Everything is Beautiful, and Nothing Hurts

What About Theft of Stolen Intellectual Property?

2012-02-01T12:55:00.001-06:00

If, by chance, I drop dead from an aneurysm today, don't be fooled. It won't really be by chance. It will be because I read this troubling op/ed piece in my university's student paper: "Intellectual Property is Theft." To be fair, the column is reasonably well written. In fact, at times, it's impressive. But the author fails to include intelligence, talent, skill, originality, and time in the category of "finite resources." In other words, if I write a book (and I have), then the paper and the ink are mine (well, my publisher's) in this columnist's view, but the words aren't mine anymore. If someone else copies my book and commits my sentences to ink and paper, then she gets to profit from selling that physical property. It's not my paper, after all. It's not my ink. And if she were to share my words online for a fee or for a fee, she could. It's all fine. No crime. I'm not a victim of theft.

No dice.

More interesting to me, perhaps, is this: if I'm in favor of intellectual property rights, then what exactly constitutes "theft"? That's where I run into trouble. Take the photo of a brain on a plate in the upper-right corner of this post, for instance. I did.

-----

On an unrelated note, Cindy Lee Berryhill is a genius.

Everything Counts in Large Amounts

2012-01-31T10:17:00.000-06:00

But some youtube videos count way more than others.

I'm not usually impressed by cover versions of my favorite songs, but this one is perfect and inspiring. I need to step up my dad game.

For the unenlightened, here's the (dare I say it--inferior) original:

Congratulations, America!

2012-01-31T08:55:00.002-06:00

It's official: Stephen Colbert's Super PAC has raised more than one million dollars. Take that, terrorists!

Poetry Slam in Norman, Oklahoma

2012-01-25T11:40:00.004-06:00

In lieu of a featured reader at the end of our regular open mic night at Café Plaid, Write Club will host our first-ever poetry slam next Thursday, February 2nd, at 7:00 p.m. We will need a minimum of four poets (of any level of experience!), and we've settled on a cap of sixteen. We'll have three rounds with three minutes for each poet (plus a ten-second grace period, after which points will be deducted). Three poets making it to the final round. Five judges will be chosen more or less at random from the audience. I will host. It will be raucous. It will be good fun. And then some. So come out! Come out! Come even if you're not going to compete. The greater the density of the crowd, the greater the intensity of the competition. (Not that we're going for intensity. Nah, in that case I was just going for a rhyme.) But seriously, whoever you are--an experienced slam poet, a curious onlooker, or anyone in between--help us make the evening great.

In case you're unfamiliar with the nationwide phenomenon and in-your-face style of slam poetry, here are five examples from a few luminaries in the field:

Daniel Beaty, "Knock Knock"

Andrea Gibson, "Blue Blanket"

Taylor Mali, "What Teachers Make"

Suheir Hammad, "What I Will"

Katie Makkai, "Pretty"

Yeah. I know. That might be a bit intimidating. But chances are microscopic that one of these poets will show up next week in Norman, Oklahoma. And, you know, just in case one does, you'll want to be there.

Get your poem on. Come on down!

Free Advice, Worth Every Penny

2012-01-25T11:04:00.002-06:00

I probably shouldn't link to my own blog, but I had completely forgotten this post from a couple years ago. It's hilarious. And, strangely, since launching that column, I have received no further requests for relationship advice.

My Mother Received a Wound

2012-01-22T11:41:00.000-06:00

I think I forgot to mention here that Prick of the Spindle is featuring my four-minute short film, "My Mother Received a Wound." I made it in 2000, largely with the help and support of the more experienced (and, to be fair, more talented) Andrew Mudge--who also plays the film's central character. Enjoy.

Oh, by the way, I suppose you could say this film is based on a true story--or inspired by one, at any rate. For years, in Colorado Springs, there was a man who stood on the median at the intersection of Cascade and Uintah holding a sign that read "MY MOTHER RECEIVED A WOUND AT PENROSE HOSPITAL." I went with "Corpus Christi" for the sign in my film, to avoid any hint of legal complication, and found out a year or two later that Penrose actually used to be called Corpus Christi a few decades ago.

