12 x 10

Here's a list of books that stuck with me this year. Not all of them were published in 2007, but I read them all for the first time in 2007. They're in no particular order. Just 12 by 10 authors.

1. Elaine Equi, Ripple Effect
2. J. Allyn Roser, Misery Prefigured
3. Chase Twichell, Dog Language
4. Charles Wright, Littlefoot
5. Rebecca Loudon, Radish King
6. Jean Valentine, The Door in the Mountain
7. Peter Pereira, What's Written on the Body
8. Virginia Chase Sutton, Embellishments
9. Virginia Chase Sutton, What Brings You to Del Amo?
10. Ted Berrigan, Sonnets
11. C. Dale Young, The Day Underneath the Day
12. C. Dale Young, The Second Person

Baltimornin'

Frantic packing tonight, then work, then a morning nap, then off to Baltimore and Brian for a late xmas visit that is going to be too too short. The time crunch is a downer, but it's a chance to see the boy and get a double dip of Christmas; so ultimately it's to the good.

Minimal blogging, if any, until I'm back; unless of course the good folks of Charm City have seasonal Virgin billboards or there's something just too good to pass up.

Best. Christmas. Song. Ever.

Run DMC's, "Christmas in Hollis."

Merry Christmas!

Here's hoping that you and yours have the merriest of Christmases--without ending up drunk in an alley.

Verklempt

Ashley drew my name for our Secret Santa exchange. She made me this gorgeous collage/painting piece based on one of my poems, "In Transit." I can't wait til after the holidays to get it framed and hanged. It was perfect: unexpected and lovely.

"In Transit"


"In Transit" detail a


"In Transit" detail b


"In Transit" detail c

Pile O' Pressies...Stack O' Stuff Edition

The caption contest is over. Last week was intense--a flurry of writing, rewriting, rejecting and anxiously checking vote totals. Congratulations to Shanna for the fierce final round. Special thanks to CDY and Jacob for the sponsorship. And a bigger especial thanks to those who voted during the whole smackdown.

A quick moment just for Brian who said: "So you are the Jeffrey, not the Santino of Project: Caption."

~*~

The other day my mom wanted to talk about politics--usually not something she does. I'm obviously not always sympathetic to the GOP, and finally neither is my mother. She's a classic old-school conservative: minmal government invasion, low taxes, fiscal responsibility, yadda yadda. She has to vote in the GOP Primary here and is wondering how. But come the general she's definitely voting Democrat. Anyways--we're talking and she says "I'm really drawn to Joe Biden. I don't know why, but I am." Now I don't know if this means she likes his policy positions...or there's some other thing going on. Frankly, I don't want to think of my mom having the hots for him.

~*~

Some time last week I'd started a post going on about how I hadn't gone all crazy for Christmas this year just because I hadn't gone hog wild decorating and turning into the more feminine, less felonious Martha Stewart (that's for you Tommy.)

When I broke it down I realize that yes, yes indeed I had gone a little nuts, again, for Christmas (with my mother's help, we broke up the duties and each tackled specific things.) A quick breakdown of the final goody production:

19 dozen cookies baked
6 lbs of candy
2 quarts of spiced mixed nuts

And 5 stockings made from scratch. We decided to do a Secret Santa this year, but each gift was supposed to be hand-made. I drew Eric, but since I was overcome with holidizzy, I made one for Tommy and Ashley and a couple of others as well (just in case I needed a last minute pressy for someone.)

Eric's Stocking


Ashley's Stocking


Tommy's Stocking

Oh, the Eighties

I wore out a 45 of this song as a tween. It's over the top, self-important, rhetorically flawed...and yet...I can't help singing along when I hear it.

Annie Lennox and Al Green, "Put A Little Love in Your Heart"

OY!

Yesterday was crazy--all sorts of last minute things to do, plus sleep, then a dismally long night at work. I totally forgot to put up one of the xmas vids.

This is Tiny Tim's singular version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Ukulele and all. It's track 2 on A John Waters Christmas. Not as bad as the Chipmunks' "Sleigh Ride" but not as stirring as Roger Christian's "Little Mary Christmas" or Rita Faye Wilson's "Sleigh Bells, Reindeer and Snow."

But it's creepy.

Gayer Than a Well-Stuffed Stocking

A Classic

Headline of the Day

From the Yahoo Front page.

Seasons Greetings

Since the photo retrospective of christmas decorations didn't work out, I decided I'd spend the next week posting the christmas tunes I just can't live without each year.

First up is the classic David Bowie, Bing Crosby duet "Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth" from the late 70s. Drunk Crosby and Coked out Bowie...what else could more truly capture the season?

Rejected Captions for Round 3

Here are the rejected captions I generated for the last round of the Caption Contest Throwdown,

From T'was the Night at D. Beckham's
His Y fronts were stuffed with the tenderest care,
In hopes that the nanny soon would be there.

The L.A . Galaxy's equipment manager couldn't understand why they were always ordering new balls.

Rupert Murdoch uncovers the mystery of Posh's missing breast implants.

His nickname in the lockerroom was Taras Bulbous.

Early on Becks had to inform Posh that "poly-orchid" had nothing to do with botany.

Hernia trusses have never looked so sexy.

Bulge it like Beckham.

Whatcha gonna do with all them lumps, all them lumps down in my trunks. My trunks, my trunks, my lovely laddy trunks.

Bryant Park, Baby!

The final votes are in for the Caption Contest Showdown. What a squeaker.

For everyone that voted for me--thanks!

Brief IM Transcript:

Brian[8:35 P.M.]: so are you the santino of project caption?
Me[8:36 P.M.]: I'm the Jeffrey
Brian [8:36 P.M.]: hehe
Brian [8:36 P.M.]: he was the bottom 2 going into bryant

I'm the Jeffrey, the Angry Peanut, of Season 2 of Project: Caption.

And my boyfriend likes to bust my balls. Oddly, I'm blissful just now.

