a risk just by going outside, walking down the wrong block? So some people start having black parties. We all know people like a party. So everyone can go to a party, and while violence doesn't magically stop, it trips up a little, gets stifled a little. (Jeff Chang's book has a developed account of this history).

So being a "cop-hater" unfortunately becomes embedded in hop-hop culture because of societal circumstance. This happens because hip-hop did more to quell violence in the Bronx than law enforcement ever attempted.

This happened before and during the seventies. Common was born in 1972. The trickle down of this was especially strong in the nineties. Remember Biggie Smalls, the entire roster of Death Row?

So it would be absurd to think a hip-hop artist wouldn't be working within the historical lineage of his medium. So Common's lines quoted by Koffler that read:

Tell the law, my Uzi weighs a ton

I walk like a warrior,

from them I won’t run . . .

Use your mind and nine-power, get the government touch

Them boys chat-chat on how him pop gun

I got the black strap to make the cops run

They watching me, I’m watching them

makes sense in the context in which they exist. Especially since Common Sense began his career in the early nineties as a freestyle and battle rapper, where this sort of content reflects the context and vice-versa.

Koffler also quotes a line that goes "Burn a Bush cos’ for peace he no push no button" which Mr. Facebook says is talk about "assassinating a former President." This means that both Koffler and Facebook Friend are reading the lyrics passively. In an article supposedly focused on Poetry Night they seem fine taking "Burn a Bush" at it's near literal value; they don't care to put it in the context of poetry which requires a closer reading. They think that Common actually wants to set George Bush on fire (although Koffler earlier seems to state that Common's weapon of choice is a gun?). The phrase "Burn a bush" offers many more readings than that--ones that should be apparent given the history I'm sure Koffler and Facebook Friend are familiar with (that's an assumption, but I'm sure it's a correct one. And Koffler, you're a writer, you know what allusion is. Grow up).

Common himself in The Anthology of Rap: "So many of the debates about rap today miss the point. People argue without taking the time to listen to what rap is actually saying." Rap lyrics are rarely meant to be taken at their literal value. They are meant to be reflective of the contexts they are born from.

The song that seems to have everyone pissed off though, is a Common ft. Cee-Lo track "Song for Assata." Assata Shakur was a member of the Black Panthers, convicted for shooting and killing a police officer during a shoot-out. This song, to Facebook Guy, means that Common is a "person who praises killing cops." It's a long song, so look up the lyrics if you are interested, but this song isn't praise for the slaying of officers. Actually here's the song:

The intro says "...freedom for all those who have been oppressed and all those in the stuggle." The part where Common describes the shoot-out: "There were lights and sirens, gunshots firin / Cover your eyes as I describe a scene so violent / Seemed like a bad dream, she laid in a blood puddle."

Where's the praise for slain officers? This song unfolds as description of the subsequent events revolving around Assata Shakur. It speaks with a tone of sadness to the societal context of the time (I mean, listen to Cee-Lo on the chorus; it's enough to bring heart pangs). The theme is oppression. The shoot-out is an intense moment that represents an intense moment in history, a culmination of stilted social development. Anyone actually paying attention to the song has to wonder why the Black Power Movement came about and why events like shoot-outs with police seemed necessary. The song is about historical oppression (though it really wasn't so long ago) and the only way a person walks away from that track with the thought "praises killing cops" probably only read the title of the song and googled what Sean Hannity had to say.

That is stupid as hell.

For the record, I do temp work in a middle schools in Denver, and I see posters of Common hanging up in all the libraries. He's holding out books and the bottom of the poster says READ. So his line of work should prevent him from attempting to use his status to be a role model? Or more importantly, what is the proper life-narrative for a person that is a role model? Is wanting to do something good not good enough?

He didn't create the problems he talks about in his lyrics.

Maybe the Poetry Night next year can feature 50 Cent and Gucci Mane so that dumb fuck argument will make more sense.

Subito

2011-03-21T00:15:00.000-04:00

Swish!
Finally got copies of this year's books from the press I work on!
Subito Press!
The Bodies, The Room is some real good poetry!
That is the blue book!
The other ones are books by Alta Ifland and Sandra Doller!

Old Man Me

2011-03-15T02:08:00.001-05:00

So last thursday in a wooden-paneled bar with a sweater worn over a collared shirt, I got called a grandpa.

Maybe confirmed that by watching this video which I love, love his energy. But felt odd about the bluntness of some of the lyrics ("E.E. Cumming on her face / now that's poetry in motion" and "my dick's too big / that's a big bang theory).

I thought to myself, am I really offended by words? Then I slapped myself in the face. This is rap music, not kindergarten.

But I don't know, maybe I've gotten used to blunt images being obscured by cleverness or other syntaxtual (not a word, sytaxtical, is that the word? damn) or formal devices. Yeah, the words "blunt" and "obscured" don't work too well together, whatever.

I have an interview going up on HTMLGiant. I wrote an intro, sent the email, then realized I'll probably be called stupid in the comments section of HTMLGiant. It happens.

Feeling a bit lonely at times, I could use some name-calling.

Hey if anyone reads this blog MFA style, I'm trying to set up an exchange program between my sexy university that sits on top of a mountain and some other university. Like, students from one school visiting another school and sitting in on workshops and then doing a reading, and generally kickin' it with people from the other program. Then vice-versa. I generally feel like there is a lot of funding for this sort of thing, so get in touch, if you're a toucher.

Also, Methodman and Redman coming April 7th. Who is going with me?

Jean Toomer

2011-03-15T01:54:00.002-05:00

“That something beautiful is going to happen. That the Gardens are purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk. That I came into the Gardens, into life in the Gardens with one whom I did not know. That I danced with her, and did not know her. That I felt passion, contempt and passion for her whom I did not know. That I thought of her. That my thoughts were matches thrown into a dark window. And all the while the Gardens were purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk. I came back to tell you, brother, that white faces are petals of roses. That dark faces are petals of dusk. That I am going out and gather petals. That I am going out and know her whom I brought here with me to these Gardens which are purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk.”

-on page 78 in my copy of "Cane"

New Words

2011-02-25T15:28:00.000-05:00

I try to use them in a sentence each day:

saltimbanque

basket

sex-(preposition of choice)-gertrude-stein

TIMBER

2011-02-24T03:23:00.002-05:00

Timber is a new journal. Looks good.

2011-02-14T02:05:00.000-05:00

Enjoyed Jackie Wang's post, especially getting rid of the I, which seems like a recurring thing, but maybe seems different now, 2011ish? Also how money sucks.

Don't Want to Be a Player No More

2011-02-12T15:16:00.001-05:00

After rap genius posted about Big Pun's early death, I went to youtube and watched the video for Still Not a Player which brought to mind seventh grade MTV days. I watched it many times. I found it odd that the video, despite the content, only has a few brief scenes showing Big Pun with the group of women; Joe, on the other hand, is surrounded by women in almost every scene. The oddness is furthered when the lines are divided according to whom vocalizes which ones:

Joe - "I don't want to be a player no more"
"Big Punisher still got what you looking for"
"Don't stop get it get it"

Which really, is the closest to a sexual reference Joe gets. Yet he is surrounded by women most of the video.

Then Big Pun:

"Who wanna ride it won't cost you a dollar / whether soft or harder of course you still gonna holla / My my, I'm big huh, I rip my prick through your hooters / I'm sick, you couldn't measure my dick with six rulers"

While highly sexual, this verse is offset by the fact that he performs most of it alone on the stage, or alone in some ill-lit hallway (which he later returns to sitting on a motorcycle). Another scene sets Big Pun outside of a club with another man holding his umbrella.

Other lines which seems contrary to his overtly-sexual lyrics:

Female voice: "You nasty player"
Big Pun: "I don't care"

This occurs in one of the few scene Big Pun is with the group of women, however the face made by the woman who calls him nasty seems to be of actual disgust.

Also:

Big Pun: "Ever since I found Joe every round brown ho want to go down low"

Which implies, as the video does, that Big Pun has women around because Joe is also around. I should note, before this song was released as a sort of remix of "I'm Not a Player" Pun had yet to really breach the mainstream, the mainstream being more synonymous, of course, with the amount of people, and therefore women, paying attention.

I wonder about this because I always thought (and have confidence that I'm correct) that the record label has control over the video, which would only serve to aggrandize the artist. While this video surely doesn't detract from the artist (as the example of another man holding Pun's umbrella implies respect) it certainly doesn't aggrandize him sexually as would be expected by the lyrics of the song.* I wonder if this was simply great directing, that isolating Pun from women serves to emphasize that he no longer wants to be a player, or if this video only serves to add to the feeling of inherent sadness that seems present only in retrospect.

*I know, I'm questioning the sexual draw of a man who died at 698 lbs. from a diet-induced heart attack at the age of 28.

I'll add Big Pun the the list of artists that are amazing but I wouldn't want to hook up with. The list already includes Stein, Milton, and De Kooning (he just seems so scary).

2011-01-09T16:26:00.000-05:00

spring semester begins tomorrow. the snow is falling steady today.

just read blake butler and brian evenson be skyping with the fiction workshop this semester, hell yes.

going to audit a class on hip hop poetics, hell yes.

read vendela vida's book. i'm wondering how to separate narratives to a point where they do not connect, yet because of proximity a reader will force connections. anyone know a book that does this? i don't mean short stories because collections of short stories are the obvious example. maybe something like "harder to admit and harder to escape" by sarah manguso? does that book do that thing?

ok, it is ku basketball time. going to wade in my leaky snowboots to a dark bar that hopefully has cbs on the tv and tequila and triple sec in a cup.

here, watch, i'm still enjoying this guy

December Reading

2010-12-19T17:15:00.000-05:00

Mike Young is good at The Collagist

Jimmy Chen is Asian and also at Failbetter

the stories don't assume themselves to be more than they are. to use a basketball metaphor, the two pieces leave it all on the court. to quote nba champion Paul Pierce, "it is what it is." of course nba champion Jacque Vaughn disagrees. for him, the story only draws the reader in so he can "try to get in that person's mind."

Glowly Manpack

2010-12-04T17:30:00.000-05:00

Christmas gifts for other people feel nice. i feel bad buying myself anything other than food, coffee, or whiskey. For other people i can be creative about it and feel better.

i don't have a current football team to name, but the quaterback would be named Glowly Manpack.

i feel differently in regard to poetry than i did in August. in the new Noo a poem by a Trina Burke felt like music. that poem is the opposite of:

i've noticed some poetry gives up control of breath and the intrinsic sonic qualities and why! i ask and what for? there are no benefits of that surrender. it is like giving up your knife in a fist-fight. you're a poet (a puss puss) and you need that knife to have a chance! keep it and use it.

i talk a little more about that in a Schomburg review i posted on my own site. is that ok? writing reviews that don't have to pass an editorial process to exist? i'm not sure what to do with that blog. if i can get small press reviews and interviews i'll post them there. people can send that shit to me. although i'm sure some other site is already doing that better.

speaking of doing it better, the book reviews in Noo are real nice.

speaking of real nice, kill author is up to ten.

speaking of Vygotsky and Piaget, inside-out or outside-in? i know how it sounds but that utterance is less sexual than you think.

Erasure

2010-10-28T19:11:00.000-04:00

How do people feel about erasure? I like it when I'm stuck, but I don't like the fact that entire books of it are printed.

Someday stays
With magic lacking in taste
And I know the tables
you've set

In search of
embarrassingly fatal
Ungodly gorgeous

Buried forever brutal
slender saint
Riding upright
Straight through everything's unused

sleep in the air
armor car ride
blew up your thighs

You threw up my best skin
you never loved it

someday stays locked in my safe
plastic arms carry your weight

Why do you float there?
disguise in dirty air
Why don't you melt here
heaven so far

sleep in the air
My armor plated car ride
all over your thighs

You threw up my best skin
Cause you never loved it

Love of roses that will grow
keep on dying,

I don't care about you now you're not alive
I guess it's bad

original song (video)

i listened to pop-punk, yeah i know. make fun of me. northstar (at least their first album) expressed less technical talent than many bands, but their lyrics were surprisingly odd. similar to the first time i read Poe, the feeling left beind was creepy instead of scary. imagery at the forefront.

i'm seeing clearly the difference between being raised in suburbs not being raised in suburbs.