Decades schmecades. Time sure flies when you're wishing you were having fun.

Parachute Man

2012-01-20T11:21:00.001-06:00

Watch this. Just...watch this.

2012-01-18T10:57:00.000-06:00

Kathy Fish is kind.

And Quick Fiction is dead. Long live Quick Fiction.

Sorry if I'm the one who killed it.

My New Blog

2012-01-16T14:13:00.003-06:00

As I enter a busy semester crammed with two sections of a new course, an extra course on top of my normal load, a travel-writing course to develop for the summer, and a novel to write, it seems perfectly sensible that I should launch a new blog today. So here you go, laddies and gentlewomen--I now present to you...

Cinephile in Exile

It's where I'll do most of my film-related blogging--which, if I hold true to form, means you can expect new posts two to six times a year. I begin with this rather long list of Forty Great Films Streaming on Netflix. Enjoy!

I Am the Weak Link

2012-01-16T07:49:00.000-06:00

Dear Packer Nation:

I owe you an apology. I let you down.

As you know, the Green Bay Packers lost their playoff matchup with the New York Giants yesterday. The fault is entirely mine.

On Sunday morning, when I chose my shirt for the day, I didn't put on my Packers T-shirt. I've gained a bit of weight, you see, and that shirt is a medium. It's not quite as comfortable as it used to be. So I decided to go against my custom for important games, and I opted for a large shirt instead. But not just any shirt. I went with my Morrissey T-shirt, purchased on the night his recent North American tour rolled through Dallas. It was a fatal mistake.

And it's clear now, in hindsight, that blame for this loss falls on me and me alone. I'm sorry. Next year, I'll get it right. I'll order a large Packers shirt, and an extra-large one, too, just to be safe.

Oh, and, in case you're wondering, the Moz concert was excellent. Really top notch.

In shame,
Eric Bosse

The Re-Education of Eric Bosse

2012-01-12T17:55:00.000-06:00

It's strange, I suppose, for a heterosexual, cisgendered man entering his mid forties to realize that if given the opportunity to suspend his career, go back to school, and study anything at all, right now, at this point in his life, he would choose gender studies. But that's what I'd do, if I could. My fairy godmother would have to provide for my family, of course, or I'd have to stumble upon the world's most generous financial aid package. But, for the past few years, I have been increasingly drawn to study gender. Perhaps this is my version of a midlife crisis.

But don't mind me. I'm just putting together the reading schedule and course packet for a new course. No doubt this phase will pass and I'll go back to wishing I could study filmmaking.

If you have a moment...

2012-01-09T22:01:00.003-06:00

...and feel up for something unusual, something well beyond the usual, something that could very well crack open your mind and expand your world at least a little bit--or, if nothing else, fill in a few of that world's blurry details--check out this wild, beautiful blog: A Wild Slim Alien. Every time I visit, I come away feeling richer for it.

It's a blog about trees. And it's a book about nothing less than life. Memory. About roots and reaching into the air. Here's an excerpt from the most recent post:

The trees along the wayside begin to stretch out now. And they are closer to me; perhaps they are less easily defined because of that. So we have to jump forward in time, through a decade which was far from treeless – among others London is full of its namesake trees, the planes, after all – but in which I formed no strong emotional attachments to any particular tree; or rather, can project no strong emotional story onto a sufficiently representative tree. Of course, if I put my mind to it, there might be buried deep in me trees which had some passing significance, a Japanese maple here, an oak there. But for a long time I lived without the special trees that seemed to dot my childhood and teenage years.