'Tis the Season

One of my plans for Yule blogging was to drive around town and get pictures of some of the more notable Christmas displays people do. Usually this town is reliably tacky--there used to be an entire road where everyone threw lights onto any stationary object, it was sort of Christmas cum Outsider Art, but they stopped years ago--but this year, lights-wise it's slim pickings. I don't know if it's because of the cost of electricity or what--but it kills one of my favorite traditions--driving people around and showing friends and newcomers the best of the worst. Even my cousin Pat, whose house is generally done up like Macy's Santaland's bastard cousin, is underdecorated. Best laid plains, yadda yadda.

*

So, while I figure out an alternative to the local front yard "Christmas Town," I'm going to pimp one of my favorite tracks from A John Waters Christmas. "Happy Birthday Jesus" by Little Cindy. This is just startling. An earnest spoken word piece, with some of the funniest lines regarding the birth, life and crucifixion of Christ that you can imagine. More startling? There's actually a YouTube for it. Sadly, embedding has been disabled. But you can check it out here. Seriously, do it. It's worth it. You'll thank me.

Thunderdome! Thunderdome!

The next round of voting is up for the Caption Contest Throwdown. There are four of us left and none of us escape unscathed.

Waiting for the Man(uscript)

In Anne's post that I mentioned below (scroll down if you want...I'm too lazy to do the linky thing) she wondered if editors cleared off the desks and their submission business for the holidays. I've been wondering that too. Mainly because I'm obsessing about the last packets I sent out. Usually I'm fine for about the first six to eight weeks...then after that I start wondering. At 10 to 12 weeks I get slightly more neurotic et cetera et cetera.

A lot of this I attribute to the first time I sent out a bunch of poems while in grad school. We had to do it as part of our final portfolios for a creative writing class. The gist was this: choose three magazines you really admired and wanted your work in. Do up a cover letter and submission, making a copy to reserve for the instructor's comments later. This was 1996 or 1997. I can't remember two of the magazines that I chose for submitting, but the third was Colorado Review. I was in my Jori phase then.

About a month later I got my first rejection--a sort of fortune cookie rejection: skinny skinny strip of paper, wide as a letter sized sheet, but maybe 3/4" tall. Seriously. That means they could reject approximately 14.67 poets per page depending on margins. About two weeks after that I got my second. It was about the size of a postcard. No notes, no sign really that the entire thing had been touched by a human hand except to reinsert my stuff back into the SASE.

So the semester goes on, still nothing back from CR . My instructor was really pleased that I hadn't heard anything back by the end of the semester. I was the only person in the class at the point with work still being considered someplace. Blah blah blah...there were moments I was a little proud of that, but at the heart of it, I just wanted to know. The semester ends, I relocate back to WV. Later that summer I sent a query letter , it had been about seven months since I submitted, including a new SASE with my updated address and went back to my life. No response to the query. So I just wrote it off and went on with classes and drinking and dying my hair. My poems changed, my reading changed, I didn't think much about the whole thing, when almost a year later I got my last SASE back. With a hand-written letter. Over a page. Thanking me for my poems, apologizing for the length of time they held them and for ultimately not being able to fit them into the magazine. I had that letter tacked up above my writing area for a couple of years and moves, eventually losing it about 5 years ago. I've been wracking my brain trying to remember who the editor was that was kind enough to do that and I'm coming up blank.

Considering it was my first time at the rodeo, I feel sort of lucky--I got the entire range of editorial response. I've kept that in mind the last couple of years while submitting--not everyone's going to get it, or like it. Time and resources are at a premium. But I do keep track of how they choose to respond (or not.) I have yet to decide if the fortune cookie rejection slip is worse than just getting my poems shoved back in an envelope or not. But ultimately, that doesn't matter. I look at the poems and I send them out again.

Stuff

Things worth reading this morning:

Rebecca's Fashion Corner.
Peter Pereira, Pundit.
Anne Haines asks a damned good question.

And by morning I mean 1:00 pm eastern time when I woke up.

*

Most of my xmas wrapping is done. I'm still waiting on a few things to arrive in the mail and then it's all done. I've tried not to go crazy this year shopping for Brian...but I see random little things and just immediately go all "Shiiiiny" and have to make myself not grab it.

Christmas cards are another beast entirely. Which is pitiful, because I only mail out 6 or 7 a year. I usually buy "Season's Greetings" ones or "Happy Holidays"--something generic that if it gets there between Xmas and New Year's it still fits the bill. This year I committed myself to "Merry Christmas." They must be done tonight and go into the mail tomorrow.

*

What the hell is a "Dirty Santa?" I've been hearing people talk about this a lot lately...when I'm out I eavesdrop. At first I thought it was Dirty Sanchez....and that's what got my attention. Two late-middle-aged ladies with perfectly set salon perms in the wal-mart talking about Dirty Sanchez. Alas, no. But then I've been hearing it more often the last week.

IDQoTM--This Wheel's on Fire

Siouxsie and the Banshees covering the Band's "This Wheel on Fire." And yes...it's also the AbFab theme. It's a confluence of fabulosity. Check out that Laura Antipova meets Cruella DeVille outfit.

Charm Free

I got caught up this afternoon on the last couple of Project Runway episodes. Every week I find myself wanting to hunt down Tim Gunn and assault him for that line in the first episode about the breadth and depth of talent in this pack of competitors. Horse hocky.

I can understand the production company wanting to steer away from persona heavy drama this season--rather like Top Chef did this past season. Give us strong creative people with points-of-view and let their work speak for itself. Fine--it's a good idea. In Top Chef's case it worked this season. So far, for me anyway, Project Runway is falling flat . Except for Christian and crazy Elise, these people seem to need drugs or serious personality implants. Ok--Victorya is a passive aggressive bitch but that's not personality and it's not why I hate her (her first two outfits are all the reason I need. Metallics and coordinating flower/bow/knot things...gag. If you can get to a Steve & Barry's and see her winning design for the Sarah Jessica Parker challenge do it. It looks like a burlap sack raped a painter's smock. Hidjeous. The racer back vest is almost cute. Almost. But there's maybe 5 people in the western hemisphere it would look good on.) Ultimately though it's the sheer boring clothes that makes me stop part-way through and think "Why am I watching this again?" I can't remember from week to week who did what. There's no fear of Nina or Kors going off on clothes being too editorial. It's all safe middle-of-the-road bleh.