(new topic)

i watch intervention wonder why these trash cans are crying about their mom not saying "i love you." which is okay to cry about i guess, but you can tell by their actions that the most important thing in their life is that they lost their jobs and can't buy things and they need to blame someone, and since they can drive to their mom's house and get drunk for free and yell, shit, i don't know. i'm disappointed with their lack of ability to think beyond their wants. how have people placed wants in front of needs?

that's how i feel about erasure poetry.

Made a Header

2010-10-24T21:52:00.000-04:00

for robot melon's blog, which i don't think anyone reads. but i made it look nice, or at least funny, so maybe people will go read it now. i want to solicit articles about small presses for the blog. i want it to be a resource. i also want more post to exist over there.

I Don't Download Music

2010-10-16T19:01:00.000-04:00

often because i'm scared of debt. debt would be the biggest horror, it would be the amityville house for me. and i'm piling plenty of it right now. but i might steal j cole's album when it comes out. maybe i'll do it the traditional way. from borders maybe?

Spring Roll Post

2010-10-12T01:55:00.000-04:00

People come to my blog by googling "springs roll recipe" or "hoisin sauce" or "best hoisin sauce."

Here is what we do when we make spring rolls.

We boil rice noodles and cut vegetables. We use red leaf lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, small chili peppers. Sometimes we put avocado in too. Sometimes julienne carrots, but not usually, because peeling and cutting carrots is more work than cutting tomatoes and cucumbers. Sometimes we put in other things we have in the apartment.

What is important is the sauce. We don't use hoisin sauce. We use sweet chili sauce with a lot of lime and a layer of crushed cashews on top. It is amazing.

If you want to use hoisin sauce I would suggest Koon Chun. It probably tastes okay.

Long Post on Writing While Watching Evil Dead

2010-10-10T02:01:00.000-04:00

i soon will start another terrible job, and instead of bitching about how america has failed me like i want to, i've read books and thought about why i returned to school. i don't mean my decision to attend, but the subject that brought me back. what has been in my mind is simple and relatively un-evolved. my original interest in writing as a permanent preoccupation birthed (that's right, nine months and all) from reading linear plot-driven books. Rabbit, Run and Palahniuk and Poe come readily to mind, and the fact that I admit to Palahnuik when it ain't cool to admit should say something about my honesty in this moment. Prior to those books, I read fantasy, mostly Robert Jordan (RIP homes).

(evil dead update: girl molested by a tree)

The eventual turn from "interest in writing" to "act of writing" followed, but I had no stories, no plot, and little character development; it was like a horror film. So I wrote page long descriptions of characters staying in bedrooms failing. I went to college as expected. Thus began a giving into expectations, which ended upon graduation college. However, during the span of college a few positive things happened. One was I took a few writing workshops and the graduate students running those classes didn't disown my work like they should have, instead they put emphasis on the single good line that stood out from the mound of ass I set on their desks each week. Two was that my school had recruited some amazing writers (who have since departed), one of which wrote short fiction, introduced me to short fiction, and was encouraging when I hoped anyone (anyone!) would be encouraging.

(evil dead update: killed an evil dead with an axe, tossed the corpsed in the woods. linda's leg us apparently useless)

(post-related interjection: as i entered a classroom wednesday, i overheard a TA recommending which journals a student should send work and said, "you must send that somewhere. and you should, you have to, continue writing." that type of encouragement doesn't exist much so i smiled a little.)

I began reading barthelme (both of 'em, but i'm talking about donald b. here), lutz, marcus, saunders, and whomever blurbed their books. how do i say my perspective on what writing was changed drastically? i want to say "blew my mind" but i picture a zombie tearing my skull-cap off and blowing air on my brain (remember, i'm watching the evil dead) and that isn't right. here are the realizations that occured:

1. language is magic. while reading lutz you see how much work can be accomplished by using the best available word. anyone can do this if they memorize the dictionary, which i think lutz has done.
an i.e.: i read a friend's story a while back and a character used words and phrases like "nearly" and "i think" in dialogue. the insecurity of this character builds in your subconscious. instead of taking a scene to show the insecurity of the character, she put it right on the page, used maybe five words. here's the thing--we all (by that i mean all the people reading this post) know english. we are familiar with usage and intent, picking up on tones, etc. so my friend's story relies on you to do the work, to be familiar with what type of person says "nearly" and "i think" in his/her speech. the story doesn't do the work for you--by creating a long description of a time when the character acted or became insecure--because that would be insulting, and since writers are asking for the reader's attention, less should be more. pack a punch, another cliche about brevity. (almost went into a post-structuralist rant like mf'ing barthes, but withheld)

2. real life in america is boring. even realism isn't real right? my next story about writing a blog post for two hours, watching the evil dead, sitting on the couch, bores me. carver is great because of the emotion portrayed; the story-line can suck it. but i'm not talking about carver. i'm talking about aimee bender and plascencia. the realization here is that no one cares about what does not interest them, duh. so interest the people.

3. jokes are funny and funny is interesting. not everything has to be serious and even serious work can be funny. if a thing is too serious it better be funny to ease tension in the reader's head.

4. form. short form works as well as long.

(evil dead update: faces are melting)

so that happened. some years later, after writing nothing of too much worth myself, the internet made obvious many people think the same way. and many people like me, weren't using that knowledge well, or everything had been done, or the author was dead and so was the reader and writing wasn't necessarily dead or boring, but it was not being done well. for some books i couldn't imagine an audience. on the internet the ideas were usually good but not executed well. then this talk about how new media would change literature (sure it could), but so far "literature" has been changed only for the lazier. i'd say contributors to change are the internet-attention-span and the impulse to email a story to a journal without letting it stew for a while.

(evil dead update: movies is over. the lighting throughout the movie was creepy i thought. i found slapshot on netflix and put it on)

so i think something new is necessary. i had a conversation about post-modernism yesterday. i was told that the idea can't be bought, because criticism minus structure is too problematic, meaning becomes un-relational and the idea of writing without an audience in mind is stupid, because if you do that you ought to write a diary. i said that humor was a good development, and that at least basing the criticism on the reader's interpretation rids the world of writer's ego-masturbation. we were both wrong of course. something new is necessary. something beyond what exists is necessary.

i don't know how i feel about what i thought my core ideals on writing were. i still do not think a direct narrative is needed. but language has to be musical, the words ought to be the best. but how to make writing sing, without making it sing-songy and without ignoring all narrative movement? because relying on narrative keeps people interested, and having some sort of audience is important. but relying on narrative also forces a writer to reply on language that moves that narrative further, restricting diction. but the writer has to learn to work within restrictions. that's why i love rap--the time restricts the breath of the line, forcing the great rappers to also be great poets. i've been thinking about macabre. i keep trying to write funny poems and no one laughs; they say, "i'm interested in the grotesque aspect of this." i keep thinking about what seeps into writing without intention. does what seeps in rot the writing or give it character? do i end up with ruined carpet, or a pretty good whiskey? and then what of audience and authorship? a balance has to be found, but i'm bad at determining percentages. some people can calculate that in their heads. I have to use the formula is/of equals x/100. i need paper.

here's what is worse. writing is a sub-set within many sub-sets of the world. i just wrote a huge post about problems that if solved, solve nothing. i said earlier giving into expectations ended after i finished college. i didn't want that to happen, but it did so i'm taking it (what is the saying, people give you shit so take it, no?). years have passed since. i've given up on expectation. the world exposed itself. the effects of the war to end all wars part II are dissolving into history and the world will settle to what it once was. my generation was born at the end of a blip in modern history, now the world will go back to normal. we are not running around like chicken with our heads cut off we are running around like people with our heads cut off. to me the scariest thing about the nazis was their disregard for human life, that is worse than disregard for human rights. objectification if the object is garbage, dirt, no, even less than that. something not concrete. i don't mean the signifier as opposed to what it signifies, i mean the thing that signifies the signifier. i wouldn't be scared if the only thing soon to happen was that the world will return to normal. the problem: no one now knows what normal means.

(slapshot update: "these guys are a fuckin' disgrace!")

the world is too incredible and i mean that but probably not how you think i mean it.

Best of the Net

2010-10-05T11:59:00.000-04:00

hell yeah, after a week of not feeling too great about writing, this nomination was nice. i'm sure i've said that i like kill author a lot. the site is clean and the authors are always good, like in the issue up right now. thank you kill author.

well that post was pretty boring so here is a raekwon video to watch.

SpringGun

2010-09-25T23:02:00.000-04:00

the third issue of springgun is pretty cool.

thinking about how a digital journal differs from a print journal, this is pretty swish daddy.

going to make kung pao sauce from memory tonight, not even going to bother looking up a recipe. good luck you should say now.

2010-09-21T12:07:00.001-04:00

1) i changed the font for the dates on this blog

2) adam robinson who is awesome has a conversation with matthew savoca who is awesome at htmlgiant

Adam: I guess. But as a reader I just think: “Matthew Savoca’s penis.”

Matthew: Right, it’s just to remind you that I have one, and I think about it a lot but don’t mention it too often.

3) adam robinson is editing dzanc's best of the web this year

4) wolf island

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

2010-08-28T21:08:00.003-04:00

i changed something if people can be interested again i am interested again

it is harder to run in CO, dropped three or four miles per run. i changed the run-ipod music for tonight, we will see if that helps. i took biggie off my run-ipod for the first time since april. i am scared

reading through poetry manuscripts for subito, so far i would describe most of them as "anus" (if you sent a manuscript there, don't worry, your manuscript probably isn't in the stack i am reading) hahaha

i haven't been able to read much today

i ate oatmeal, oatmeal is one thing you can't go cheap with. generic brand oatmeal is like dog-chewed cardboard

saliva foodmeal

can i talk about THE MAN SUIT

THE MAN SUIT by Zachary Schomburg was good. at first i didn't like it. i thought the absurdity was only being absurd, which is too easy. the black/white telephone part won me over though. that part made me like the previous section better. you begin to feel like you are rolling though the book, like you are a rock and the book is a field, and the poems are sticky grasses that stick to you. maybe you don't like the grasses at first, but then you get more grasses and it feels comforting somehow, unless you are allergic to grass (which here would mean you are allergic to poems) and then you have a problem. i had no problem. i'm going to get scary no scary soon.

can i talk about BLACK LIFE

Dorothea Lasky might be my favorite poet. her poems have this bare emotion that make them super accessible. did i mention i think accessibility is a most important thing to writing? because why write if no one knows what the hell right? i thought it was amazing that she doesn't use a ton of imagery but the poems are still vivid to me. she uses color though. but not just to tell the color of something. here color is a feeling that she feels and then the reader feels it, and all of a sudden i am rereading her book and i want to rip the pages out and paste them all over my walls. her poetry is not contained like some poetry, you know? it is like the sky or air or sometimes snow.

and she likes biggie, so there.

can i talk about FEAR BEFORE formerly FEAR BEFORE THE MARCH OF FLAMES

the always open mouth is a scary album. i love it.

i don't know what anyone thinks, but i am full of love

2010-08-25T16:51:00.002-04:00

i'm reading through pile 1 of 3 of poetry manuscripts

big piles

i'm a slow as hell reader, and i have so much to read

i'm mad at my phone

i read no good poetry books all summer and suddenly have read 4 good poetry books

eating a lot of homemade salsa

won 5 games of basketball yesterday with minimal contribution

what are things people would read a magazine about?

i might spoil the ending to "inception" in this post

2010-07-23T20:43:00.005-04:00

i saw "inception" last week. i think people really liked it.

i think movies with a lot of money behind them have become afraid to confuse people. the movie begins in a dream, which is happening in another dream, and then the movies moves to "reality," or at least what what the viewers think is the reality.

and of course i knew, everyone knew, that the end would throw out a twist, that the movie ought to have ended showing a black screen with the sentence "OR WAS THE WHOLE THING A DREAM" spewed across in white text.

i wasn't disappointed at the end of the movie. i was a little disappointed when the movie moves to "reality" where leo and joseph and everyone is in their "real life."

disappointed because the opening dream sequences last for a while, and it was a little unsettling. and i thought, how unsettling would it be if the whole movie existed only in dream sequences, but without a twist. what if the writers of the movie made the viewer aware of the fact that everything was a dream, but never showed reality? because i think people want to get back to reality quickly. people don't mind suspending disbelief, as long as they only do it for a short period of time. i mean, i was a little antsy after ten minutes of dream movie.

and shouldn't good art do that? leave a person unsettled?

so i thought it was a little cheap to go to reality, to give movie-watchers what they wanted. but whatever. the movie was entertaining, and leo has an intense face. i just thought the movie was going to move beyond the realm of entertainment, and really, it wanted to, but did not.

and movies that are more than just entertainment are good. they hang out in your brain and you get more in return for your viewing time. you know. "synecdoche new york" was good, but i don't yet have the balls to watch it again. i know nolan and kaufman don't go for the same thing, are not the same person or anything, but nevertheless i'm comparing. also you can download the screenplays for these movies. they are fun to look at sometimes.

ok ok ok

what else

i'm only a chinaman cook one more day. then what do i do? if anyone in colorado wants to give me a job, give me a job. i do work.

for a while i rebelled against abstraction but i gave that up. abstraction is all right if it is used all right.