Ark and the Black Opal

2012-01-06T14:29:00.002-06:00

Eager--probably over-eager--to hear what Dead Can Dance comes up with for their recently announced, long awaited, freshly confirmed, totally new studio album and its accompanying international tour in 2012, I grew impatient. Last week, I cobbled together my own new DCD album. Please understand: I'm a devoted fan, but I am not among the band's most avid followers. I saw them live just once (in 1994 or so, in Denver), and I caught Lisa Gerrard (solo, but with everyone from DCD but Brendan Perry) in Boulder, Colorado, the year after. I also did a phone interview with Lisa, once upon a time--one of the highlights of my brief career as an arts and entertainment journalist. She was delightful, and she said mine was the last voice she would hear before sleep that night. I swooned! Anyway, as a less-than-fanatic fan--the kind who never joined a DCD discussion forum, and only just discovered that these brilliant artists have email lists--I probably haven't listened to their recent solo records as often as I would have if the records were released under the DCD banner.

In a belated effort to get to know the songs, I decided to pick my favorite tracks from Lisa Gerrard's The Black Opal and Brendan Perry's Ark. Both solo albums feature great work, but neither is consistently magnificent from top to bottom, in my view. So there was room to trim and cut and rearrange. I alternated between the two, limited my selection to under 80 minutes, and tinkered a wee bit (though not much) with the order. Here's what I came up with (note: youtube playlist added to the bottom of this post):

ARK & THE BLACK OPAL

"In Search of Lost Innocence"

This faux album sounds and feels like something new. It's imperfect. It's repurposed. And I realize it's no big deal. But by putting these songs side by side--alternating between Brendan's voice and Lisa's--the effect is quite magical. Had the band done this, it could have passed for a new DCD studio album in 2010. So I thought I'd share it with you.

Here's the first smash-hit single:

If I can figure out how to make a youtube playlist with these songs, in this order, I promise to post an update with the link. In the meantime, I'll assume you're reading this because you, too, are a DCD fan excited about the joys to come. Have you ever done or heard anything like this? If you give this "album" a try, let me know what you think. Are you, like me, willing to make a pilgrimage to wherever (within reason) to catch this tour?

Another question, for the Brendan Perry completists: What are the best non-album songs and recordings from his solo career--or, if you prefer, what are your favorites?

UPDATE: Here is a youtube playlist of this hypothetical album.

Men with Big Mouths and No Guts

2012-01-01T17:21:00.004-06:00

As one year ends and another begins--the one in which the world is scheduled to end--I must admit to myself that I have grown tired of self promotion. And not just tired. Wary. I don't trust the stuff. And everyone's got that stuff. I'm as guilty as anyone.

I have tried, in good faith, to promote my book. And I will no doubt keep doing virtual cartwheels and backflips to grab the attention of a stray reader now and then. But so what? Does the world need another book of stories? Does the world need anything any of us has to offer? I don't mean this cynically. I'm not questioning that we can work, in our own ways, to make the world a better place. Yet I witness acts of shameless and shameful self promotion left and right. Everyone is doing it. All the time. In some sense, that's what this blog is. But it's also...

No. I'll let the thought drift in the wind. When the world ends--and it will end this year, we're told--none of my doubts will matter. So I'll leave you with this dark gem. Go do some good.

Free Ink Squiggles on Smashed Wood Pulp

2011-12-30T15:39:00.001-06:00

The generous souls at Ravenna Press headquarters in New York or Paris or Spokane or wherever are giving away a brand new, free, unscribbled-upon-by-small-children copy of my book, Magnificent Mistakes, via Goodreads. If you want in on this action, click here, then find the "enter to win" button somewhere around the middle of the page. (While you're there, would you please add my book as one you want to read? Thanks. You're a peach.) Or, if you'd rather cut to the chase and buy a copy, you can make your purchase at Ravenna Press or Amazon. Come to think of it, skip the corporate big guy and go straight to Ravenna Press. As I said, they are generous souls. They deserve material rewards. Plus, I get a bigger slice that way, too. And you get a book! We all win.

Or, for a signed copy of Magnificent Mistakes, send me an email and we'll work out the details. I've gotten pretty Paypal savvy in the past few months. I also take good, old fashioned paper checks. Happy reading in the new year! Thanks for supporting a small, independent press and one of its authors.

