The Master of Submission: Free Download

Starting on Monday, Amazon is giving away the e-book "sample" of my short story, "The Master of Submission," for four days. It's the complete story, which happens to be the longest (and by far the creepiest) in my collection, Magnificent Mistakes, so you would not misread this post if you felt this was just another attempt to bring readers to the book. Maybe you already have the connection, or maybe you're not the least bit interested in reading the exploits of a creepy, spurned, and ailing sex-toy inventor as he stalks his ex and stumbles into a new love--but if you were to download the story now, you'd give it a nice boost in the Kindle Store rankings. You don't need a kindle to help--a browser will do. Thanks for your indulgence!

Does She Realize??

Oklahoma's deeply problematic G.O.P. Governer Mary Fallin may not realize the sh*#storm of Okie slacktivism she hath (or will hath) rained down upon her re-election chances in 2014 by choosing not to renew the Flaming Lips' anthem "Do You Realize??" as the official State Rock Song. This story broke yesterday, mere years after her fateful decision was made. And don't think this blasphemy will go unnoticed. Well, further unnoticed. One can already feel the low, sleepy rumble of hipsters, stoners, and stoner-hipsters across the panhandle state waking up to the revocation of our state's token gesture to the fragile self-image of many of its kindest, gentlest citizens.

And when I say "our state," well...I've lived here six years. It's mine more than any other, by now.

Yes, I realize...

Sh*#'s about to get real down in here.

And the Award for Best Use of a Hitler Mustache Goes to...

I have to give a shout out to the Daily Show's graphics department for a couple of excellent touches on last night's program, during the bit about Egypt's legal charges leveled against satirist Bassem Youssef. Throughout the bit they used a parody of the cover from Morrissey's (brilliant!) debut solo album Viva Hate...

...replacing Morrissey's name with the surname of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi:

That visual pun made me smile. Later in the bit, there's a joke about how breastfeeding is the superior method for nursing your children on Zionist and Jew hatred, as compared to feeding the kid Gerber's "Elders of Zion Formula." The graphic showed a canister of the formula, and the little Gerber's baby logo had been given a tiny Hitler mustache. I almost didn't see it, but when I did...well, it was the perfect touch. Well done Daily Show Graphics Team! You deserve a raise.

You can see both moments in this clip. (Damn you, Blogger, for disallowing the embedding of video clips from sites not owned by Google. That's exceedingly lame.)

All of which inspires me to share this delightful Morrissey send-up from Sparks:

UPDATE: While I'm shouting out to obscure media craftspeople I'll never meet, let me give kudos to the CNN headline writer who came up with this extremely informative, highly nuanced headline today:

Should Have Called David J

Ex-Bauhaus singer and one of my personal musical heroes, Peter Murphy, got busted on a DUI after rear-ending another car and injuring the driver.

Murphy allegedly hit a Mercedes in Glendale then drove to Los Angeles with a witness following him. The witness says he was eventually able to block Murphy in somehow, and the police came. They also allegedly found a baggie of meth, though not on Murphy...just mysteriously, coincidentally hanging out in the back seat of the police cruiser with him. He had just flown in from Turkey...so who knows what was up?

Wherever he'd been, he had to drive himself home: alas, there was a spy in the cab.

Reading in Norman

I'll be the featured reader for OU Write Club's open mic at Second Wind Coffee House on Thursday 28 March 2013. I'm not sure yet what I'll read, but my current plan is to read a piece of memoir, a piece of fiction (or, if I can manage it, a flash fiction and a short story), and a poem. I'll be selling the last eight copies of the first printing of Magnificent Mistakes as well as the first copies of my new chapbook, The Last Few Minutes Before the Bomb (both from Ravenna Press--check out their newly redesigned site!).

For local readers (assuming there are such people, and assuming they find this blog or the OU Write Club Facebook page!), I'm offering a $3 deduction on the cost of the book for anyone who downloads the e-reader edition and brings it to the reading. Such a bargain!

More on the chapbook soon... 

We Cannot Cling to the Old Dreams Anymore

Morrissey's still ill. After numerous ailments and postponed concert dates, he's chucking it in for this tour. My wife just told me, and I felt an ominous dread for the day when, someday... I won't say it.

It just wasn't like the old days anymore...