Yesterday's Horoscope was wrong.

No bingo. No dollars. No toilet paper cozy. Though there were plenty of people on-site last night who probably thought they'd be good gifts.

Karaoke filtering downstairs into my right ear (the worst karaoke you can imagine... I've committed my fair share of karaoke karnage and have heard a good bit too. But what I heard last night coming from the upstairs party--wowza.) Live music from back in the bar filtering up into my left ear (his set included a Roy Orbison medley, that didn't suit his range; a Johnny Cash medley, that didn't suit his range...etc etc. Plus Neil Young, the Beatles and Van Morrison. It's hard to be a man and not sing tenor nor bass). It was stereo hell.

The upstairs party had a great time. Hokey pokey and everything (structural integrity of the floor be damned). Stunningly, it was a dry event.

On the upside, I had poetry in the mail when I finally woke this afternoon.

Horrorscope

Tonight you'll take the lead in a bingo tournament, and come home with a pocket full of one dollar bills, and a crocheted toilet paper cover with a doll's body on top. Things just don't get better than this.

From their mouths to god's ears. I've been wanting a toilet paper cozy. All the relatives that used to make that stuff have passed on.

What Immoral Hand or Eye

Loni Anderson

+

Hungry Koi

=

Jessica Simpson

Rejected Captions

Now that the latest round of voting for C Dale's Caption Contest Throwdown is done, here are some of the also rans I came up with.

Four heads no waiting

Free Valtrex with every 8 pack.

My secret? I puke.

Wait 'til you see how I open the second one.

Not to be outdone by Screech, Mario finished his sex tape with the "Dirty Lopez."

Corona: Strong enough for a man. Made for a wanker.

From Mario Lopez and the makers of Has-Been comes the new fragrance for men: Chunder.

Always ready to please his Dancing with the Stars fans, Mario reenacts his Paso Douchebag triumph.

IDQoTM--Peek-A-Boo

My Siouxsie Sioux gateway....from waaaay back in 1988.

Vote or Die

The next round of CDY's Caption Contest Throwdown is up.

Go check it out for some Mario Lopez and Project Runway-inspired snark. Peter and Aaron have outdone themselves.

Frankly, I think they should do all the major lit prizes this way.

WA-FUG?

It is now exactly two weeks until Xmas and it's supposed to be 65 degrees and cloudy here.

Dreck the Halls

The other night, Eric, T-Shuffle and Shlee and I were sitting around after gorging on cookies, discussing xmas carols and songs we could live without.

There are few things worse than the execrable "Christmas Shoes;" oh, I know there are novelty songs and overwrought renditions of classics foisted on us every yule. But really, this five minute nugget of maudlin crap makes me want to slit my wrists. It's like someone took the plot of a Lifetime movie and set it to music. You can find it here if you're reeeeallly curious. I'm not going to inflict it on anyone.

What's your worst?

The Perils of Pauline

In which Pauline goes to a youth group meeting and sees boys in diapers held by girls and spoonfed.

Praise Jesus and read the rest here.

Get Ur Fat On

Snarky the Snowman--ganache amok.

It's that time: forget the shopping, the songs, the decorations...I pretty much hate all that shit. Except bad light displays. My favorite part of the whole Xmas Xtravagaaaanzaaa is the food. Maybe it's the 'mo in me or the Appalachian...I dunno. But I'll probably spend great parts of the next two- and-a-half-weeks baking and tasting and sneaking off to grab a cookie or some candy when I should be eating something with vitamins, anti-oxidants, fiber and minerals instead of shortening, butter and chocolate.

Hopefully, not all of them will turn out as evil looking as Snarky did. I kept him for myself.

Supplementary Inner Drag Queen of the Day

I am a friggin spirit of vengeance today. I'm channeling my inner vengeance demon. It's a Buffy thing. But yea--I'm out to take bitches down.

Oh Those Brits and Their Stiff Upper...

The understatement in the emergency call floors me. From the BBC.

Fire crew aid in penis operation

Firefighters helped operate on a man who was rushed to hospital after getting a metal ring stuck on the end of his penis.

Doctors at Royal Wigan Infirmary in Greater Manchester put out the alert after fearing the man faced amputation as the ring cut off his blood supply.

Two firefighters used a mini hand grinder to cut through the ring during a 20-minute procedure.

It is understood the man, aged in his 40s, was given an anaesthetic.

The firefighters placed a thin sheet of metal around his penis to protect the skin while removing the ring, which appeared to have been cut off from the end of a pipe.

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service confirmed fire crews were called to the hospital at around 12.10 GMT on Thursday to "deal with a situation".

A spokeswoman for Royal Wigan Infirmary said they were unable to comment about the incident.

EW...I Just Puked in My Mouth a Little

Sometimes I wonder how we manage to survive, given all the shit (literally) that we're exposed to in our air, our food and drink. I'm not even talking the (now and scarily) normal sort of food and product recalls. I found this on AOL news this morning.

Restaurant ice cubes dirtier than toilet water

A recent study in Chicago found that an alarming number of restaurants, more than 1 out of every 5, has more bacteria and fecal matter in their ice cubes than in a random testing of toilet water.

Stuff

Xmas shopping is nearly done. Yay. I just sucked it up and hopped online last night and clicked away. The only person who's getting something that's not ordered yet is my mother. She's always a last-week-before-Xmas sort of buy. She is nearly impossible to shop for--and I refuse to cave in and just resort to gift cards. She never wants anything. She always deflects by saying "Save your money, I don't need anything." What do you do with a mother like that? I should confess, as Brian can confirm, I have a variation of the same behavior: "I don't really want anything." Usually if pressed, I just say books.