The Birds of Leaving Call

2011-12-30T12:24:00.000-06:00

It's official. I'm quitting Facebook and fantasy football, as of this weekend. This has been a long time coming. One year ago tomorrow, on the verge of leaving Facebook, I conjured up what turned out to be a fantastic project. It arose from a discussion with my friend Axton, probably here on this blog (which was largely abandoned as a result of the project). So I launched a Facebook group called "P.I.G.S.T.Y.2011," or the Project for the InterGenerational Swapping of Tunes in the Year 2011. I invited some friends. Axton did too. Our friends invited more. The group grew to around 120 members by year's end, yet the project stayed manageable. The sheer volume of songs posted in the group overwhelmed some members (and, I suspect, they considered many to be lesser-quality songs), but I found it a warm and engaging conversation about music past and present. Anyway, I imagine this makes fascinating reading for precisely no one but me, so I'll move on.

Suffice it to say that P.I.G.S.T.Y.2011 enabled my already established Facebook addiction. I could rationalize Facebook visits in the name of sharing music. Inevitably, though, I got sucked into reading friends' status updates or clicking on interesting news links, and following the endless stream of clever, viral, sloganeering graphics. Oh, and I am hooked on the little red boxes that flash when anyone clicks "Like" on one of my posts or comments. You know the drill. Facebook is addictive.

This is not news to me. Here I am, a couple years ago, talking about the same things, yet apparently not ready to quit:

Around the time I joined the book of face, I also got hooked on fantasy football. For those not in the know, it's a stats-based game in which each player picks a team of all-stars and lesser stars from around the NFL. Each league typically has ten or twelve teams, and the manager whose all-star team performs the best wins. Usually. This game appealed to my inner sports geek. Hell, it brought that geek roaring back to life. As a child, I collected and traded baseball cards, followed the Milwaukee Brewers and Green Bay Packers religiously (seriously--they were the closest thing to religion in my life, back then), and tracked league leaders in batting average, passing yardage, etc. Though I've heard rumors that fantasy baseball can be even more fun, I stuck with football. And, competitive as I am, I really got into it. I started tracking NFL news five, six, seven days a week. In year two, I joined nine leagues. (Nine!) Last year I scaled back to three. This season, two. And in the past two years I've won three of five leagues and finished second in another. I'm a fantasy champ. Hooray for me.

Over the course of four years, I devoted countless hours to that stupid game. I saw grown men engage in flame wars that occasionally escalated into full-on cyber-bullying. In some leagues, arguments broke out over the dumbest things. I didn't do any flaming or bullying, but I sometimes got as angry as the next guy. And, as I said, I threw myself fully into the competition. At times, the first thought in my head when I woke was something like this: What can I do, right now, to strengthen my fantasy team? I'd hop out of bed before dawn just to scour the news sites and player pools for an edge. I cringe to think what I might have accomplished if I had devoted that time and energy to, say, my own writing. Or to reading books. Or to meditation. Or to reducing clutter around my house. Or to making money. Or to reducing world hunger.

Plus, there's the whole worshipping-false-idols angle. Sports stars tend to be, by and large, out-of-touch, rich, spoiled jerks. Sure, there must be many exceptions. No doubt a lot of them set up charities and do socially constructive work. But, generally speaking, professional jocks do not seem to be the kind of people I'd want to hang out with. Nor do I look up to them. Nor would I want them running the world in which I live. Here, for instance, is LaDainian Tomlinson's answer when asked whether he would play another season for the New York Jets at the league minimum salary for a veteran:

"I've got kids, man," he said with a laugh. "I mean, I don't know. It would be hard for me to do that. It's never been about the money for me. It really hasn't."

It's not about the money? Then why scoff at $925,000 for a single season's work?! I've got kids, too, and I make fairly near the median income in my state. It would take fifteen or twenty years for me to earn what Tomlinson could make as a second-string player on a team he seems to enjoy. And his attitude is typical of pro jocks. So why follow their careers so closely? Why give a damn about whether Tomlinson or Marion Barber or Ricky Williams or whoever might revive his season the right matchup? I have given way too much of my life to professional sports. It's sickening.