The Smiths, "Still Ill"

Live-Blogging the Move

Today I'm packing up my old office, where I have worked for three years, and next week I'll move into a new office in the next building--this time on the fourth floor, instead of the second, with a much better view. Obviously this will have a tremendous affect not just on my work but on my writing and, in turn, my life. Nothing could be more momentous. Therefore, to commemorate this milestone, I will live-blog the experience.

12:04 p.m. - Not writing. Again. So I may as well start packing. Shouldn't take more than half an hour.

12:48 - I'm not even halfway to halfway done. I've packed up four of my drawers and that's about it. All this crap I never use is all so interesting. New goal: finish by 1:#0, resume writing.

1:22 - OK, this is slow going. I've packed up one bookshelf and a few drawers. I've got another shelf and a filing cabinet to go. New goal: done by two o'clock. Amazing how easy it is to forgive myself for not writing.

1:36 - One thing you discover, when you move, is how many books you've accumulated in the meantime. Thinking ahead, I saved all my small boxes for this day, whenever it might come. (Small boxes are best for books, which are too heavy for big boxes to hold.) I'm going to need an extra five small boxes or so to pack these beasts. Then again, there are movers coming Monday to carry all my crap. Maybe I should let them deal with it.

1:37 - Feeling guilty about previous sentiment.

1:48 - Nothing like handling a few dozen great novels, on their way into boxes, to make one feel like one's creative work remains undone.

1:49 - Nothing like live-blogging to slow down a move. New goal: done by 2:15.

1:52 - Jeffrey Eugenides is proving problematic, as usual.

1:55 - Am I really this much of a John Irving fan? I was at 20, 24, even 30, I guess. But now? This is a lot of Irving.

1:59 - Just piled Mary Miller atop Cormac McCarthy. Hope they don't mind.

2:17 - Why is this taking so long?!

2:20 - Hey, why is my collection bereft of posthumously-published J.D. Salinger books, anyway?

2:38 - After a sudden burst of...focus? A distraction deficit? I'm almost done. For a little break, I'm going to walk my lamps and a couple of other breakables over to the new office now.

3:58 - So. Tired. Must. Go. To. The. Gym. Back tomorrow...

Facebook

It's like this. I stand by a fence, peering through cracks between slats. I hear voices over there, happier than I thought voices could sound. But now and then one of the voices cries in pain. I can't get to the joy or even reach through to console the hurt. If I say as much, a dog leaps up and barks through the fence. If I say nothing, the happy people will come for me with torches and pitchforks. So I shake photos from my wallet and slide them through the cracks. More photos shoot my way like a slot-machine fire-hose jackpot. Night comes, wind picks up, and billions of stars sing overhead about the end of everything.

Guadalcanal Diary Stands Corrected

The United States Post Office is finally ready to take a Saturday off. Sorry, Guadalcanal Diary.

In an odd coincidence, I'm heading out the door this morning to take my iPod Touch to the UPS Store, per the instructions of the Apple customer service line. I bought it last April, and the camera stopped working in May. I finally found time to sort this out yesterday. 

Rage and Sorrow

TRIGGERS: Violence, tragic loss.

The title of this blog does not apply to this post. The irony there was never more cruel than it is now. I may write more on this later, but for now I will note the passing of one of the best of us.

I worked with Mark Hummels when we were both, essentially, cub reporters at a weekly independent newspaper in Colorado. Mark was endlessly kind, as bighearted as a person can be, and smart as hell. As I told a friend last night, two guys in our situation--trying to latch onto long-term positions at a start-up paper--would normally fall into a rivalry, friendly or otherwise. But Mark was not like that. He showed me the ropes when I was an intern and worked side by side with me for months after the internship ended and I was hired on full-time. Really, we slaved away, working on our articles, reviews, calendar items, and everything else that fell within our arts & entertainment section in the paper. We were both pretty broke, so we'd buy one dinner and share it while we worked, often late into the night. There was not a moment of tension or acrimony in the time we worked together. I don't remember why or how he left, but I do remember that everyone at the paper and in the local arts scene loved Mark Hummels. He was a great reporter and the greatest of guys.

This defies belief: Mark was murdered last week. Shot. Killed.