~*~

To everyone that voted for me in the last round of CDY's Caption Contest Throwdown, thank you.

~*~

Why aren't FedEx men the objects of lust that UPS men are?

Inner Drag Queen of the Month

Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Kiss Them for Me."

For Aaron

Pity it's not Daniel Craig....

Driven

I am hyper-reactive...I know this. Prone to panics, to fits of pique, to fly off the handle and to want to crush you like a bug if you cross me or one I love. That character flaw is why I'm so driven to maintain stability.

Why even when I was porking up on prozac and gorging on butter and cream I didn't care, because I felt even. Because the jackhammer heart slowed; the vomitting stopped; the urticaria stopped.

Tonight, driving to work, for the first time in years, I felt that out-of-control, beyond-my-control, instability. The roads were wretched, a good 1/2 inch of ice, frosted with snow. No sign of center line. Uneven and rutty. Truly, truly, wretched. I never went above 30 mph and tried to touch my brake as little as possible. By the time I got to work and turned off the ignition, my hands shook in that old panic attack way. Almost like palsy. The body resisting its own stability. All I could do was sit until it passed. I made a quick call to let folks know I made it safely. I let the cold seep in.

Someone Call Project Runway

I can just hear Heidi (it'd have to be done via voiceover) telling the designers: For this challenge you got 100.00. You had 24 hrs to use your fabric from Mood and taxidermied rats to make lingerie for your tranny models. Let's start the runway.

I bet Rickie wouldn't cry that episode--unless he was really into rats.

Click here for the madness.

Caption Contest Pandering

C Dale Young is running the final Caption Contest of the Year--previous winners are being voted on. I'm up this round against some pretty funny shit, so send a little e-mojo my way by going to Avoiding the Muse and voting.

Snow

We've gotten our first real snow here yesterday. Lovely little fluffy white snow... covering a layer of ice. We got more over night and it's still snowing intermittently now. Schools are closed today, releasing early, the whole nine.

I ran around yesterday morning doing errands, buy catfood, run to the bank, blah-dee-blah-dee-blah. No biggie. Trying to go through the bank drive through, I noticed one side was closed. So I decide I'll just do a u turn an it should be fine, I can get back into the open side, deposit the money, get on my way. As I'm about to enter the street, I apply my brakes. I don't stop, I just slide. A Head Start school bus is passing directly in front of me, I'm still sliding. It feels like I'm going to push through the floorboard trying to get the brakes to engage enough to stop me. Finally, once the burning brake smell wafted up, the car stopped. About 4 inches from the street. The tail end of the bus had just gone past.

Inner Drag Queen of the Month

I've been obsessively listening to the new Siouxsie Sioux album, MantaRay this week. It makes me wish I'd bought that riding crop I saw in a porn store once.

Chapped

I've realized that I am less a generative sort of artist than one who just notices things and keeps track of them until I might use them. It explains a lot about how I keep tons of files that are little more than images that I arrange and rearrange until they please me. I've got about 20 pages of stuff that I think of as a long poem or sequence that is coming together faster and faster and faster, like albumen congealing in boiling water; eventually it's going to be a chapbook. And it's all due to one phrase that a friend of mine used...it's been in my head for weeks now...and it's the ordering principle--as soon as I heard the phrase I saw the possibilities. Now all I need to do is gin up the nerve to ask permission to use it.

Meet the Feebles

I had the CNN YouTube republican debates on while I was at work. Sadly, the cable here doesn't carry Bravo, so I have to wait for one of the infinite repeats to watch Project Runway.

It was like every one of my drunk uncles got a suit and podium. Guns good! Brown people bad! Taxes bad! Hulk smash! O wait...the Hulk is a being of color, bad analogy. Surge surge surge! Send Hillary to Mars! (Sadly, I agree with that one.) Gays aren't even 3/5ths of a person! But Mike Hukabee wants their votes because they probably hate brown people too. I'm guessing that's what he means when he talks about shared values and principles that make us republican.

It's frightening to watch these hateful old white men trying to outdo one another to be the scariest and craziest. They have all the appeal of televangelists and chancre-ridden whores. Whores, however, have enough integrity not to behave as though they're fucking you because they like you. As long as they don't ooze on me, I can deal with whores.

Submission

I'm tossing this out to the greater blogosphere.

For those of you who go through the slush pile rigamarole as a route to publication, how do you pick and chose lit mags? It's tough to keep up with what's out there. I try to surf websites and snoop around before sending out packets--but I'm wondering if there's a better, centralized source?

Dos/Don'ts for Younger Poets

Via the fantublous Brent Goodman at the Brother Swimming Beneath Me this tag: four Dos and Don'ts for younger writers. If you're reading, consider yourself tagged.



DO



1. Read. Everything.

Not just poets you love, but those that leave you cold. Especially those that leave you cold. Figure out what it is you don't respond to in their work. Sometimes the easiest way to establish who you are is in relation to who you aren't. Aside from poetry--read everything. Learn about art, music, history, politics, the world, fiction, science. Regarding art--study other art forms, become conversant in their histories, trends and technical languages; learn how they intersect with literature, exploit those similarities. Read trash. Read literature. Just read.



2. Imitate.

Find writers you respond to and set aside time just to take apart their poems and imitate them. Look at how they open their poems and end them. Middles generally take care of themselves. Don't worry about not being innovative. You're learning here. No one started out a genius.



3. Work Every Day.

Devote part of every day to your poems. This doesn't mean, necessarily, generating new poems. But spend time with them. Jot down notes, lines, questions; think about what does and doesn't work. Tend to your work like any other daily task.



4. Persevere.

Keep at it. Don't stop. Find supportive people you admire and trust, share your work with them and take their comments and criticisms graciously. Become part of a writer's group or a local workshop if you can. If there isn't one, start one.