So, near the top of my list of New Year's resolutions, I vow to quit Facebook, cold turkey, for a minimum of three months. After that, I hope I will have the will to stay away. And--though the actual decision looms months in the future--I'm vowing now to take a pass on fantasy football in 2012 and beyond.

If I'm wise, I'll never look and back.

How to Argue for Occupy Wall Street

2011-12-01T12:04:00.001-06:00

When G.O.P. strategist and wordsmith-in-chief Frank Luntz advises Republicans, I listen. Why? Because every piece of advice he gives them reveals the winning arguments that he (and they) fear most. In this case, it's especially interesting, because, rather than giving anti-Democratic talking points, he's giving anti-Occupy Wall Street talking points.

Yahoo News just published a list of Luntz's tips to the Republican Governors' Association on how to talk about Occupy Wall Street. You can click through and read those, of course. Luntz and the Republicans in power have a lot on their minds. Here I'll flip Luntz's points on their heads to identify the perhaps obvious but effective rhetorical strategies one can use in Favor of the Occupy Wall Street movement:

1. Talk about "capitalism." As Luntz says, the public still prefers capitalism to socialism, but people generally believe that capitalism is immoral. It is.

2. Argue for "taxing the rich." It's the right thing to do, and it's fair. Luntz would have us believe a just tax rate for those who can afford to pay more amounts to theft. If anything, they are the thieves, and they have gotten away with it for far too long.

3. Fight for the "middle class." That's a fight Republicans know they can't win, which is why Luntz wants to change the subject to "hard-working taxpayers."

4. Talk about jobs. Luntz says Republicans shouldn't talk about "jobs" because people don't want jobs--they want careers. And in some narrow sense he may be right. So why not talk about careers, too? Employment is a lose/lose topic for Occupy Wall Street's opponents.

5. Talk about the value of a social safety net. Luntz would have everyone believe that government does nothing but waste taxpayers' hard-earned money. Emphasize the humane potential of a system where everyone could have access to health care, food, and career opportunites--you know, like most people do in the rest of the industrialized world.

6. Don't give in. In this instance, Luntz advises Republicans not to talk about "compromise," because it's seen as selling out and giving up. And on this, he may be right. Occupy Wall Street does not need to compromise with Wall Street. Why would anyone accept a "compromise" in a call for justice and fairness?

7. When a Republican says, "I get it," don't believe her. She favors G.O.P. policies in response to the problems highlighted by Occupy Wall Street. Those policies got us here in the first place. They're not suddenly the solution.

8. Talk about entrepreneurs, big business, and corporate fat cats. They're the ones with the most to fear from a movement toward economic justice; and they're the ones widely viewed as exploiting the rest of us.

9. Emphasize sacrifice. We have all made sacrifices in this economy--well, almost all of us. Wall Street firms still report record profits. CEO's still rake in massive salaries and bonuses that send executives around the world into fits of envy. The big boss at Wal-Mart allegedly makes $16,000 per hour. It's time for the 1%--especially the top tenth of that one percent--to share in the sacrifice.

10. Keep the focus on Wall Street. When Republicans try to change the subject to Washington and the Obama administration, remind people who pulls Washington's strings.

Sound good? It should, because this list is exactly what Frank Luntz does not want people to hear.

-----

And while you're here, please support my small business. It's so small, in fact, that it's just me and my friend George.

Ten Reasons to Occupy this Shirt

2011-11-30T11:40:00.001-06:00

A lightning bolt of inspiration struck my friend George recently, and he conjured up this shirt. In turn, he had about fifty of them made. They exist. Now we want to sell them. That's where you come in. Here are ten reasons to buy this T-shirt:

1. An inexpensive Oscar Wilde shirt makes the perfect gift for that one-of-a-kind literary hipster who strongly prefers not to wear a shirt likely to be seen on anyone else, anywhere, ever. (CAUTION: This hipster undoubtedly dislikes the term "hipster." Be judicious in your use of it. Don't toss "hipster" around all willy-nilly if you don't want any hurt feelings around the holidays. If you do, well, then bombs away!) Seriously, we have only a handful of these shirts on hand--fewer than 100--and we're not likely to produce many (or any) more.