HI EVERYONE

2010-07-10T00:10:00.005-04:00

WEATHER UPDATE

the weather today was a breeze

i took off a shirt and let the air slap

the sun was there and i haven't been in the sun

for a long time

every time i write a poem now it seem to be about the sky

about how it is a huge thing

that wants to eat the earth

that sounds dumb, i know the sky won't do that

as a young one, i watched this cartoon about jack and the beanstalk

and up in the sky the family was giant

and just hanging out in their cottage

you know, when being happy was cool

LAZY AMERICANS UPDATE

something else, i was reading a woman's memoir who lived in hiroshima

in the late thirties and early forties and mid forties and into the fifties

and then she came to america to attend college

and she said, "we are not underachievers, foreigners have trouble understanding that"

that is true mostly true i think, but why are we underachievers,

i believe we are. when she says "we" she means japanese,

when i say we, i mean americans. or kansans. i of course mean myself

and i tried to write a long essay about this but it went nowhere

it is dumb

the section titles include "Parents, Not Parents," "Lebron James," and "Computers with Guns"

but it was serious

i think some people might think i'm a little retarded because

all my blog posts are disjointed and out of control

i can write ok

or, i can at least edit ok, when i am trying

what i said earlier about underachieving, i am only trying hardly at all

i have more effort i need to use it to do something good

i don't want to cook chinese food for a living anymore

i don't even enjoy cooking anymore

FOOTBALL UPDATE

mississippi state went 9-3 this year (video game)

BASKETBALL UPDATE

mario chalmers might begin averaging 50 asst per game now

Pear Noir 4

2010-07-05T14:05:00.004-04:00

got my copy of pn4 yesterday. i've read the first few things and i really like this issue already. i own the first two issues and they are real nice too. i have poems in this one, which is good, because 4 + shift = $, which is the best button on a computer's board of buttons.

also everyone awesome is awesome in this issue. read rebecca scherm and sarah manguso and was one boulevard pilsner (good) and three high lifes (cheap) into my body, and knew right then that those two pieces of writing were pieces to read right before going onto the court and swishing a three pointer. i really like pear noir. if someone has the third issue and wants to send it to me i'll read it.

i can trade. i have an extra copy of EVERYTHING RAVAGED, EVERYTHING BURNED by wells tower, and an extra of EVERYTHING HERE IS THE BEST THING EVER by justin taylor. i really loved both of these story collections. both made me think about how i think about writing. one cover is yellow, one cover has orange-ish tones. i would just give these away, but no, i'll trade them away.

$$$$$

i play ncaa football on xbox a lot. so much that when i move next month, i'll have to buy an xbox just to play the game (no more roommate xbox). before, i would post the names of the players on my teams after renaming them all. i think the names have gotten too dirty, and i don't want to post them. but then again, this is the internet. but then again, my dad reads this blog. but then again, sometimes i look out the window and the drunk boys and scantily-clad young ladies are worse than any words, unless the words are describing them, then the boys and ladies would probably be equal to the words, not worse than. maybe still worse than. they're a damn mess.

2017 Mississippi State Notable Players:

MLB - Remmy Fogster
CB - Saigon Beef Roll (Beef Roll brother)
CB - Torso Beef Roll (Beef Roll brother)
QB - Johnathan Taylor Penis
RB - Halibut Portnoy (injured, 4 weeks)
LE - Olde Englishe Nuggette
SS - Thomas Jefferson
OLB - Cornelius Bright
OLB - Blackman Asswrinkle

probably more, yes that is what i do with my free time

EBOOK HOS

2010-06-21T17:50:00.001-04:00

put up "field mice" about 45 seconds ago.

matthew savoca is awesome.

dave ray drew nice animals and trees.

you can go read it and i hope you all like reading it like i liked reading it

ebook

2010-06-17T00:14:00.003-04:00

getting ready for an ebook, here are some links

new robotmelon blog, looks okay right now, going to try to make it look better eventually

goodreads page for the poem ebook

changed the index page of robot melon for the days leading up to the 21st which is when I'll put up the ebook. (might have to refresh that browser)

the ebook was a lot of emails and i'm really happy that it will soon be on the web for the wide world to see

(space, space, space)

i really love the bearcreekfeed poetry series, which has a new kgm which is good kgm.

did i have something else to say? i did i think i did. does anyone want to read some poems? you read mine i'll read your's.

once in a bathroom at red rocks a drunk guy walked to a urinal and yelled "you hold mine, i'll hold your's" and then giggled a giggle to be taken seriously.

oh, and i have two itunes giftcards, what should i listen to? what do cool kids listen to?

2010-06-08T16:16:00.002-04:00

worked 14 days straight and maybe hurt my knee running last night, or playing basketball in the rain, might go get drunk a little big and come home and blog sad bastard poems into blogger

have some real poems coming out in pear noir when it comes out, and there are a ton of good names in it. i hope people get some. sarah manguso's book that came with deb unferth's book was really good.

2010-04-14T18:16:00.003-04:00

i want people to get ready for an ebook, it's going to be real good

been writing poems on my lunch break on my tiny samsung, seems like this is the only way i can get production again, the poems are all right

moving to boulder in august, my life, brain, and limbs feel a lot better knowing that

here is a today story from my job:

an obese woman tried telling my manager something that caused me trouble. i didn't get in any sort of trouble, but had to start wearing a glove that makes my job more difficult. later the obese woman walked by and i pointed at her and said "you're going down big time." she thought i was calling her "big time" in place of here name. i was, of course, only specifying the severity of her "going down." it was not a physical threat, so when i had to go talk to a manager about it later i just said the whole thing never happened. it was a lie and i most likely am a bad person, but people believe me because i'm generally calm and quiet in situations, so a manager probably has difficulty imagining me telling someone they are "going down big time."

that's a memoir piece.

anyways, if anyone wants to write a poem about field mice and email it to me, i'll be happy for it.

2010 Bracket

2010-03-22T18:10:00.002-04:00

at the end of the field of 32:

minus three elite eight teams

minus two final four teams

minus one nat'l champion

i guess back to writing and reading books

WU MASSACRE

2010-03-08T14:04:00.003-05:00

damn, I though this new wu-tang thing was coming out tomorrow, but I guess it is march 30th.

VIDEO

don't know if that one is on the album, but still

Complaining some more and my bed still is a little small for sleep

2010-02-28T02:04:00.002-05:00

Reading at The Raven was good like chicken with rice. I think a video of me reading like a sad person with nerves, hitting puberty three time, and not being able to say "anthropomorphism" is on the internet. Everyone else was really better, but I might have been the tallest.

Tried to read this article about college costs compared to value of output (how much is learned) in the bookstore but was laughed at like a laughingstock, so I came home and read it on the internet. Makes sense sometimes, wish there was some cites for further reading. Really though? Only 31 percent of adults are proficient in "prose literacy?" I wouldn't believe it except I've always felt it was true. When a person reads through something and obviously read the words but didn't get any meaning from those words, it is like once I tried to explain to a man named Ule that communism was a form of economy, not a form of government, and he said, "yeah, like a monarchy." His teeth were not the best teeth.

Honestly, I couldn't write an essay until I had graduated college and started reading essays in order to learn to write essays. I think, in high school, teachers should have skipped the 3-point paragraph paper bullshit and just handed over The Best American Essays and I wouldn't have gotten a goddamn C in English literature prior to 1800. Or maybe I shouldn't have spent 2 pages of the finals essay shit-talking Gulliver's Travels because I didn't understand the essay question. Or maybe should have majored in accounting. In high school my average test scores in geometry and algebra II were 102 percent. And I listened to Master P at the time. No Limit.

Some troubles sleeping. Can't stop the tired and can't stop feeling like my body is something bad. Ran a few miles in the 27 degree and then snotted all over the place.

Oh yeah, back to that essay about the college lie, I think the main problem is that America is about cashmoney (as opposed to "intellectual value" (learning shit and doing shit with what was learned)) and universities are not exempt from that fact. And of course everyone thinks more money buys better education (but everyone is wrong, of course. Mo' money, mo' problems is actually true). Reality is, a cheap ass college is a good place too, as long as one has access to a sexy library and enough student loan money to focus on what she wants to do well with minor distraction. And has the drive to pursue.

But of course, what college age person has that sort of drive?

(And also, what I said about cheap ass college with access to whatever isn't entirely true. I had a few great professors that really shaped what I took away, and I don't think I would have any interest in what I have interest in without them.)

Plus, I would still rather drink than give effort for anything, because after drinking I sleep instead of pacing my room in despair.

While reading that article, I kept thinking about this quote in the newspaper when KU hired the new chancellor. Some official said something like: "It will be nice to have someone who can handle a university with a major sports program." (The new chancellor previously worked for the University of North Carolina.) I love collegiate sports, but that was the sentiment which the newspaper used to present the chancellor to the community? Yes, and I'm sure bitches and hos loved it.

Oh yeah, back to that paragraph when I said Mo' Money Mo' Problems, that movie, NOTORIOUS, sucked.

2010-02-22T19:03:00.002-05:00

Cool article at the millions 'bout some online places. I'm glad robot melon comes across the way it seems to for the author.

Still unsure if anyone in KS reads this blog, but I'm reading Thursday at The Raven, part of the Big Tent reading series. Since no human has read anything I've written for a few years, I'll mostly be reading things no human has read, excluding myself. It could be something good. Any tips for reading?

New things I have:

Feb 2010 issue of The Believer (I really like this magazine)
Everything here is the best thing ever (read some before bed last night, just read the first one a few times, I think this is going to be good)

Things I've had for a while:

Obese pet (fat)
Creme Brulee candle (haven't lit it yet)

2010-02-13T23:56:00.002-05:00

When does the new NOON come out? Been reading the zebra one (2008?) and it is a killer book with a knife it's so good.

My sister told me that she always thought chorus to TLC's song "Waterfalls" said, "Go Go Jason Waterfalls"

this site is pretty cool if you're into that type of thing

I have a question today

2010-01-30T02:34:00.003-05:00

I have time off from shitjob, what are cities people would recommend?

Here is a list of states I have been to:

Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, California, Colorado, New Mexico. There are others (like Louisiana) but if I can't remember them too well it doesn't count. I know the list is limited, so maybe something new?

I went to Seattle last year, walked a lot and ate pounds of food in Chinatown. Became drunk in a lesbian bar. Went to a beach and jumped in the air.

Do-over for all the pages of robotmelon is pulling at my insides, but feels ok in a relative way, relatively I mean it feels ok, like I could say, "tomorrow could be worse" and be right, like I am sometimes (right). Clean code is happier.