He is survived by his wife (who was his girlfriend when I knew him 20 years ago) and two kids, ages seven and nine. I have no trouble believing that Mark may have been the best father on the planet. My heart aches for his family.

(UPDATE: Please give to the Mark Hummels Memorial fund.)

If you have the stomach for it, you can read more about Mark and the vile little coward who shot him: Phoenix office shooting. The world is worse for this, worse by far. Anyone who knew Mark knows this with certainty.

Here's a song from back when we worked together, because this seems like a moment that calls for a song:

Grab the ones you love. Hold them close. Don't let go. 

A Return to Italy

This summer I'll teach two travel-writing courses in Europe: June in Italy, July in Ireland! After last June's successful but perhaps a wee bit lonely trip with OU students to Cork, Ireland, I'm thrilled that my wife and kids will join me this time. We're working out details, but we'll fly into Genova or Milano and spend three weeks in Northern and Central Italy before heading to Rome to meet thirty OU students in early June. After four nights in Rome (with a daytrip to Pompeii) and three nights in Venice, we'll settle into Arezzo, Tuscany, for the rest of the trip. From there we'll visit Florence and Siena and wander Tuscany and Umbria.


Then zoom! We hop a plane from Florence to Dublin to launch the July in Ireland adventure, without a moment's rest between. Two or three nights in Dublin (lodging at Trinity College!) should be plenty, with tours galore, then we'll take a coach down to Cork (stopping off for a couple of serene hours, at least, at Glendalough) and spend the rest of the month in and around the rebel county--apart from a big weekend adventure up along the coast to the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands.

I had a blast with my co-leader and students, but I sorely missed my wife and kids. This opportunity to travel with my family realizes a dream I've held since we found out we were having a baby. I remember fantasizing with my wife about how we would give our daughter (and now our son, too, of course) childhood memories of traveling abroad. In fact, we were in Venice when we decided to make a family, but that's a story for another day (and another venue!). As single-income home-schoolers, we haven't had the means to make a trip happen, until now. Landing two classes in Europe, back to back, was a stroke of brilliant luck. I had already been chosen to co-lead OU's Journey to Italy program (an honor in itself, as there is a competitive application/proposal process), when I got the email calling for a late-in-the-game fill-in for Ireland in July. Impossible to imagine saying "no" to an offer like that!

The photos in this post come from my January 2007 research trip to Italy, when I had a lot more hair. My father tagged along, and it was one of the best trips of my life--perhaps only topped by my trip with him to Poland and the Czech Republic 18 months later. But it's hard to rank trips abroad. They've all been wonderful. Even my two-week adventure in Mexico with my first wife, very near the end of our marriage, is filled with glorious memories despite the minor discomforts of finding ways to get along.

Anyway, hooray for the planning phase! I love looking at the map and plotting out the early, independent phase of this trip. The kids are learning a bit of Italian. Rachel is shopping for a new bag--the kind that rolls but converts to a backpack, too. And I've got a couple of syllabi and course schedules to tweak and tweak and tweak for the next few weeks. I'll savor the sweetness before La Dolce Vita. 

A Perfect Cup of Coffee

We've got low clouds and fog in Norman this morning. It's around seventy degrees (in January!), and maybe even a wee bit muggy out there. My wife tells me there's a tornado watch, but I'm not watching. It's a writing day, and I'm about to settle in to work on the novel. But right now I am drinking one of the best cups of coffee I've had in my life, and I want to tell you about it. It's bittersweet, it's rich, and it feels indulgent. This is the Nicaragua Segovia from Marioposa Coffee Roastery--a local roaster with a gift for roasting and a big heart for social justice, here in Norman. And best of all, for locals, Mariposa delivers. But wherever you are (in the U.S., at any rate) you should treat yourself and order a bag or two from Mariposa. This is outstanding. And when the bag arrives, I highly recommend opening it and just putting your nose in there with the beans. Trust me, it's heavenly.

This is only my second purchase from Mariposa. They're a bit pricey--I usually go for cheap organic/fair trade coffee from a co-op--but so well worth it. I've convinced my colleagues in the office to join me in making regular Mariposa purchases.

Here's Mariposa Coffee's sweet new promotional video. Give it ninety seconds, then treat yourself.

Mariposa Coffee: Short from Scissortail Media on Vimeo.