2. Perhaps you or someone you love admires Oscar Wilde. The shirt offers a clever way to announce that love to the world. Alternately, you could go through life saying, "Hi, I admire Oscar Wilde. I truly admire Oscar Wilde. Oh how I admire Oscar Wilde." That works, too, though not as charmingly as this shirt.

3. The shirt's design also parodies the logo of a famous hot-dog and lunch-meat brand by infiltrating the logo with the name of someone who has nothing whatsoever to do with hot dogs or lunch meats. How's that for post-modern visual wit?

4. Perhaps you're a card-carrying, vegetarian PETA member, and you want the world to know that meat is murder and Oscar Wilde is not. (Trust us: the world knows that Oscar Wilde is not murder. But since when has stating the obvious counted as a strike against a good T-shirt?)

5. And perhaps someone you care about is a Morrissey fanatic with the love of Wilde on his or her side. This shirt makes the perfect armor for adversarial encounters in cemetries with people who may ally themselves with Keats and Yeats.

6. You believe in covering your body when you go out in public. We do, too.

7. You don't believe in giving your money to big corporations. Especially not now. You're excited by the Occupy Wall Street movement. You moved your savings from a bank to a credit union. You sent mittens to Manhattan to keep those occupiers warm. But, of course, those holiday gifts have to come from somewhere. Why not buy from the little guys? We're as little as guys come. So to speak.

8. I forget what eight was for.

9. You've never before had a word to describe reminiscing about the greatest sex of your life, and now you can say you're feeling lustalgic. (You're welcome.)

10. You or someone you know is a vegetarian literary hipster who loves Oscar Wilde and Morrissey, gets a kick out of tweaking large corporations whenever possible, believes in supporting small businesses, ponies up for PETA year in and year out, wears clothes, and enjoys remembering awesome sex.

So take a walk on the Wilde side. Order a shirt. And, if you'd like, we will gladly bundle a signed copy of my book of short stories (published this year by a small, independent press) with the shirt for $20, including shipping.

We Are the 99%, and We Reproduce

2011-11-26T21:19:00.001-06:00

A Challenge to Every Reporter in America

2011-11-20T10:23:00.001-06:00

In light of recent police violence against nonviolent protesters across the country, it is time for our journalists to do their civic duty and act in the public interest.

This week, every reporter at every television station and newspaper in America (including--no, especially--student newspapers) should investigate how thoroughly armed their local, public police forces are.

Will the police show up to peaceful rallies and demonstrations in full riot gear? If so, why? What weapons will they carry, and why? What exactly are these forces' policies and regulations regarding how they may respond to nonviolent (and even violent) protests by unarmed civilians? Are local police required to give their names and ranks to anyone who asks? If not, why not? When protestors are arrested, will they be treated humanely? Will they be given prompt medical care?

And where are the good cops on this one? Why aren't our police forces policing themselves?

The American people have the right and need to know. We also have a responsibility to hold these publicly funded militias accountable.

-----

As a citizen of the land of the free and the home of the brave, I feel proud of those enacting nonviolent civil disobedience for the cause of economic justice. And I fear for them in the face of thugs who cloak their abuses in blue uniforms, flak jackets, and helmets with plastic shields.

Occupy: Police Violence Against Peaceful Protesters

2011-11-15T17:02:00.001-06:00

I don't go to church, but I spent the sabbath putting together this...sermon?...propaganda...music video:

The song is U2's version of Woody Guthrie's "Jesus Christ." Please share.

Dick Gregory's Do-It-Yourself Acceptance Speech

2011-09-01T09:44:00.002-05:00

We stand tonight at the threshold of opportunity, ready as a party and as loyal Americans to carry the bride of promise over the threshold. As [substitute Democrats or Republicans] we realize that the vital issues confronting our country and our conscience are much greater than party labels and more important than partisan concerns. We have seen the terrible price that must be paid for giving partisanship a higher priority than patriotism under the leadership of the [substitute Democrat or Republican] Party.