Woke up at five thirty a.m. to run and run, is now two a.m., I feel ok, maybe a little tired, probably won't feel too good at work later when I go and cut separated chicken and cabbage and who knows why my job even exists. Maybe just to bring salty soya and sugar sauce into the world.

Watched a good dark comedy called Pillowman, we were in a basement with chairs on risers, good words, good time. If I could I'd go again tomorrow, if you live in Lawrence maybe you might look into going tomorrow.

Do people write for a large amount of time every day? Once a professor said we should write for an hour each day, she pleaded that, because she cares about writing, and I felt guilt that semester if I didn't write for an hour each day (end of semester, only ended up with 36 pages of work). I'm trying to work my way back up to an hour each day, wrote a good amount today, feel like I need to be involved in a writing community and that might be better for some things,

like I saw Joseph Wood and Clancy Martin read last week, that sent off my synapses.

Ugh, my shoulder is growing out of my body, either I am becoming Dwight Howard or my arm will just fall off. Fall into the dirt and sink through the holes I dug in the sandbox earth.

It's time to start something again.

(When I reread these blog posts I feel like I'm alive and learned something but somehow came out still stupid.)

New Robot Melon Some Days Ago

2010-01-04T03:17:00.002-05:00

oh yeah, I put that thing up on the internet.

ROBOTMELON TEN TEN TEN TEN TEN TEN TEN

it's good I promise

it is better than facebook and pringles, mixed

it is better than hairnets

it is my resolution for the new year

I solicited TS Eliot but he didn't send anything

2009-12-31T02:40:00.003-05:00

I'm finna get verbally abusive like Mark Mangino.

But first, robot melon on the first day of 2010, are you as excited as I am?

How E-Books Will Change Reading and Writing

So Carr who is the first interviewee says that after the press was invented readers learned to read with "great concentration and focus," and that electronic reading devices are having an adverse effect, causing people to read with shorter attention spans. The article doesn't go into more depth, maybe mention that this is not a good thing at all, that Americans are building more advanced ways to spread media, but are making people dumber in the process.

That's ok with me though, because I realized the article didn't set out to get into any sort of cultural deterioration conversation, but simply set out to show how e-books might change reading and writing. I also think an e-book doesn't force one to read with less concentration or focus, but only makes it more difficult to do so. Distraction is something that can easily be overcome if people are given solid reading skills when they are young (and of course if the people reading are truly interested in what they are reading). But this article isn't about education.

Then in the middle of the article Rick Moody talks about twitter. Okay.

The third person they interview, Lev Grossman, made me want to talk some shit, so I'm going to. He says e-books will lead writers to write, "Very forward moving, very fast narrative," and with e-books writers "don't tend to linger on the language." Writing like this works because the readers just take the data and move on, without thinking about what they just read.

This is retarded. His solution to the problem slightly touched on by Carr in the beginning of the article is to write hyper-narrative text that is just text, because language doesn't matter. Novelist should really just write novels that are really screenplays, because their story should be well-worked, but the writing shouldn't be he says. The writing should be lazy he says. I don't understand the point of writing a book if you don't care about the language, which is, you know, usually the only thing that is inside the book. Also, if the solution to a reader's attention problem with a book is to simplify everything to make the experience easier, then I might quit my job and just steal shit and slap hos. I mean, because it is easier.

I don't think it is hard to teach someone to read with depth and concentration. To look up a few words in a dictionary and maybe appreciate a sentence that is one hundred times better than one the reader might have used in the same situation. Appreciate that the writer has formed her craft and spent the time to make something just that much better.

I'm not against simplicity (I hate a Hawthorne sentence as much as the next guy). But using that as a way to drag the reader through your shitty narrative (well, if the narrative is shitty, maybe getting through it faster is a good thing) seems like a waste of time. Maybe publishers would publish better work if they didn't receive half-ass-written-for-an-e-book-writing that they have to read, and then get tired, and give up. People should care about their work. Good job Lev, I'll be sure not to read you novel about magic, but if I do I'll do it while I jerk off because I'm sure you made it simple enough that I only need to half pay attention.

By the way, if you want to read a good book that is a perfect example of great language, exactly the opposite of what was talked about above, Molly Gaudry's We Take Me Apart is really OH YEAH. I'm about to go read some of it again right now instead of bed, it is really really good.

Music for Doing

2009-12-15T00:30:00.004-05:00

I was going to post videos of some songs, but that always looks a little messy so I made this instead

I Think I Mostly Listened To These Songs During Physics and Trigonometry Classes*

I did. I listened to it again while trying to understand internal style sheets and background images

Coding for that site is a messy ass. One day I will go back through and clean it up with a broom. Oh yeah, one day I'll put up the new issue before I get more hate mail.

*******88888888***((*&^^

Finally got a third recommendation, I guess when shit comes down to shit, I'm a .5 Korean and that is helpful.

i want to sweep this entire house.

*I should warn about emo bands and maybe poppy bands in that, don't get mad

2009-12-02T02:48:00.004-05:00

ok hi

long time

read chilly scenes of winter, felt like that guy but without a house of my own

***

A drunk man was on my porch when I came home from work today. He scolded me for not having the time and for being late. I said, "Who wears watches anymore?" He got near my face and smelled a vodka-stink. I thought I might have to uppercut/hyduken him off the porch. Instead I asked him what house he was looking for, told him that house was a block away, and he fell off the porch on his own. He left a bad smell.

***

my friend Robert Baumann has been periodically posting good poems on his blog.

***

I seriously can't get a third person to recommend me for colleges. I was a good student but I think I slumped too much and took too many art history classes in dark rooms to really remain in professors' memories. A third recommender is important because

a) once I finish these applications, robot melon will exist again

b) increased chances that I will not be making goddamn chopstick food next year

I'm considering asking my boss, even though he is Chinese and doesn't write English well. But I'm sure he likes the written word. He likes Transformers and Magic Johnson.

I like The Thing and John Stockton. If white men can't jump, they can be NBA assist record holders.

2009-11-06T14:19:00.002-05:00

Saw Amiri Baraka read some stuff. The room was too small. Moved to a room with real seating, harsher lighting, and armrests. He read an essay about monopoly capitalism and then read some poetry, people couldn't stop the clapping. Some sorority girls next to me texted during the first part of the reading, studied biology the second part. I felt bad for them, these girls were missing this amazing thing because they wanted to get an A in Bio 100. If you have to study to get an A in Bio 100 then maybe you should have been in high school once. Baraka said, "I'm a socialist, I'm not up here pretending to be anything," and garnered the most hand and mouth noise of the night. Didn't feel like we were in Kansas for a few minutes, I thought we were scared of socialists, hmm.

Is it really going to cost me $450 to apply to schools and maybe not get in? Ass.

I can't find my old professors. Disappeared. I think a few are in Korea. Anyone want to recommend me?

Umm. Ok. In my car's cd player: Jay-z, Sleater-Kinney, Bone Thugs. Is that right? I feel weird about that.

Hey, listen to Baraka read Someone Blew Up America if you haven't yet. Ended the Poet Laureate position in NJ with that poem.

2009-09-07T22:01:00.002-04:00

Having trouble writing sentences.

Has anyone read The People of Paper and would like to have a conversation about it? I have email if you don't live in Kansas.

I'm also reading Invisible Cities by Calvino if anyone wants to explain that to me.

I have picked up the reading part, now the writing is back to shit.

Are nails worse than screws in most situations?

I went to borders the other day and read a story from Kevin Wilson's Tunneling to the Center of the Earth and didn't realize it was this Kevin Wilson from Melonland. Swish.

That Lish story in The Collagist, wow.

I used to have little interest in reading poetry, and wrote a lot of it. Now that I am reading more of it, I can't write it. Albert Goldbarth I think is tops. He teaches at Wichita State, but I don't think I could make myself live there for two years (if I were to even be admitted to the program [see that? split infinitive. these sentences are crumbling like mold bread]).

Went running tonight, the ground was murdered by my long legs.

Books that might be labeled fairy tale or fable are my favorite right now. PoP, Light Boxes, Motorman. When will that damn Molly Gaudry book come out?

I read a Newsweek review of Loorie Moore's new book that said Moore tortured the protagonist too much. Too much suffering. I'm going to buy it because of that.

Going to start labeling posts "worth reading" and "not worth reading" and put that on the sidebar so people can navigate my blog better.

I feel that fall is going to be a good part of this year. I live in a huge room with metal supports and white lights. Four woks and buckets of corn starch.

2009-08-31T02:21:00.002-04:00

Fall of Troy is a little hyper on the guitar, found it on my computer

Still on a Mcsweeney's kick, read Zeitoun, Maps and Legends, Icelander, and now on The People of Paper

I bought The People of Paper a few years ago, why did I not read it until just now? Mistakes. I keep trying to tell people how much I'm liking this book and then they ask what it is about and I just look at their faces

Is there some insane hatred for art, writing, whatever that doesn't make money? I'm getting scared when I meet people and tell them I work in a grocery store and want to go to grad school and teach after that. People are all like, "Well I guess that is all you can do with something like that." Like teaching people things you know isn't relevant to what actual people do. The education system I crawled out of seemed pretty bad. A lot of people from that system quit early and had babies before they were 18. I just wonder if the same people telling me "well I guess that is all you can do with something like that" also think procreating between the ages of 12 and 18 is better than someone being a teacher. And I just want to tell these people, "hey, I'm just trying to hold a damn conversation. I really want to sell ditch weed in Missouri for a living."

Some guy in our living room the other day was shitting all over the idea of making flash cartoons without getting $$$. Saying, "What do you plan to do with animation? How are you going to make money with that?" I wasn't in the conversation, but wanted to say, "you make money by working inside a grocery store."

I seriously feel like people will not believe you are serious about something if you are not making a lot of money doing that thing.

Someone stole my notebook and wrote rude things in it and put it back.

Does anyone want to do something with me? My brain is dulled.

The Drunk Sonnets is going to be the shit. Sonnet 45 ($%) makes me love poetry. (Scroll a little).

Keep rereading this one by Ani Smith at Piffle also.

fdg

Big Stupid Post: Fantasy Books

2009-08-17T11:23:00.005-04:00

I have that Michael Chabon book, Maps and Legends, and read the essay "Fan Fiction." He talks about how lasting writing (such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books) has gaps or untraveled areas that allow the readers imagination to explore on their own. It reminded me that months ago (or has it been a year now?) I received a message from a friend that Robert Jordan passed away. He wrote fantasy books, so what. Fantasy books with the gaps and maps spoken of by Chabon.

My friend mentioned his passing to me because there was a period when a group of eight others plus myself read the Wheel of Time series diligently. It was exciting. We would count down days until the release of the next in the series (I remember doing this for Path of Daggers, eighth in the series). Once, when between four or five of us there was less than the $14.95 cost of a book, the youngest in the group stole A Winter's Heart from the big green corporate bookstore in our town (not that there were any other bookstores). Copies were passed around, and we read them during Physics and during Kansas History and during Psychology. Most of the books spanned over one-thousand pages; I think I never spent more than four days reading one.

I spent many years of high school and college forgetting that I read these books, or acting like I had not. Tried reading "literature" literature. The thing was, I could not get through most of these books. It took me two months to get through The Scarlet Letter the first time. Catcher in the Rye was fairly easy, but I couldn't even finish Silas Marner. I understood that these books were revered as art; they had relevance in history (our history, not a fantasy-based history), could evoke long conversations, and were fine examples of craft. But, I just could not get through these fucking books.

So I thought, what is the point. I wasn't enjoying Hawthorne, so why not just read fantasy books? But then I thought, why is everyone else enjoying Hawthorne? I was just missing something. I felt like, when you let your face go slack and someone sees you and it is pretty embarrassing and the person who caught you knows that something is wrong with your face, but doesn't say anything.

Maybe I just thought something with historical legitimacy was boring.