DON'T



1. Fixate on what others are doing.

Do your own thing. Don't get sucked into who gets published where, who wins what, who gets praise, etc etc etc. That way lies discouragement and madness.



2. Take Rejection Personally.

Sure, your work is an extension of you...you thought it up, you labored, you slaved, you want it out in the world. That doesn't mean that everyone is going to respond to your sonnet sequence the way you'd like. That's just the way of the world. Taste is subjective and a given reader on a given day might not respond strongly. That doesn't mean you're not talented; that your work's not good. It just means you haven't found the right place for it yet.



3. Be An Asshole.

Faith in your abilities is crucial...but don't become an overweening egomaniac. There are always better (and worse) writers out there. When faced with a misreading or a comment that you feel is off the mark, don't be defensive, don't be dismissive. Be gracious.

4. Expect Less of Yourself.

Push yourself to try new things: new subjects, new forms, new voices. Try to top yourself every time you write.

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

I should be blogging about getting to see Brian for the last four days: about dinner with friends Saturday and Monday night; about our cat-sitting and how sweet speckly Nina loves him and drools on him in bed; about insane amounts of shopping over two days and how I've come (back) in touch with my inner Imelda Marcos (the shoe part, not the lacy black panties); about how he brought me Radish King and reading it in bed with him and how much I lovelovelove and envy parts of it so much my gums tingle. But that's all got to wait.

See, part of my job involves handling money. I account for it, I fill out forms, I do it up for deposit. Not being the most mathy boy in the free world, I tend to be meticulous about this, counting it three or four times before settling in to finish the forms. Anyway, I get home today and find a message that I need to call work. Seems that one of my deposits came up short, $250.00 short, in fact. So it's been stressfull today--how does one (dis)prove a negative? Even after getting the verdict from one of the owners that I'm still employed, I feel like I'm scooped out; I'm headachey, I'm still nauseous. I'm determined to not get down...but right now...well...it's hard....And this is not what I wanted to put out here....

In the Middle of the Night, I Steal Ideas

From Peter, at the Virtual World, I found out about the haiku blog post. Go over and check his out.

Leaving Work at 7:15 am, I Pass the Hotel Playground

Eight men stand there, proud.
They point to their bucks: hanging
from the swingset; dead.

Take the Challenge

I'm passing this along after seeing it at ]Outside the Lines[. Each word you get right in this quiz adds ten grains of rice to the bowl toward ending world hunger. It's a little challenging in places but it's for a good cause. So far they've provided 3,403,520,350 grains of rice overall. Yesterday they added 147, 385, 350 grains.

When Recycling Goes Too Far

Courtesy of Slate.

Things NOT to do with Thanksgiving leftovers

Turkey fried rice. Turkey-mushroom casserole. Turkey dinner muffins. Turkey samosas. Turkey hash. Strawberry-turkey spinach salad. Turkey and veggie lasagna. Turkey chowder with wild rice, crimini, and pancetta. Turkey quesadilla suiza,. Additionally, curried turkey salad on greens, turkey and leek risotto, turkey bundles,turkey tetrazzini, turkey pho,
moo shu turkey
Actually, I'm sort of fond of turkey hash. Especially if you use non-candied roast sweet taters instead of regular russets. The turkey abuses I remember from childhood include: turkey salad sandwiches, creamed turkey (both alone and with egg noodles,) turkey casserole (mix the turkey with cream of mushroom soup and top with old stuffing), turkey noodle soup, turkey a la king. And let me just say...my dear sweet mama did not do ALL these...but these are ones I remember.

What did/do you do with your thanksgiving leftovers?

Jigga WHA?

I've seen this a couple of other places but felt compelled to post...just in case we don't traffic the same sites. One aspect of the Conservative Right's arguments that I've always found fascinating vis a vis both liberals and homosexshuls is that we are apparently obSESSed with filth and doing the dirty. However...over at Conservapedia, you can look at their top 10 viewed pages. And what do we find?

Most viewed pages

1. Main Page‎ [1,929,132]
2. Homosexuality‎ [1,622,733]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [517,944]
4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [421,993]
5. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [414,651]
6. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [400,250]
7. Homosexual Couples and Domestic Violence‎ [373,837]
8. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [332,044]
9. Homosexuality and Anal Cancer‎ [294,230]
10. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [293,375]

WOW. Just....WOW. Gay Bowel Syndrome? Is there even such a thing? Paging the doctors. Is this like irritable bowel syndrome but with shopping? What would Freud say about this list? A sociologist? An anthropologist? These people (if the site stats are true) are obsessed with what homosexshuls do. More so than I am.

So. If Conservapedia was created as the conservative palliative to Wikipedia, what would the godless liberal users of that site look at? Here's the 10 most viewed pages for 11/07 so far.

1. Main Page 27 543 000
2. Wiki 825 818
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 376 636
4. Naruto 367 636
5. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock 362 455
6. United States 301 909
7. Wikipedia 300 545
8. Deaths in 2007 292 909
9. Heroes (TV series) 280 636
10. Transformers (film) 277 091

The first mention of sex doesn’t even enter Wikipedia’s most viewed pages until number 17—list of sexual positions. And in the entire top 100 most viewed pages, there are only 8 pages that are even remotely related to sex, sexual intercourse, anatomy, etc. Most shockingly—there are no links directly to homosexuality (well…unless you count anal sex, but I’m not willing to budge on that one…it’s not strictly our domain. Even straight people have anuses.)

But Think of the Chiiiiildren

Even though it means I'd have to go to Kentucky, I'd like to shake this restaurant manager's hand.
From WAVE-3 in Louisville.

Woman says restaurant kicked her out because of crying child

It seems to happen all the time: an unhappy child causing a scene in a public place. But one Louisville mom says a Springhurst restaurant went too far, throwing her and her family out of the restaurant. WAVE 3 Investigator Lindsay English spoke with the mom and the restaurant's representatives to sort out what happened.