But we also know that deep within the soul of every true American resides an instinct for freedom, for justice, for equality of opportunity, and for the inherent right of free men to determine their own destinies. From this moment on, let the word go forth and let us make it perfectly clear that it will be the untiring endeavor of the [substitute Democrat or Republican] Party to tap that reservoir of American conscience, so that our nation--indeed, the entire world and now even outer space--will be flooded with a tidal wave of honesty, justice, and freedom.

The task which faces us tonight is no easy endeavor. It requires nothing less than the total dedication and undivided determination of every man, woman, and child who loves liberty, who pursues justice, and who, as we know, is registered in the [substitute Democrat or Republican] Party.

You have bestowed upon me the great honor of leading this [substitute Democrat or Republican] crusade for freedom. It is an awesome responsibility, but one which no true American could refuse to willingly, and humbly, receive both as a duty and a challenge. I therefore accept your nomination.

-----

[Plucked from the obscurity of the printed book.]

Gregory, Dick. Dick Gregory's Political Primer. First. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. Print.

2011-08-26T16:33:00.001-05:00

I am. A. Wreck. Today.

Magnificent Mistake

2011-08-19T15:37:00.002-05:00

Whether we're talking birds or mistakes, there's an abundance of magnificence around here. Have some. My short story collection, Magnificent Mistakes, finally comes out next month, from Ravenna Press. You can pre-order it now.

Cowboys and Indians and Theme Parks

2011-08-18T09:46:00.003-05:00

A dream fulfilled: I made a Western.

Which is to say, I recently rummaged through hours of footage in my grandfather's home movie collection for clips from various times and places that I could assemble (using Final Cut Express, for the record) into a personal reflection on genocide and cultural misappropriation, while passing it off as my second music video for my favorite Norman band, Magnificent Bird.

But it's easier just to say I made a Western.

In any case, I offer it up here somewhat belatedly, as it premiered on youtube and facebook a full ten days ago. I've slipped back into neglecting this blog, but I anticipate a return to semi-frequent posting soon. My short story collection is finally ready to come out from Ravenna Press. (The delays were entirely mine.) That should arrive in late September. No doubt I'll be hawking the thing every chance I get. It's a small press without a substantial promotional budget, so the project's success depends almost entirely on word of mouth.

As does the success of your awesome local indie band. So, world, I'm telling you now: Magnificent Bird is great. They make slightly nerdy, orchestral, indie rock--though I have no idea how the band would prefer to have its music described. Listen for yourself. This one evokes Ennio Morricone.

I included an earlier Magnificent Bird song along with my video for it in the previous blog post. And here is the Magnificent Bird youtube channel. Enjoy!

Magnificent Bird "Superdark" (video)

2011-08-04T13:53:00.006-05:00

Last week I made this video for Magnificent Bird's song "Superdark." Click the HD option for the best sound quality.

Magnificent Bird is a local band, from Norman, Oklahoma. We're friends. The footage comes from family movies of my mother's childhood. Click through to youtube for more information, and please share the video if you like it.

"My Mother Received a Wound"

2011-06-09T11:20:00.001-05:00

I forgot to post this here when I uploaded it a couple weeks ago. This is my first non-student short film:

I love the colors, but film costs too much. This project approached $2,000, a decade ago. All the other projects I've done on digital video, combined, haven't cost nearly that much. If I had the money, though, the quality would be well worth it. Enjoy.

The Home Stretch

2011-06-09T11:06:00.004-05:00

I can't count the number of times I have set and reset deadlines, for myself, for the completion of this book. It was essentially publishable when Ravenna Press accepted it back in, oh, 2007. Here I am, four years later, still tinkering to get the words right. Every story has gone through multiple drafts meant to tighten and improve and make consistent the writing style of stories begun as early as 1999 and as recently as 2007. Half the stories are flash fictions that clock in under 1,000 words (with one as short as 150), and half are longer (from 1,000 to about 5,500). I have been tempted to divide the stories into sections based on length: medium first (800-1,800 words), then the short-shorts (150-800 words), and closing with the longer ones. But that would mess things up thematically and prevent me from closing the book with the story I know in my bones belongs at the end.