But, ok let's look at this another way. Robert Jordan's books are, in a way, similar to early art. Art was largely born from religion, for worship (I'm thinking Shinto torii and the 93 ton Great Buddha in Kamakura), and religion is based on collections of ahistorical events. So Jordan's books are the art, sort of, I guess, and everything occurring within are the ahistorical events.

Then Hawthorne is more like the origin of an "art piece," meaning the connections are relevant to the artist instead of just seeming pulled from somewhere in the sky and left to the community at large. First, Hawthorne (in The Scarlet Letter) is dealing with human vices, human emotions, all happening in a Massachusetts colony. A few themes: guilt, persecution. Hawthorne's life is connected to this book by a rope (his great grandfather was the presiding judge of the Witchcraft Trials in Salem).

Then Jordan's connection to his book. I admit, I don't know much about him biographically, although wikipedia mentions Vietnam and a job as a nuclear engineer. But really, if you read Eye of The World, with all the swords and magic, doesn't Jordan's bio seem quite interchangeable?

I feel that religious art is created with a certain purpose. Other art is created, then sent into the world, and its purpose develops after.

But this doesn't make sense. I feel that Jordan's books are just set out into the world, while Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter with a particular reason for doing so, which is the opposite of how I just described each book (by purpose, in this case, I am thinking solely of the books as art objects, ignoring issues of money or anything tangible, really). So in this sense, doesn't the story of Hester and Pearl become more like the big Buddha? More purpose-driven? I think so.

I think this happens because art mimics art, and whichever is there first becomes the object of derivation. So taking into account art up until 1850 when The Scarlet Letter was published, in an abstract enough space, Hawthorne's book could be part of anything's art-relevance family tree. So I guess in this way, neither piece is really separated that much from the other.

How the two authors are separate: Once something deviates far enough, it becomes something else, and the relation is looser and thinner, strings and yarn instead of rope.

So I didn't really get anywhere with that. What is the point? I guess the point is that it would be all right to have A Crown of Swords on my bookshelf next to Kafka in nice alphabetical order because, shit, they are both a little weird anyway. And what else am I going to do?

Internet!

2009-08-17T10:25:00.004-04:00

Been away for a while, moved into a house with no working doors and no working internet until now

I read Zeitoun, it was pretty good.

Hey, I like kill author still. I have poems in there, I feel these poems have a sort of energy that doesn't exist in my daily life. Also read the always great Jimmy Chen and Sam Pink and there is Peter Schwartz, Roxane Gay, Lauren Becker, Vaughan Simons, Donald Illich, Ben Spivey. Hell yeah.

I have to go to work, but I'm definitely posting about fantasy books when I get home tonight.

Something New

2009-06-23T14:02:00.003-04:00

Read all of Kill Author today, it was pretty hell yeah. Everyone go have a look and love it.

Bad last week.

I made an 8track. My roommate makes better ones.

Newest names for NCAA 09 football players on the xbox: (I started in an older post)

Finicky Dicks (defensive end)
Taco Slophands (receiver)
Padre Choad (receiver)
Baby Legs Washington (kicker)
Ding Dong Daddycakes (outside linebacker)
Youngboy Towelman (middle linebacker)
Obesity Challenge (center)
Faggie Demons (tight end)

Places I have lived in Lawrence

2009-06-22T00:15:00.006-04:00

[Copying the format from here, by Megan Boyle which I read a while ago and liked.]

Engel Road

This was a dormitory. I lived with three people here, two from Kansas and one from Germany. Once, the German one left a masturbation mess in the bathroom we all shared. Put a lot of movie posters on the walls. I was in a political science class that I attended three or four times. I ended up with a B. I didn't work this year, and I ate a lot of food. I ate at bland restaurants often. I walked most places for the first time in my life. I'm glad I didn't live at this place another year.

Wisconsin Street

This was a quad-plex. I lived with one other person, this was in the summer after my first year of college. I was probably 18 when I moved here. We only lived in this apartment two months; we sublet it from two people I had never met, but were nice and left us their movie collection. That summer I watched Suicide Kings (Christopher Walken), Pump Up the Volume (Christian Slater), Dark City (Kiefer Sutherland), and Dummy (Adrian Brody). No cable or internet. Worked at a pizza delivery place inside, answering phones and making pizzas. I would get home near four a.m. and sometimes sleep in my bed and sometimes sleep on the couch watching a California Raisins VHS. I ate pizza. A neighbor lived above us and was named Ace. Within the last few weeks we lived here, Ace came into our apartment and took contacts, an Xbox, a Nintendo Gamecube, and a box of my friend's checks. He wrote a check at a local grocery store for $370 with those checks. My friend's bank returned the money. I think Ace lives and Kansas City now. I was happy to only be alive in this place for two months. Probably the worst place I've lived.

26th Street

This was an second floor, three-bedroom apartment. The people in the apartment beneath were family-oriented. We were quiet most of the time. We framed movie posters in cheap frames, the kind with snap-on edges, and hung them around the living room. Our neighbor's apartment (not a family-oriented apartment) allowed fungus to grow on the kitchen floor. I began reading fiction non-stop. Worked at the pizza delivery place but also began working at Quizno's. Eventually quit working at the pizza place. Ate a lot of sandwiches and soup. Punched two walls: 1) In my bedroom, probably about 8 inches in diameter 2) In the entryway to the kitchen, there was metal support, looked like a big dent. I Started playing guitar in a band in the living room. Caught a mouse and named it Sumo. His body was overtaken by a tumor and he died in his food bowl. Watched Waiting (Ryan Reynolds) and The Girl Next Door (Elisha Cuthbert) often. When I moved, I left a lot of cooking utinsels and a 20 pound bag of rice. Started taking 20-credit hour semesters. Living here was calm and we didn't turn the heater on often.

Maine Street

This was a four-bedroom house. The houses in this area a unique and two stories. This house was blue and had wooden floors. My bedroom was next to the front door and I thought that would be annoying but it never was. The house was near the University's football stadium, and during home games we charged cars to park in our backyard. Paid electric bills and bought beer with this money. We had a gas stove and the heater didn't work well, so sometimes I would cook with one burner and warm my hands with another. I hung a few things on the walls but none of the movie posters. Sometime while living here I quit working at Quizno's and began working at a library and I really enjoyed the library job. Didn't punch any walls. Movies watched: Waiting (Justin Long) and 28 Days Later (Cillian Murphey). Also began watching Korean movies, bad horror and ones by Park Chan-wook. Took a fiction class with Deb Unferth that made me read and write and think about reading and writing in a more serious way. I ate macaroni and chesse and a lot of rice. Bought a hookah and later broke it. I would say this house had character, it would have been a person without a twin, with vague relatives. I liked how I felt in this house. One person who lived with me was a dick.

Louisiana Street

This was a one bedroom apartment on the third floor. Built-in bookshelves that I filled with oriental piggybanks and art history books. Spent time working out in the living room. I didn't hang many things on the walls, but I did hang a large clock in the center of the living room. Drove my car appoximately thirteen times during this year. Mostly watched The West Wing (Allison Janney). Didn't have cable. I continued my library job. Wrote a lot of stories in a Gary Lutzian style. The carpet was blue and I felt calm while in this apartment. During winter, a cat moved in with me and the cat usually slept within five feet of where I slept. Never turned the heater on, but had the air conditioning on during six months that year. I became obsessed with the idea of having a minimal amount of objects around me and sold some things on ebay. I didn't eat much meat during this year. Started drinking large quantities of coffee and tea. I enjoyed this place the most. I was calmed to have so much time alone.

Freedom Creek Road

This was a three bedroom duplex. I never liked heat or humidity but never felt like I have suffered from those things until I lived here. A water pipe exploding near Christmas. The duplex avoided natural light. Two and a half baths. My library job ended and I couldn't find a job for a while, then found one in a deli at a local grocery store. Through this job, learned that people are uncreative in the ways they are assholes. The movie posters are either in a landfill or in a closet. Read a lot, but never felt like it was quantifiable. Ate food some days, some days didn't eat food. In the pantry: blank beans. In the refrigerator: eggs and carrots. Bananas on the counter. I used frying pans often. The front door didn't close well; one night the door was left open and the cat that usually slept within five feet of me left through the open door and was gone. Couldn't find the cat. I think the job worked while living here, and the incident with the cat made this occupation as bad as the one on Wisconsin Street. This duplex is something to escape.

NINE NINE NIENNENEI

2009-06-07T17:07:00.001-04:00

HI!

remember all those images in the post below! I didn't use any!

But I updated Robot Melon, some badass writing.

Read it, I think it is worth liking.

Shakin' like a dog shittin' razorblades

2009-06-01T14:37:00.004-04:00

I'm going to breathe into this blog again.

RobotMelon has been slow, I know that when I look at accepted subs for issues 8 and 9, and they are from 2008

screenshots in safari:

(boobs)

(boob)

Here is one for eight, which might not really be there, might just suck:

(driving in the country somewhere near the Kansas/Oklahoma border)

I've been reading a book about HTML, XHTML, and CSS, and Dreamweaver isn't very efficient. This will probably be the last robomel I make using Dreamweaver.

I think my web hosting shit expires in some months, anyone know cheap hosting?
I'm going to sell a few things to pay for it, keep Robot Melon alive. I'll take photos of things and you can give me a few dollars if you want them. I has thought about just letting the site disappear when the service ended, but this post convinced me otherwise.

Ok, I guess I am starting with the links;;;;;**

THIS IS NOT A CONTEST

Look at that post. Doesn't Blake Butler make doing all this shit seem like the shit?

My friends make this eight track, which is a small concept but really worth listening to. Eight track is the new muxtape but not as illegal.

Como Te Llamamama

2009-04-29T00:37:00.002-04:00

I'm faster when it comes to washing dishes, come visit me from 10am until 9:45pm tomorrow, I'll show you how to scrub dem pans

A little drunk from during the Chicago / Boston game, hi

Reading DOU interviews so I can ask her to write me a recommendation letter, here are some OIJL OIUJKL, I am feeling intimidated

Hi Robert if you are reading this we should get a drink sometime

MFA where? where? where?

Reading Molly's manuscript right now, on page 48, I can't wait to buy it when it comes out

....................................

oh man, I just got a 29 on wii bowling bye.

thanks kassia

2009-04-09T18:19:00.002-04:00

Homelessness

2009-03-23T12:44:00.004-04:00

The last day we were out of town felt optimistic. We met a person for brunch whom I would like to be able to talk to more because he drew us a map of Sweden and wore a KC Royals cap even though. We went to the wrong restaurant and finished eating before we solved through phone calls and he came to meet us. Flying back happen suddenly, but I finished the new NOON (when does Clancy Martin's book come out?) and ate sourpatch kids and listened to Very Emergency! in a little bit of sleep.

My Seattle meals were something like:

$17.86 Ethiopian
$67.00 Seafood
? Thai
$30.17 Very Terrible BBQ (why did we eat BBQ there, we live 20 minutes from KC)
$9.39 Vietnamese Pho
$40.00 Greek

(some of those I paid for a few people, and some that aren't there, someone else paid for mine)

and also a lot of coffee and now my stomach is crimping as I try to revert to bananas and black beans and rice and water.

Returning to work I was unimpressive with a lack of smiles, but I began banging a metal spoon on a metal counter (approx. 5 minutes) and the managers were satisified, thinking I was "looking busy." We were forced to watch a one-sided video argument anti-union, and I sarcastically said, "unionize for better dishwashing conditions and complimentary employee handjobs," which I think led to the corporate comments on my lack of smiles directed at customers. Either way unions are nothing like they were in the fifties, or working conditions are nothing like they were in the fifties, so I've read. This picture was on facebook when I returned, taken a few months after graduation:

I think I shaved my hair the day before. I might include this with resumes from now on. Looking for jobs anywhere is harmful. Should have applied to grad school.

Why did no one ever tell me David Liebe Hart had a TV show on public access? Also, if anyone has a video of him singing "Father and Son" (the one from Tim and Eric) please make it possible for me to watch it on my computer.