Amanda Williams says her lunch at O'Charley's in Springhurst ended before it began, with her and her family being shown the door.

"I was so upset," Williams said. "I cried. I was devastated. I was embarrassed. Everybody was looking at me."

Williams says her tears came, after the restaurant's general manager asked her, her three sons and her sister to get out.

"He told me that if I could not hush my son, that he was going to have to ask us to leave," Williams recalled. She says her 20-month old son continued to cry, despite efforts to calm him. She claims that's why General Manager Joe Houle gave them the boot.

"He stood there with a very serious look on his face, and he says 'if you can't control your child, then we'll have to ask you to dine at another establishment," Williams said.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Newness

This is the latest poem. It won't be here long.

[and scene.]

A Passage to Indian

I had my first Thanksgiving dinner of the week last night and it was remarkably tasty. Shlee found an Indian-inspired/flavored Thanksgiving menu in a recent Food & Wine magazine; so she and Eric and Tommy and I decided to take recipes, prepare them, then get together and have at it. We made almost the entire suggested menu, excepting a Rosewater and Mango cocktail and Indian popcorn. If you enjoy Indian food at all, you should try this. (The pumpkin and yellow split pea soup that Eric brought is delish. The roasted curried butternut squash and chick peas is going to become a staple...I let my mom sample some...she's not the most adventurous eater, but she loved it. Tommy's chai caramel fondu was just decadent...and it's perfect with bananas.) It was one of the best at home, sit-down meals I've had in years. We ate until we were near-immobile. It was beautiful. The yogurt-and-spice marinaded turkey breast (Shlee's first turkey ever) was perfect: moist on the inside with a lovely crisped skin. I'm convinced that the marinade must enhance the properties of tryptophan because we all just zombied out for a bit, marshalling our stregnth until we could tackle the dessert course. Seriously...hit the hyperlink and check it. They also have two other full menus...so who knows what you might find.

Bidness

Posting will be heavy the next two days...probably three posts a day...maybe more. I've found a lot of fun, quirky, irritating stuff that I wanna share. I'm a giver like that. I'm also prone to cold sores...but I digress. I'll be off cavorting with Brian over the weekend and won't be back to (semi)regular blogging until Tuesdayish.

Just Click on the Link

Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians.

This is genius. And they have t-shirts!

That's Me!

From Today's Horrorscope:

You like to think of yourself as easygoing, but even you know that that description really doesn't apply to anything about you -- try fiery, ornery, combative, stubborn or even pig-headed.

Mmmmm Tasty

From Yahoo News.

Reuters Photo

What Brings You Here

A list of recent keyword activity that brought fellow travelers to my l'il corner of the web. These are in order...I'll let you guess which is my favorite.

Elissabeth Hasselbach baby

What do poppers mean on Craigslist.

Ash and misty gaying.

Fluffy maribou feathers bulk.

How can increase pamela's boobs size video.

Mens room art book.

8 Down

I finished a new poem today, bringing my total to 8 for the month...not all of them new new...some have been in the works for months maybe years. I'd get to a point where I couldn't go on with them...where I knew if I kept going I'd overwork them, over-control them (and controlling a poem is my greatest vice, sad to say), wring any vitality from them so I leave them in my drafts/fragments file until the time seems right to finish them. Today's poem is new new and I sort of love it and sort of see its limitations...but I'm sending it off to people I trust to see what they say. 20-odd poems to go and my drafts file is empty.

O Sweet Jeebus

The winsome (wince-some?) Camille P. is back in the virtual pages of Salon, bringing her own interesting mix of wit and wisdom...does she want to be the lesbian Harold Bloom? (Or is Harold Bloom already the lesbian Harold Bloom.) Seriously...if she wishes to be such an emasculating scold she should be wearing stilettos and brandishing a riding crop.

I'm not even going to TRY and take her down or call bullshit. TRex at Firedoglake has already done it. Just go here.

Done and Done

This has been a frightfully productive week. It's unnerving.

I got my aquarium broken down, re-substrated, replanted and functioning pretty well. At least none of the fish are dead. Got my car serviced (well...they're still waiting on a part for the radiator.) Got some poems done and am just about ready to send out more packets. I'm spent.

~*~

I'm working a graveyard shift. 11pm to 7 am. I sleep while it's still light out. Better than at night. It's bizarre. Most nights I wake up 3 or 4 times. Twice if I'm very lucky. Lately I only wake up once (unless I forget to turn off the phone which happened today "Hello?" (background noise static static) "HELLO." "Hi, this is LaShawn from Verizon, could I speak to Rob." "There's no Rob here." Click. I hate when people ask for Rob, or Bob, thinking that those are the default settings for the name Robert. All you're doing is pissing my happy ass off, insuring that I won't listen to your spiel or even consider buying what you're selling. Seriously--who tells these poor people that sort of plastic familiarity is charming? I feel the same way about overly-attentive, perky, chatty wait staff. I don't want you crouched down at my level. I don't care what you think about an entree unless I ask. It's not going to help your tip. Actually, I'll be more likely to tip better if you come and go as unobtrusively as possible. Check on our drinks, see if we want coffee or dessert then get the hell outta there. I know I'm not like most people--but seriously, this aggressively friendly, overly familiar stuff has got to go.

~*~

Project Runway Season 4 started tonight. All I can say is "Meh." I've got no real dog in this fight...which is strange, because I usually latch onto people the first episode. Way way way too much metallic fabrics. Very 80s cuts and proportions on a lot of the outfits. If this is where fashion is heading, then I'll just check out til next season. I lived through the 80s once. I don't want to go back. It's fun to have this back though. Brian and I always post mortem the episodes on the phone before he goes to bed. We don't agree on things...and we rarely like the same people, but it's fun. Just being able to be snarky and funny together is a great gift. Best line of the night: Heidi Klum saying "She looked like she was pooing fabric down the runway."

