ferriswheels

This journal is friend's only. Most of it is bitching about graduate school, my inability to write poems, drafts of my badly written poems, bitching about the near-impossibility of properly delegating household chores between men and women, mother-guilt, musings on the tyranny of beauty, and other things which are most likely far less interesting, such as my musings on message board posts from awfulplasticsurgery.com.

Comment if this sounds like your cup of tea.

Christ, it's SNOWING OUTSIDE  and it's almost April. Not just little snow, but bit, fluffy, piling snow.
I am assured that this has been an unusually long winter.
God, I hope so.       

I  have five poems in the latest issue of Listenlight. 

Christ, Barack Obama’s speech today was amazing. It is truthful, and he actually says things that are painful and messy about race. This is territory that I've never seen a politician touch before. Call me officially convinced.

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Hey all, the 7th issue of 21 Stars Review is up, including work from Micah Bateman, Allyson Boggess, Robert M. Detman, Glenn R. Frantz, D. E. Fredd, PJ Nights Maurice Oliver, Steven D. Schroeder, and Jane Wong. Read it here: http://sundress.net/21stars. It's short and sweet and tasty. It includes boy adventures, talking chairs, toothless children, first-time-published writers (Micha B!), practical advice on how to get rid of fleas, slap-happy whippersnappers, and some heavy alliterative Ks. K's? Anyways. Read it here: http://sundress.net/21stars

Zach is on the radio right now, 4:00 to 4:30 Eastern, I think!

    EDIT: Zach is interviewing somebody first, then they will interview him. So I' think his interview will start soon--maybe at 4:30?

http://www.wvew.org/

I've got three poems in the Mipoesias cafe cafe "best of" anthology, out in print & in pdf format. You can get it here

I'm actually quite happy with all three pieces, which is rare for me, since I usually hate everything that I write soon after it is written.

Pictures of my town:

Here is the town from above:

The graveyard next to my house:

A weird gravestone from the 18th century:

( More more gimme gimme )

How do you guys feel about the new Interpol album?

Here's how I feel--some interesting things happening with the music & the Paul Banks' vocals, but wow, are the lyrics bad.
The good:

It seems like Paul Bank's vocals are no longer all "listen to my really good Ian Curtis impression!" He seems to actually sing now, instead of...intone. The music also seems less "Listen to my martial beats & moody guitars a-la Joy Divison!" Unfortunately, some songs are entering sweeping power ballad land. Not good.

The bad:
I don't even want to talk about a song called "there's no I in threesome". I just imagine some slimy bastard saying that to me--"Hey baby, don't be so selfish, there's no I in threesome!".

It seems that the songwriter (I'm assuming Banks) has had some disastrous romantic relationship with a beautiful actress type, because all of these songs seem to be a critique of that "type"--which doesn't really work when the narrator/singer/speaker seems equally shallow (see "there's no I in threesome"). Still, I like the unity of subject.

But I actually like "Heimlich Maneuver", despite the cheesiness of it ("How are things on the west coast/you wear those shoes like a dove"????). I like songs about glamorous, shallow people complaining about the shallowness of other glamorous, shallow people. This is why I like F. Scott Fitzgerald so much. Ditto for "Pace is the Trick" and "Rest my Chemistry".

Edit: Maybe this struggle between being attracted to the glamorous & shallow & hating that part of yourself is what I'm sensing in the album. That would be a great subject matter. That's sort of Fitzgerald's thing too.


But anyways, it's a decent album with a few fun songs. A let down from Antics, for me, but maybe they will bounce back with the next one. I think they need to embrace the whole trashy/glittery/complaining-about-fame-&-beauty theme overtly & not pretend with terrible lyrics about teenager angsty sadness. Just wallow in the glitter.

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I have a poem in Ocho #10: http://stores.lulu.com/mipo

The title of this poem is a line from a Patti Smith song. It's an Oulipo n+7 thingy.

Lots of good poems in this issue.
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I saw Morrissey, and it was beautiful and I love him, and now I can die.

I think that everyone should make one of these and post them.


Create Your Own PaloozaHead - Visit Lollapalooza.com

Best website ever! http://www.goodreads.com/
You can keep track of the books you've read, write reviews of them, and see what your friends have been reading. I am forever trying to remember what the hell I've read, so this is incredibly helpful. I love it! I'm currently updating this year's books.

Add me: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31934

So I'm doing a reading tonight at Larry's bar with Natalie Shapero and Kathy Fagan. Instead of reading poems, I might do a ten-minute rendition of Tom Jones' "Sex Bomb" accapella. Or maybe not. I'm thinking over my options.

I've got a poem up at Juked. It's the fabulous female Stirring editors Juked page! Check out Erin E's (Stirring's editor) poem too.

I forgot to announce this earlier, but the newest issue of 21 Stars Review is up. Thank Chris for our flying leap into the future (or at least the present), with our fancy new sleek archives page look. CSS something or other. I stopped learning html in 1996.

Has anybody seen the movies Volver or Babel? Has anybody seen both? Would you like to strongly recommend or discourage us from seeing either of these movies tomorrow?

You can hear me reading my two poems in the winter issue of Pebble Lake Review on their website. My voice is sort of cheesy. Anyways, I like PLR's poetry choices & recommend their journal.

I'm working on a Christmas update as we speak (not that we are actually speaking). It will include pictures!!

I feel much better, though I'm still coughing up junk.

Hello all!

The third issue of 21 Stars Review is up! Featuring work by Shane Allison, John Steven Cummins, Martha Deed, Doug Draime, Ricky Garni, Carrie Grinstead, Frank Haberle, Donald Illich, Halvard Johnson, Nathan Klose, Andrew Lundwall and Sheila Murphy, AE Reiff, and Lori Scoby

My poor cat needs help--she is absolutely infested with fleas and nothing seems to help. We have given her that back-of-the-neck stuff for three months, we have sprayed her fur with flea-killing spray (which made her wet and smelly and miserable), and I have spent an hour picking fleas out of her fur with a lice comb (yes, I'm insane, I know) and she is still itching and biting and it is breaking my heart. I just can't stand to see her suffering--she can hardly sleep for more than five minutes! I have also sprayed and vacuumed the carpet, particularly in areas where she sleeps. What should I do? What flea products for your cats work for you?

Does anybody know of a free photo editor that allows you to type text on the image and do cool things like blurring and whatnot? I swear I used to have a program that did something like this, but I can no longer do it anymore.