Leg Bones

2009-03-18T12:56:00.002-04:00

Bought the new NOON but am restraining from reading any of it until flying back tomorrow. Art museum had a lot of good abstract expression art, I think minimalist art is ass, there was a sexy colonial America exhibit, was good. Trapped by a freeway that came from under the ground. Ate big pho was good good good I am fat.

HI

2009-03-16T01:50:00.002-04:00

Flew to Seattle today. Walked a lot. I brought Light Boxes to read during the flight here and back, but it was really good and I read it straight through. Maybe I can read it again flying back. Walked a lot and felt good, but cold. Forgot my camera. The time difference feels odd. Feels like tomorrow will feel good. If anyone knows what we should do here, I would like to know what to do while I am here.

Below

2009-03-11T02:46:00.001-04:00

that butt bastard who was watching heroes didn't turn off the light downstairs either, it is sneaking underneath my door and making my cat freak out

Why I just may slap the next ho that turns on an episode of Heroes in the living room

2009-03-11T02:11:00.003-04:00

One roommate has Netflix on his Xbox and it is amazing to me that Netflix on the Xbox exists. One day Heroes Seasons 1, 2, and 3 were on Nexflix. With six people trying to watch one show, somewhere near the third episode watching became a static-pile of shit with re-watching and skip-aheading occurring depending on which person sat on the couch first at night.

I think Heroes is a show that I would have liked if I only watched the "previously on" parts of each show.

If a large mattress factory of money is spent on a show, it should be art sort of, or at least have some re-watch value. But Heroes is like trash, a person just waits until they find out what happens next and then that episode is done and shouldn't be used again. Maybe Heroes is like a condom, not trash. It definitely is not like a finely-woven shirt or a pair of patent leather shoes.

Heroes is mostly shock value, people tricking other people in unexpected ways, but the dialogue isn't ever interesting (ex., save the cheerleader; lido! beep beep!) and all the events that occur aren't really that interesting, but are only there to move the story along to the next event that all the characters are thrown into.

I think the last show I watched an entire season of was Studio 60, Sorkin-type dialogue is fun to listen to and usually interesting, with odd facts strung throughout. Of course the events on this show, like Heroes, also occured to move the plot along, but when something happened, (I don't know, like the part where Matthew Perry does drugs) didn't seem finger-nail clipper-cut-shit thin and linked directly to the next obvious event, but instead seemed to open an entire part of the show that didn't exist or wasn't apparent before. Like a flowchart with a lot of arrows instead of a bar-graph that stops at 50 on the y-axis and will never go any higher. Studio 60 didn't make me feel like someone read the series plotline to me and then decided I was retarded so they explained it again in smaller words.

That is why I just may slap the next ho that turns on an episode of Heroes in the living room, because someone keeps turning on episodes from the first season, and those episodes feel like a condom that has been used by six other people already and I don't want to hear it or look at it anymore.

I heard these songs while writing that post:

Waves by J Dilla
Today by the Smashing Pumpkins
Wonderwall by that one band that is better than the Beatles
'97 by the Alkaline Trio
Don't Say Nuthin' by the Roots
Vacant Skies by Sparta
and some Third Eye Blind song off their EP

FECCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

2009-03-03T23:57:00.004-05:00

I feel that most writing I have is writing that won't be published anywhere because it already hasn't or is all unfinished and I haven't worked on anything in a long time so I think I'm going to put most of it on my blog and forget about it and fuck fuck fuck fuck and focus more on my job that might be the only thing worse around. It will also help me blog more because I already will have the posts to post.

If skin was more telling, we could have talked about your good bones. But instead other ones were apparent: the stubby ones beyond the wrist, then your knees that never grew correct. (The most recent time I felt captivated by you I was sick somewhere in the dirt and grass that is always near us. I carved constellations into the carrot-studded guts on the ground. The air around you warmed, and your spine felt welcoming as I learned the indentations.)

A pretty stretch of dirt road we just passed. We passed and you grabbed at my leg and the car drifted left a little. You were talking about stars. When we talked about stars in a sensible, or even an abstract way, I wanted to go to sleep.

When the metal and plastic began bending around us I awoke. My legs compressed and my bones slid upward through my body like breathing. I had a strong urge to pull the key from the ignition, so to stop the motion.

And my mouth! My mouth felt like biting snow. I felt promised that for dinner we would eat permafrost. I knew that I could have replaced the soil with flakes of skin that form in winter. I could have loved the dirt during that time, when the metal and plastic began bending around us. I could have fallen toward the ground and dug my extremities into it like roots.

And no, if you and I were in a closeted space I wouldn’t feel better. The more I learned about the rocks that make up your body, the less I believe a time existed with me carving constellations for you. You felt better vague. All the edges were smoothed and like stars.

Once, during a yellowish and chilled month, we first ground our hands using mortars and pestles. We thought we could flatten our bodies and love each other. If there was a way to become a romanticized couple from the television we would find the tools and we would become.

Then I became. You did not. I learned about my organs sifted through the sieve of pistons and dashboard plastic and my bones then being isolated. You did not. You heaped in the ditch, scraped but tear ducts still working. My guts soaked through the dirt, but bones do not degrade so fast. You, telling my bones not to consider the parts they had lost. How you would never miss the parts that were tangible, but had always missed parts I gave elsewhere.

Well, since our skin isn’t armor let us stretch it all out like a picnic blanket and pile our remainder in the middle.

A short low quality video about

2009-02-25T00:11:00.001-05:00

what I looked at when making robot 7 melon part of the world

Robot Melon 7 from Stephen Lewis on Vimeo.

Happy Pancake Day

2009-02-24T13:34:00.001-05:00

http://pancakeday.net/about.htm

2009-02-11T04:05:00.003-05:00

When I snapped my arms off I felt like deconstructed legos. But when I started spitting up on the floor I felt like an organism, like a beautiful Sunday in a house with white-painted walls. And I thought that and I haven't.
What I thought about was when my sister said to comb arm hairs with lemons. Or I thought about grandmothers with brains separating into worms and the grandmothers, they are crying and holding worms in their hands.
And I felt mostly bad, yeah.

2009-02-06T13:44:00.002-05:00

PILES

2009-02-05T19:29:00.004-05:00

been listening to this,

I don't like feeling this unproductive, feeling heavy like a backpack, does someone want to buy a guitar?

Someone put this on my door yesterday

Here is an excerpt, "Jesus is the only way to Heaven and He gave these directions on how to get there."

Then there is a list, a four-step program. How do I get the job that allows me to make and print things like this? I have goals.

Didn't apply to grad school though.

Bought a plane ticket to Seattle though. I haven't been out of Kansas for some years. What should I do in Seattle?

I read One Hundred Years of Solitude and thought about writing something about the corporeal qualities of the Buendia's house.

Got some exciting mail today,

(Ever by Blake Butler, Light Boxes by Shane Jones, and Barnaby Jones from PinchPinchPress)

But I'm reading Revolutionary Road right now, first, before those three, Leo Dicaprio on the cover of Revolutionary Road makes it a good bathroom book, ha ha

I love the winter, but I feel like I won't do anything until sometime after August, as a person not in Lawrence, I have written one poem this year, slow ass start. Maybe I should have gone to AWP probably not. If I start gathering Letters of Recommendation now, will that motivate me to apply to grad school in a year?

I have a stye in the corner of my chink eye and don't think I can go to a doctor right now.

If anyone wants to come over and play RISK tonight, today, Thursday, is a day off work.

Happy Kansas Day

2009-01-29T18:45:00.002-05:00

While in College, I wrote papers over this poem by Gwendolyn Brooks a lot:

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.



She was from Topeka.

Barry Sanders went to High School in Wichita








I started Motorman again, good, good.

I put issue six of robot melon on the internet

2009-01-07T19:11:00.001-05:00

People should go read it tonight instead of sitting at home eating ice cream and watching What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

Seven, VII, IIIII II

2008-12-28T02:42:00.003-05:00

YEAH YES

1. I rubbed cake frosting over the cracked skin ever winter since

2. I love my cat, it is possible for me to spend over an hour pinning her on the ground and rubbing my face in her furry belly

3. When I vomited all the fried chicken, I rubbed relief maps on the floor with my left hand and washed my hair with skin cells and canola oil

4. My twin bed is shorter than I am, and very near the ground, and allows my feet to rub the carpet while my back bends and creaks

5. The year the window and sliding door refused to remain the way I positioned them, I covered my hands in chicken rub and sat in the refrigerator to starve my stomach

6. The reason Thanksgiving was fast food was because the mustard is an insubordinate muscle rub, and we wanted to carve the sauce off you with our kitchen knives

7. I miss being hopeful when hopeful others would rub off on me, I miss effort and something creative as sustenance

7 others

jenn and molly and karl and rob and alicia and matthew and pa ul

titles pending,

FREG

2008-12-17T00:48:00.002-05:00

I Don't Want to Live Today 3:16 Ape Hangers
France 2:53 Keb' Mo'
Two-Headed Boy 4:27 Neutral Milk Hotel
Red & Blue Jeans 2:56 The Promise Ring
The Night Starts Here 4:54 Stars
Lost in the Supermarket 3:48 The Clash
Tombstone Shadow 3:41 Creedence Clearwater Revival
Crooked Teeth 3:25 Death Cab For Cutie
Sick And Tired 5:45 Eric Clapton
Just a Dood 3:56 Josh Martinez
What Did You Think I Was 3:10 John Mayer Trio
Woke Up New 2:58 The Mountain Goats
Hey Jealousy 3:58 Gin Blossoms
By the Way 3:39 The Red Hot Chili Peppers
How Long 3:58 Samiam

I can't find a copy of The Promise Ring's "Nothing Feels Good" anywhere.

I mopped my shoulder out of place tonight.

Walked home in the snow with thin shoes.

Gut noise sounds like.

I didn't get recommendation letters so that is something I don't have, let's see where my effort and motivation are next year.

Poker, bye.

I read it it was good

2008-12-09T13:02:00.003-05:00

As I Said by Kathryn Regina

I just decided issue eight of robomelelelele will be a little diff'r'nt.

Right now I feel I want to be an artist like Masayuki Nagare (wikipedia, here too) in that he is prolific and most of his sculptures look similar, but not like he is trying until he gets the work right, but he is trying until he has a ton of work.

I think he lives on an island right now and just sculpts all the time. Doesn't bother with anything else.

I picture him looking at all of his works somtimes and comparing them to each other like children (this one is better at basketball, but this one knows math better than anyone in Japan, etc&etc.).

I don't know why Noguchi is so famous in America but no one knows who Nagare is. I wonder if either of them could make a hat out of a bear.

Will someone share their thoughts about Gabriel Garcia Marquez?

I just began reading that one book by him the first 19 pages have been well.

I am trying to be interested in something and also not beat anyone while I am clocked in at work. Goals Goals gols.

I sent Robert a poem for this, I think maybe it is a little better than some poetry I have written before. I wonder if maybe I should submit some things again to the internet.

Duotrope

2008-12-04T15:34:00.001-05:00

Duotrope added a listing for Robot Melon. This makes me feel better about working in a deli.

Things I Don't Know

2008-11-28T03:35:00.003-05:00

Should I be embarrassed by all the things I don't know?

Like

Jimmy Eat World songs, I know,

Claire
The Middle

Green Day songs I know,

'86
all of Dookie

Sigur Ros songs I know,

hhmmmm.....

i probably know every Alkaline Trio song ever

I love 90s music

hhhsdfl

dumb post

I sold stuffing this Thanksgiving

I drank a little whiskey

I hate the idea of jobs

The Get Up Kids are good, I don't know if I appreciate Eudora Kansas though

Central Standard Time is a good song by them

I never want to live in Texas. Do I keep promising a decent post? It it will never happen, the posts will keep getting worse.