~*~

My arrangements are all set for AWP. I got all my confirmations via email today. Huzzah! I'm frightfully excited. It's my first one. And I'm trying to remember the last time I was in NYC. It had to be at least 10 years, 12 hair colors and 3 dress sizes ago.

Poem for the Day

Not done one of these in aaaages, so I'm here to rectify it. It's an odd choice, because Sharon Olds is not a touchstone poet for me; I admire her, but she's not a poet I think of as influential or informative to my own process. All that aside, this is a poem that gut punched me when I first read it years ago, it's one I think about often, especially lately.

The Language of the Brag
I have wanted excellence in the knife-throw, I have wanted to use my exceptionally strong and accurate arms and my straight posture and quick electric muscles to achieve something at the centre of a crowd, the blade piercing the bark deep, the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock. I have wanted some epic use for my excellent body, some heroism, some American achievement beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self, magnetic and tensile, I have stood by the sandlot and watched the boys play. I have wanted courage, I have thought about fire and the crossing of waterfalls, I have dragged around my belly big with cowardice and safely, my stool black with iron pills, my huge breasts oozing mucus, my legs swelling, my hands swelling, my face swelling and darkening, my hair falling out, my inner sex stabbed again and again with terrible pain like a knife. I have lain down. I have lain down and sweated and shaken and passed blood and feces and water and slowly alone in the centre of a circle I have passed the new person out and they have lifted the new person free of the act and wiped the new person free of that language of blood like praise all over the body. I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, I have done this thing, I and the other women this exceptional act with the exceptional heroic body, this giving birth, this glistening verb, and I am putting my proud American boast right here with the others.

The Waters Run

These bits are from a week-old interview in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Q It's been your job for about the past 40 years to think up shocking ideas, and --

A No, no, no, I'll stop you on that one. I don't agree with shocking. If I was just trying to be shocking, my career would have stopped in 1972. I never tried to top it. I tried to surprise you and make you laugh at things that aren't safe to laugh at. It's easy to shock. It's harder to surprise people and make 'em laugh.

Q Anyway, surprising ideas. The question then is, does it get harder --

A No, every day I'm inspired by things. I live in Baltimore, that always inspires me. Things happen to me in my daily life that are funny every day. I was in a bar in Baltimore and I asked a guy what he did for a living. He said, "Can I be frank? I trade deer meat for crack." I can't think that up. I could think of three movies about him. I mean, does he wait at a deer crossing sign and gun it when he needed a fix? It takes a while to get deer meat so you have to plan ahead, which isn't what most junkies do. Little things like that, anything can inspire me.

Q A couple weeks ago we had a case of somebody seeming normal but behaving oddly --

A Oh, at the airport! I hear that airport is becoming a big tourist attraction. I want to make a movie about it. "The Last Stall on the Left." Sex in a public bathroom? How could you? In every airport bathroom it's very crowded. It's in the main airport, eh? I have to go there. Which stall was it, do you know?

~*~

Q But what about "Hair --

A That's the most devious thing I ever did. Middle American families are going to "Hairspray" and seeing two men singing a love song. They're clapping and encouraging their 15-year-olds to date black guys. If I ever did anything perverse, that's it.

Q But it's been very well- receiv --

A Of course it has, that's what's subversive about it! They don't see. I'm an insider now. I'm the establishment. Isn't that hilarious? I've always wanted to sell out. Nobody would buy me.

~*~

Q You're at work on a children's film?

A I'm hoping to make it. We'll see if anybody gives me the green light. I'm in the middle of it. It's a terribly wonderful children's Christmas adventure called "Fruitcake." That's about all I say about it because after you do something, you have to talk about it the rest of your life.

Q What was your favorite movie as a kid?

A Always "The Wizard of Oz," because I wanted to be the witch. In "Cinderella" I rooted for the stepmother. ... I rooted for the queen in "Snow White," I rooted for Captain Hook. Always I was on the wrong side. Which continues.

Separated at Birth II

George Wendt as Edna Turnblad in Hairspray


Charlotte Rae, Mrs Garrett from
Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life

Separated At Birth

Blogging's been minimal lately. Nothing has really struck me. I've just been working on poems, going to work, cleaning up hairballs...you know...usual shtuff. But in the last two days I've found some fabulous photos.

Professional Junkie, Pete Doherty



Danny Devito as the Penguin in Batman Returns

Afternoon Robe Blogging

I am apartment/cat sitting for a friend away on a ten day cruise--I'd envy him, but he's going to be travelling through the aftermath of Noel, so now I'm just trying not to let everything spiral away into worst-case scenario mode. Hard to do when that's my default setting.

~*~

His cat is bizarre. I thought they were almost constitutionally incapable of separation anxiety...not this one. She firmly believes in near constant attention and affection. It is maddening when you're trying to sleep.

~*~

I really like this nocturnal schedule I'm on; waking up in the afternoon, once the day has settled into what it's going to be seems right to me. I've yet to work out the logistics of certain things (running to the bank, getting the car serviced) but I'm sure I'll adapt.

~*~

Going tomorrow to visit a poet friend. I'm anxious. It's always a marvellous way to spend an afternoon.

Reprogramming

There's been a change in my work schedule...no more landscaping for the time being...I'm inside now, doing front desk shift work (and praying for the day I can rip off Rebecca's "My Glamorous Job".) I'm working from 11 pm to 7 am. This is all fine. This I can deal with. I can utilize the programs, I know where everything is, I can actually tone the snark and contempt down long enough to help someone if they have a problem. It's pretty quiet at night, so I have time to read and work on poems at odd moments with no problem. What I'm not sure I can deal with are the two idiot xtian woman who bring daily devotional books on their shifts but cannot count money. Perhaps I should write a devotional for them...something about a humble girl in no neck Missouri who enumerates her blessings....perhaps the idea of counting will carry over...thick as these two are, I doubt it.

~*~

Last night, while out sneaking a ciggy, about 1 in the am, I saw a drunk college boy staggering toward campus from one of the crap bars. He was dressed like Hulk Hogan. It was pitiful.