What Happened to Freedumb Airlines

2008-11-21T00:41:00.000-05:00

During middle school, I had a few shirts from a small company called freedumb airlines, I think it was called that. One was a blue bunny with a pink bunny behind it with a strap-on strapped on, and another was teddy bear that had accidentally cut itself in half. The shirts were $10. I want to buy some now, but I can't find anything about them anywhere. I have looked sporadically for the last year or two. I probably don't need them, or maybe they weren't as funny as they were to me then. I think I wore one in high school and the principal, Jim Little, took it away and never returned it. ML Press kicks ass. I finally got NO COLONY, and it was amazing (thank you Blake). I started reading Jesus' Son, sometimes I feel like yelling yay, sometimes, I don't know, I like the stories better if I reread them. Does that title mean the son of the Jesus (plural of jesu), or the son of the Jesus, because then wouldn't it need to be Jesus's son? I forgot how to speak a little Korean. How about I post something useful sometime instead of blabber. Does anyone want to buy something? I need the money to grow beans in the pantry and combat the cold coming from outside. I'll also trade people books so I have something to read. I'll also trade hats as long as the trading hat has no lice.

Robot Melon has a lot of submissions. I'm not letting them sit for more than a month, I am trying not to. But I'm going to start sending form rejection letters I think, I really don't want to but holy shit, my job isn't even a real job, I don't make a lot and have no benefits, and I spend two or three times the amount of time on Robot Melon as I do working at my work.

One Hundred Forty-Nine Dollars and Fifty-Two Cents is Not Much With the Heater On This High

2008-11-09T20:27:00.004-05:00

CNN posted one of Jim Jones's last speeches. He is a toilet.

Nearly all his words are forgettable, like "hurry my children," "hand of the enemy," "no more pain now."

The only near-concrete thing he said was "for all it matters, I killed that congressman."

How does a person with an asshole full of bland expressions convince people to pay attention? Really, imagine him bent over with stupid saying spilling out of his anus. He doesn't even have a commanding speaking voice. Maybe he had attractive forearms.

If someone walked up to me and said, "no more pain now," I would ignore them until they handed me ibuprofen and a sheet of paper outlining exercises to rebuild the ligaments in my shoulder. And maybe a month later I would listen to that person, if there ended up being no more pain in my shoulder. So really, just the exchange is necessary, no words were even needed to be convincing. People with nonsensical phrases are idiots. People willing to listen based on a non-neutral emotional standpoint are idiots. People who cannot tell apart types of phrases like the ones I mentioned should work in grocery stores or delis, or delis inside of grocery stores.

I meant to say something different than all that, I really only wanted to type that first paragraph.

I guess I'll just link some things.

HAHA

Yeah Kansas we better get our guns, huh, geez, (handjob, handjob, whatever).

I finished poems number 5 since August, but deleted number 2, so I am back to only four since I moved.

i deleted files, and also east central indiana

2008-11-03T13:50:00.003-05:00

In the last week I've read East Central Indiana, Snow White, Two Against One, Black Kids in Lemon Trees, Yum Yum I Can't Wait to Die, and some Linguistics books from a class I dropped once. I know since August I have only written three or four things. Today I opened about 40 word documents and deleted a lot, I deleted about 80-90 pages of work that was bad and I felt embarrassed that those certain documents were still on my computer. Some people I have been reading write really well.

Yesterday I stood up fast at work and gashed my side on the corner of a metal sink and grabbed at the gash with my hand covered in degreaser and then paced vehemently while breathing hard and thought about how retarded I feel working, how I really want to go to grad school or get a quiet job at a library where people are afraid to talk too loud and the corners of things are dulled.

Last month I outcame $100 more than I incame.

I want to say something about "East Central Indiana"

Daniel Bailey is like Dwyane Wade. As in, he isn't a legend like Dr. J yet, but will be soon. The poems in "East Central Indiana" are sad in a way that makes you wonder what is sad about them. The subjects within a poem are always moving to something else like in "meth is a mid-western drug" a stanza goes from "once we bought a gator suit for our dog / and put it on her and she fell over and died" to "you turned on the radio." I think the way to subject is changed makes something seem ignored and that is what feels sad in the poems. I think it feels Midwestern in a weird intangible way too. And it is amazing that Dan is able to do that, I am in awe that he is so damn good at poetry.

I could say more and try to seem a little more coherent, but really you can just go read it at bear creek feed's poetry series and be amazed.

I printed it out and read most of it outside. Why is the temperature still 75 degrees Fairenheit in October/November?

also, please comment if you have or plan on voting for Bob Barr, or if you were disappointed Mike Gravel dropped out of the primaries so quickly. Also comment if Barry Goldwater is you mom or dad.

a school portrait of me in fifth grade, or maybe me in forty years

2008-10-30T12:07:00.002-05:00

something

i hate boxes of fried chicken

maybe soon something interesting
probably not

list of what will be done today:

pay Paul
call Phyllis @ 1 pm
vote, not for tom sloan, no sawed-off shotguns, the guns are all sighing in the closet anyhow
don't eat chips
chase mercury around with hands and mouth
read the 17 things and do it and read it all
find out if the male end of a quarter inch jack will fit into my chest cavity
today i'm reading the poems this is from, hell yeah
wasn't wichita, ks once called the meth capital, or was that in missouri? probably in missouri
weren't the parents of us all born in a bowling alley

this looks good, if i ever wrote anything with words i would send it

ok

2008-10-22T04:14:00.000-04:00

ryan manning's blog interviewsldf

merry men

2008-10-15T23:17:00.001-04:00

www.robotmelon.com

Robot Melon Issue Five from Stephen Lewis on Vimeo.

hi everyone

LCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLSLSDFDKNF

2008-10-08T13:40:00.002-04:00

i just finished reading the new lamination colony, good shit in it.

ongoing list of possible names if i could rename a football team, or had 22 children for which i could pick their first and last names:

robbie helmet
butts mcgavin
remnant sad-day
pedro mexican
captain buttarm (buttarm brother)
terrance buttarm (buttarm brother)
mommy daddy
chester man-nut
midget legland
trace "facial hair" adkins
etc.
etc.
etc.

Plum

2008-10-02T12:58:00.002-04:00

some dissolving is occurring, i can feel my face crinkling and thin like pissed on paper and it is ok, there just isn't anything else that ought to be happening now, i want to lie down on the brick fireplace and make animal noises and meow at my cat and no one to walk in and say what the fuck is this, if i zested my face on a grater like a lemon would it be tastier on pork or chicken? the only imagery i ever think of has to do with kitchens, stoves and cutting boards and big knives and big knives and paring knives and sometimes toaster and noodle strainers, i wonder if i became flexible enough i could be rodded like a chicken and become a rotisserie human, twat, mos def, time saver, magic, this blog post will probably help drive blogviews down to zero, my favorite thing to say when something bad happens is "sad as a dad"

2008-09-19T13:45:00.001-04:00

jenn ashworth wrote about online lit scenes here and mentions robot melon, thank you jenn.

i'm reading snow white and vacation and articles about korean art in 5 minutes increments it is confusing

2008-09-17T09:56:00.002-04:00

if you google my whole name the first three images are: the header of my blog, my cat licking her butt, and a picture of MF DOOM. hell yeah.

here, blake butler on action yes, read.

after this post i am just going to copy and paste all of sam pink's posts for the rest of my or his life

2008-09-06T15:53:00.000-04:00

ok
there is plenty of time to do what i will do
maybe
unless time stops
and time does not want to stop for any person
not even a person with guns and well-defined muscles
time is bullshit
time doesn’t exist, no not really
if hours move extremely slow, the amount of money i make in a day
well, it will be expansive
it will be like taking over countries
extremely slow moving hours mean more resources
eight hours of sleep would be impossible
it would be a coma

but extremely slow moving hours might have something to say about arthritis
but that will not be addressed here
and glaucoma
that will be left alone too
some thing just happen and there isn’t any reason
so just blame grandmothers and weak genes
or wander around boring parks with you eyes closed and acquaint yourself with the blacked-out eyes of what you will be

to really think of anything is dense and weighty
futures are depressing
we should all be anorexic and suntan on porches toward our happiness
or kill ourselves every time we have headaches

ugly people will die too

2008-08-27T20:38:00.002-04:00

i had a job interview today, they want me to cut meat 12 hours a week for like $2 an hour or something. college must have been worthless. i'm reading Snow White by Donald Barthelme. it made me want to write a lot, i haven't written for a while, my room is too hot to write in, when i go up there i just want to lie down and sweat.

i'm going to make a chapbook with my stories and jenn's stories and i think it will be good to give to people.

different types of kombucha are different levels of tasting good, one was really bad, like piss-vinegar. i'm going to apply for an mfa i don't give a shit if it wastes anything. going to watch dawn of the dead. draw a picture of edward norton. explain to everyone how i just want to vomit on various nouns. explain why my favorite objects in the world are kitchen knives. explain what territory is and why it will kill people.

2008-08-27T12:18:00.000-04:00

a good video at hereexplodesmygiantface by matthew savoca

poems i wrote as drafts in gmail at work when i worked at the library, not so good, give me a job someone jk jk jk jk j k jk jk jk j kj kj kj k jk jjk

2008-08-25T16:55:00.002-04:00

11111111111111111111111111111111111

let us all carpool to california
when i spend hours with anyone
i want to make a sprinkler system
out of that person's head

i can debate for a long time
i know what i know is correct
what is difficult is not punching your face
or imagining it with a carving knife

yes, your face is a jack-o-lantern
i am finding you more disgusting than expendable
if your body is left over
it can be some kind of soup

i could stare into it for a while and see fractions of skull
i could eat it while it was cold and malcontent
or just call you derogatory names
and let you say the same things back

2222222222222222222222222222

There was that burner I burned my hand on,
but that burner, we threw out the window.
I remember it ripping branches off the pine tree,
the thud,
the metal casing bent like a balloon animal.

I play-doughed temptation to jump toward the stove,
run my hands along the serrated edges.
I set what I had done, a work of kindergarten art,
on the counter to dry. To harden and become susceptible.

The way the stove is lying there seem unprepared,
I want to lunge at it
because my instinct is to cower from soft things,
weather and its noises, but never anything metal or warm.
I always thought tetanus
was something not to be concerned about,
and I like the idea:
a swimming pool of rusted nails.

We laughed for a while and didn't give the stove a burial.
I leaned out the window, grinning,
goddamn scared
because I can already feel the future,
the way it yanks at your bones
until each socket is separated.
After, I would try to make light of reality,
of never walking again without the suctioned feeling
of loose joints colliding.

If the future is a wrecking ball,
I am something unrelated.

I had an idea that as long as on person laughed
we could fend off something.
I had an idea about an endless supply of stovetops,
and we didn't live forever,
but we lived as long as we wanted.

I Will Unfold You With My Hairy Hands by Shane Jones

2008-08-21T17:38:00.002-04:00

Shane mailed I Will Unfold You With My Hairy Hands to me and I've read it twice and wanted to blog about it, but wanted to try and order thoughts about what i would say about the chapbook, I still haven't organized thoughts, but I will say some things anyway.

Ryan Call talks about the way Shane turns sentences in IWUYWMHH, I like what he says.

The design is amazing, I keep thinking of how important design is for books. Presses like Calamari and Greying Ghost and McSweeney's make their books desirable just by making them look really good.

Each page looks good, and I think about every sentence was good. A coherent story-line is something that a lot of people look for while reading (I think) but I am more interested by someone who is willing to make every sentence of their work worth reading, with less regard to the end result. I'm going to flip open the chapbook twice and copy the first two sentences I see just to prove what I am saying:

"The next day I go to the garden and find the tree covered in wagon parts."

"When you closed the door the whale was pulled away from me."

Good, interesting sentences.

There is also this certain way Shane uses repetition that is really new and interesting. The word becomes twisted from the previous usage, it means something a little different, yet the reader knows they just read the word a page earlier. The effect (for me) was to say, "Why was I not the person to write this?" An example can be found in "Really Important Sentences." Number 1 contains the sentence "Your wallet smelled like oranges." This seems simple enough, but in Number 9, "Dreams aren't like orange juice" complicates the use of the word orange, questions what the word really means, and questions the importance of the meaning at all. This is done with many words throughout the chapbook. I think what I am talking about is similar to what Ryan Call talks about when he says "turning sentences" except I am thinking of the same idea applied to words.