~*~

Sent out poems at the end of last week. Working on more. We shall see.

Tap Three Times Photoblogging

Some snaps, courtesy of Shlee, from last weekend's party.

Left to right: Jenny, Tommy, Me, Eric, Shlee

Stuff I Learned Today

Despite what they say on FoodNetwork--using a ziplock bag with a piping tip is not nearly as effective as a pastry bag.

~*~

Spray paint, when used inside smells (and behaves) like poppers.

~*~

Two new poems in a finished draft stage this week. No idea what they're doing, what they mean, how they work, but I like them.

~*~

What have you learned today?

Herm...Really? That's all?

Since there's little more boring than waiting for glue to dry, I took the Tickle, Are You Masculine or Feminine test to while away time.

You're 42% feminine
This is based on how you scored on a variety of traits that, founded on classic research and our own studies, are typically associated with women.

You're also 58% masculine, which is based on how you scored on traits that are typically associated with men. When we compare your results with other men it shows that you are somewhat more feminine than other men.

From the "report" itself...

It is not uncommon for men to have higher masculine scores than feminine and for women to have higher feminine scores than masculine, but there are also many people whose masculine and feminine qualities are roughly equal to one another. When a person's masculine and feminine qualities are balanced they either have high levels or low levels of both. Each configuration has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Your test results indicate that you're Androgynous.

There're also some bullshit charts and stereotypical crap (being a sports fan is apparently very critical to being a man...likewise being cheerful is crucial to being a woman. I fail miserably at both.)

Trapped in the (Water) Closet

So, part of yesterday's weirdness. I stop at the local big box discount shopping mart to grab some groceries and things before heading properly home yesterday. Before running around to grab 50 cent tangelos and supplies for finishing my Halloween costume, I ducked into the mens room for a "furtive grab" and tinkle. The handicapped stall was occupied as was one of the two, urinals, but...desperate times etc etc. So, overlooking my usual uneasiness about peeing next to a total stranger, I stepped up and started to go. Now...I should've been patient, talked myself down and waited. Because just as I was stepping up, it became clear to me that the guy using the urinal was leaning over it, resting his forearms against the wall and his head against his forearms. That alone should've told me to back off and just wait...bladder discomfort be damned. As I stepped up, he leaned back upright, turned toward me and started saying something about being old and having to hold onto it. I had no idea wtf he was talking about, because he very obviously hadn't been holding onto anything prior...unless, like G/C Lionel Mandrake in Dr. Strangelove he meant his precious bodily fluids. I just muttered something non-comittal, look at the tile and think of England. He proceeds to rest his forearms atop the divider and rests his chin on them and starts talking to me about his "prostrate" problems. I look over at him, black black black dyed hair and pencil thin mustache...just a hint of a perm to the hair. At that moment I want to be anywhere else. He goes on about his condition. About his swelling, but no cancer, and a rather detailed description of the procedure he had that alleviates the swelling problem...I finished up as quick as I could, washed and dried my hands and got the hell outta there.

~*~

Am finishing up my Halloween costume today (and this isn't as totally unrelated as it seems.) I'm going as Larry Craig and his bathroom stall.

Photoblogging, the Reading

Back from Bmore. Good god. What a strange day. Off to unpack and get some grub, but wanted to post these photos from Shlee.

80 Degrees and Pissy

It's just a week before Halloween and it's almost 80 degrees here in Baltimore. Crazy. I just ran to the grocery store and Lambda Rising in a light shirt, shorts and flip flops, the whole time I'm thinking when is it going to be Fall. Even at home it's been unseasonably warm for the most part.

~*~

I ended up running out for groceries earlier than I'd planned because it was impossible for me to sit on the balcony with my smokes and coffee and work on poems. Not because of the heat, but because some tool (or tools) with a bullhorn were in the park across the street having some sort of demonstration, brain-washing rally or friggin performance art experience. All I could make out was the occasional "God is Love." There are several phrases, but sadly "God is Love" is the only one I can totally make out. Apparently it's all on some sort of tape loop or something because I hear the same phrases over and over. The space between each phrase is punctuated by a blast not unlike a police siren. Given that each phrase is at best 45 seconds long, you can imagine what this is like. Earlier in the morning, about 11 or so I could hear the siren blasts while I was doing the dishes and reading. Sirens aren't uncommon here...but I wondered what the hell was happening that there were so many short ones. It is amazingly loud up here on the 7th floor. Esp. the sirens. As I was walking too and from the grocery I noticed that you couldn't hear it really at a half block away. But out on the balcony...clear as crystal...as a bell...as as as some shit that's perfectly audible and distracting and enough to piss me off. This is one of those moments where I think the First Amendment sucks.

~*~

Went book shopping at Normals Saturday afternoon, after I was in and settled and found some good stuff (sorry Shlee...they had none of the vinyl you wanted.) I got a copy of Charles Wright's Littlefoot for 10 bucks. It looks as though it's not been read at all. Also got Berrigan's Sonnets and an omnibus copy of some of Joe Orton's work. A few other things but nothing really exciting. Just replacing a couple of things. It was a tough shopping process...there was really a lot of things I wanted and I kept picking things up and winnowing down the pile. Better that tho than the alternative of desperately wanting something and finding nothing.

~*~

We went to this great Afghani restaurant just a few blocks from Brian's building for dinner. Beautiful beautiful beautiful food. The restaurant was a little cramped tho and I found myself feeling really squeezed and wanting to leave as soon as possible. Just too much crowd buzz and movement...the restaurant really isn't that large, but I counted about fifteen wait staff buzzing around and weaving in and out of the tables. The service is excellent, really...we got our food quickly, drinks refilled in a timely fashion...they were polite but not smarmy and trying to charm tips from us...just what I appreciate in table service. But...all that movement...the close proximity of other tables...it just got to me. However...I'm going to dream of that lamb soup.