I also like the way normal reality v. absurd is treated in the book. In "Messengers" the premise, which isn't realistic (people being able to communicate only through messengers) is treated as a normal thing, and in the context of the chapbook is very easy for the reader to accept as normal. Then Shane is able to insert sentences such as "Inside the red chimney lives a fox with ash for lungs," as a acceptable part of the story. I really like how he does this. It is manipulative to the reader, Shane makes the reader his bitch. But what I really like is when the person who is able to communicate with another person without a messenger (which in reality is normal and people expect to be able to do it) becomes the weird part of the story. Why should these two be able to talk, shouldn't they have to use the messengers also? Something that is accepted as normal becomes something outcast. I liked "Messengers" a lot.

Maybe I could say more, but I also might be boring people.
Plus I should keep looking for a job.
Bye.

TTB is a Mystic Powerhouse

2008-08-18T17:30:00.005-04:00

[Thank you Brandon for organizing all of this]

TTB blogs at the National Monument of Mysticness

If someone told you about Two Tears Boye, you may picture the man sitting on the basketball goal in this video

or maybe a person in this movie

but TTB is not any of those people. TTB could be something from my childhood, he could be at a WWF event at the expo center in Wichita, KS performing a DDT on both members of the Legion of Doom at the same time. If TTB was not so damn mystic, he might have once called Jake Roberts a bitch.

When TTB first appeared on the internet I was a little worried. But his videos and his part in the Jaguar Uprising were amusing and I watched them at work.

Then I realized that TTB was causing me not to work. TTB and the Jaguar Uprising support work, so I ws conflicted. Eventually I stopped watching the videos so I could spend more time working.

Little time passed, and I read zzzzz zzz zzzz by TTB and liked it. I read more on bore parade, one other very notable work being Kendra's Journals. I remember telling somone that bore parade was cool.

I read about the Jaguar Uprising Press. I read this blog post. These books really do look good. TTB and members of the Uprising put them together with their hands. They published Sam Pink, I thought, fuck yeah, I've always wanted someone to publish some Sam Pink. I work and when I get paid for that work I'm going to buy some of those hand-made books. I really do like what the JU Press is doing.

I think in a blog comment TTB once mentioned Eddy Guerrero.
TTB once mentioned Bud Light. I hate Bud Light. But that wouldn't stop me from sitting down and watching wrestling with TTB, but I think he lives on a cloud or something.

More blogging about other bloggers and free handjobs:

Tao Lin blogs about Gene Morgan
Noah Cicero blogs about Shane Jones
Blake Butler blogs about Mike Bushnell
Jillian Clark blogs about Kathryn Regina
Zachary German blogs about Ryan Manning
Jereme Dean blogs about Blake Butler
Justin Rands blogs about Matthew Savoca
Kathryn Regina blogs about Ryan Manning
Ken Baumann blogs about Jereme Dean
Kendra Grant Malone blogs about Brandon Scott Gorrell
Matthew Savoca blogs about Gena Mohowish
Shane Jones blogs about Jillian Clark
Stephen Daniel Lewis blogs about TTB
Ryan Manning blogs about Tao Lin, Noah Cicero, and Brandon Scott Gorrell
Connor O'Brien blogs about Tao Lin
Mike Bushnell blogs about Zachary German
Colin Bassett Blogs about Chris Killen, Zachary German, Connor O'Brien, The Mississippi Review, and has a contest running about the 'most powerful writers of serious literature'
Chris Killen blogs about Ken Baumann
Kathryn Regina blogs about Kendra Grant Malone
Sam Pink blogs about everyone

HAI

2008-08-16T02:17:00.000-04:00

i have a story at pequin

bye

GIANT FACE EXPLOSION

2008-08-10T22:36:00.002-04:00

i have a video i made on here explodes my giant face which is a nice site from daniel bailey. i think i like this video. i like here explodes my giant face.

it was hot outside today, i think i am going to ride my bike to the store. i'm really hungry.

kassia is posting pictures of good food from thailand.

i wish i went to thailand.

i stayed in kansas. i haven't left kansas for a long time. i haven't been outside the mid or mid-south US since i can remember clearly. i didn't start remembering things until i was 12 i think. i remember things before that i a fragmented way.

The Woman Down the Hall

2008-08-09T10:48:00.002-04:00

I really liked reading this ebook by Lily Hoang. Every section made me want to cringe without actually doing it, because I was more occupied with reading and seeing what the next sentence was.

A good line - "my icicle fingers into the sockets of my eyes and scooped them into a pail."

The design looks good too.

Lamination Colony bitches.

2008-08-08T16:26:00.004-04:00

ISSUE FOUR: UTILITARIAN HUMAN REANIMATION

UP NOW

READ

work by Brandi Wells, Shane Jones, Dan Bailey, Jenn Ashworth, Brandon Barrett, Matt Savoca, JA Tyler, Lisa Ladehoff, Sean Ruane, Noah Cicero, and Katrina Nguyen

thanks everyone

MAIM

2008-07-31T13:17:00.003-04:00

i moved out of my apartment today. i'm living nowhere until tomorrow. i already am missing living alone, it was nice and quiet.

when i checked out of the apartment the woman told me my blinds were dirty. i had windows like this, the blinds are in between the two pieces of glass. i looked at her and wondered how i was suppose to clean the blinds, and she looked at her board and checked a box that took $30 out of my deposit.

i think i am nice and considerate to people i don't know well, i have always been nice to the people working at the company i rented from, but i don't think that benefits me. i watched the person who lived next door to me (who was still moving out while the woman was checking out his apartment) walk to the stairs and throw a coffee table down and make a big hole in the wall, and the woman (who watched him do this) walked into his apartment and did the checklist that probably ended up similar to mine. i didn't make any holes in walls and had already moved all my things before she got there, but i don't think she thought that was nice of me to try and do. but she did tell me that the toilet wasn't clean because the water was still blue, you know, from cleaner.

i think i become stressed easily in the summer. i hate sweating. i read something like this once. i haven't slept much and feel dizzy if i look at the screen too long. the screen moves different, like playing that game descent.

i thought of punching the next person i see in the ear as hard as i can and doing it repeatedly until that person falls down.

when i move to the other apartment i'm going to sell a lot of things and use that money to buy food and books. if i own something you want tell me. i already gave away my limp bizkit cds though.

i hope no one is stealing all my shit right now.

get out of your face

2008-07-24T16:20:00.004-04:00

when some person is talking to me about something i am not interested in, i look around the room and when that person finishes the sentence i tell them "get out of my face"

i want that person to feel rejection, to feel that what was said needs to be taken to the other side of the room and pissed onto the wall

i read the news a lot while i'm online now, it is boring but i still read it, i don't skim it

in the last six months i have had a lot of writing accepted to online journals, none of it is online yet. i'm not putting robotmelon up until one of my poems is put online, a hostage situation. just kidding, i never got any artwork for robotmelon, i called the person and asked if he wanted to work on the drawings, he was tired, he has been too tired to draw the pictures for two months. I don't know why he says that, does being unemployed make a person tired. ass bag. I'm going to wank in his water bottle next time i see him.

good story matthew savoca

i've been moving and tired from moving. i promise i won't blog again until robotmelon is online and i have something interesting to say

88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

i typed all that before the eights a week ago and never posted it. it's 5:46, i moved a lot of things out of my apartment tonight, my back and right shoulder hurt a little. i'm on the floor. my eyes are tired. i feel like that LFO song that just says odd facts that no one gives a shit about.

Hey, Links,

2008-07-09T15:24:00.002-04:00

i usually read things, think "i should link that," then forget to do it for a long time

we heart four things is good, read it and the back issues if you want to do that, i enjoyed it

blake butler post on why book need to look nice

muxtape stumbler occupies me at work sometimes

congratuations to shane jones and his book LIGHT BOXES, adam robinson at publishing genius is publishing it, also some excerpts of it will be in the next issue of Robotmelon

were there other things? probably

i think i finished two things,

a chapbook if anyone wants to see it or something email me, i haven't received an email for two days

and my job, yeah yeah whatever

Poem

2008-07-06T22:41:00.002-04:00

I have a poem in spooky boyfriend 1 called cutting board

Nate Logan runs that, read the issue. It is quick to read and has a lot of good people.

Something

2008-07-02T21:58:00.006-04:00

Two good chapbooks exists here by Anne Boyer and Chuck Stebelton, I saw the two authors read, they read well, I bought the chapbooks, the chapbooks look good, the content is good also. Robert Baumann made those good chapbooks.

bought new alkaline trio cd

just finished proofing robotmelon, now I want the lazy art student helping me with the art to do the art and not be lazy, seriously, we talked about this a month and a half ago, I asked for like, three pictures, what is taking so long, take the twenty minutes out of your day and draw a goddamn robot arm, or else I'll do it and it will look terrible, look at this, that art is proof.

think I fell on my should so hard I'm having back problems because of the fall

Read Lorrie Moore today and some other things then sucked at writing

Read a poem by Brandon Scott Gorrell that is really good

been waking up at 5:12 each morning

my cat is horny:

playing playstation and licking her junk

i didn't blog for a long time, i hurt my shoulder and it was hard to type

2008-06-25T18:13:00.004-04:00

at times i feel cheated by my high school, mostly during every english class i took during college because nearly every other person had read the books that were assigned and i had not read any. i could have read on my own, but at the time i didn't know writers like chekov or kafka or camus existed.

so i just read The Metamorphosis and Other Stories for the first time.

i didn't think of anything that hasn't been said about it before. In the Penal Colony was good, i was reading it while riding on a stationary bike. the narration is really detached, so i read the first quarter of the story before realizing what the machine did.

In the Penal Colony and The Country Doctor (which i liked also) really showed that people are fucked no matter what they do. An example is the Doctor in The Country Doctor. He is trying to help a patient that is difficult to reach. He seems like an altruistic person, but by the end of the story he is crawling through snow trying to get home. In the Penal Colony ends with an officer who was "standing up for his beliefs" being murdered by what he was trying to protect.

also, kafka seems to have a fascination with things that were once popular but are forgotten in the present (In the Penal Colony and The Hunger Artist). The forgotten-about things aren't viewed in a nostalgic way, they are just stated as they are - something that people used to enjoy but now no one is interested in. i like this. instead of thinking of the past as a collection of good/bad things, the past is just a collection of things that happened before - absent of a value judgment.

also i just finished What is the What, that's right, i took me three months to read, i am the slowest reader on earth.

i still have a pile of books to read:

nevermind i am too lazy to list all of them

one is a history of WWI by John Keegan, and one is a history of Korea
the rest are fiction

i hurt my shoulder and wrote a poem about it, which is in a chapbook i just sent places, in that chapbook are also poems that are forthcoming in No Posit, Spooky Boyfriend, and somewhere else

i have been listening to robert johnson since monday.

if you are in the next issue of robot melon and are thinking, "where the fuck is my shit" i am sorry, i am waiting for artist pictures from an artist, he's a slow bitch, but it will be ok, this issue is really good.
*update* - I think in the fifth issue i'm going to publish spam mail. although i just read some submission and they were really good, so maybe no room for the spam. oreaih;cglk;ncxzcf

TRUMAN

2008-06-14T18:05:00.001-04:00

happy flag day everyone

this is a good story by jess rowan

masondixongravity'srainbow

2008-06-05T19:03:00.003-04:00

i got this chapbook by shane jones and chris killen yesterday, the person who delivers the mail put it in the wrong box. my neighbor probably read it a few times and wondered who had tricked him before he checked the address and gave it to me.

the chapbook is good and i was able to read it quick, which is nice because then i can read it again or do other things. i like how the poems refer to each other a lot, like the poem by shane jones called "a blurb about thomas pynchon" which talks about pynchon and haikus, and the next poem is "a blurb on the haiku," or chris killen's poems that teach the reader about microwaves.

good chapbook

mine says 1 of 20