Choosing the first story is difficult. For several months, I have planned on opening with the book's longest (and probably best) story. Now, though, I think it kinder to the reader to precede that long one with something smaller. As I see it, those first two stories not only have to stand on their own; they must prepare the reader for what's in store in the rest of the book. My stories range from consensus realism to the fantastic. I want to say that some of the stories are lighthearted, but that's true for only one. Most are dark. I make a few departures from reality as we communally agree to understand it, but only a few. And there's a surprising (to me, anyway) and sustained focus on gender, sex, and sexuality. It's a lot for a reader to take in, and the first two stories should give the reader both a sense of focus and a sense of the range contained within the rest of the book. It's a tall order.

And here I am, blogging when I should get back to work on the text. Of twenty stories, I've finished ~~eight~~ (update: fourteen). I'm polishing the flash fictions today, and I hope to go to bed with twelve or thirteen stories done. All my delays were about getting the words right. I probably won't make my current self-imposed deadline (Friday at five), but I have a decent shot at wrapping up this book on Monday or Tuesday.

Don't wish me luck. Wish me focus.

New Flash Fiction Publication

2011-06-07T00:24:00.000-05:00

Sometimes a story takes forever to find a home. Once in a great while, it happens in just a few days. This one went out last week, and it's up this week: "Old Bells, Young Mountains."

In Your Wake, Inc.

2011-05-19T09:59:00.002-05:00

(I'm back! And with my second apocalyptic post in a row, no less!)

Dear Christian Friends Anticipating the Rapture:

I am here to provide any and all post-Rapture services you may desire, at highly affordable rates. Sending letters to friends, walking your dogs, speaking highly of you and your accomplishments when you're gone, kicking someone's ass on your behalf--you name it, you pay for it, I guarantee it will get done. Call me! Email! Friend me on Facebook! Tweet me!

And God bless! No, really, GOD BLESS.

Sincerely,
Your left-behind friend,
Eric

Pigs Will Fly

2011-04-05T10:11:00.003-05:00

WARNING: In the unlikely event that humans and pigs would open negotiations over the pigs' right to fly helicopters, do not--I repeat, DO NOT--appoint my son as lead human negotiator. Believe me, he may talk tough, but at the first squeal of objection he will suddenly and sweetly cave, in the name of "sharing." And our skies will be filled with pig-piloted choppers. And no one will be safe.

Painfully Overextended

2011-03-30T11:55:00.001-06:00

I feel like I haven't one minute to type this post. But I will, anyway. I'll give it three, in fact.

I am going through one of those periods when everything--and I mean everything--on my schedule collides. Snow days early in the semester forced my second round of conferences to happen on this side of Spring Break. Now they have spilled over into a second week, and they are keeping me from doing the work I must do on a study abroad course proposal. Add to that the fact that I just started teaching an introductory creative nonfiction course at the senior learning center, and I'm maxed out. Oh, and well over half the seniors aren't beginning writers at all. Not sure what I was thinking there. It's a blessing, really. And all of this leaves me...

...out of time. Back to work.

Here's the song playing on my iTunes right now, for what it's worth (a lot--it's brilliant):

Rilke Week Redux?

2011-03-09T12:15:00.001-06:00

I'm mulling over hosting another Rilke Week here on the blog. That would be the "second annual Rilke Week," and I imagine it could become a rich tradition. Or it could snowball into an obligation I struggle to meet. I could go into every Spring Break for the rest of forever dreading the work I need to do when I ought to be working on my own material or taking a vacation. Or worse: I might grow to feel like I shouldn't travel at all for Spring Break, because I would not want to break the tradition. And, no doubt, tens of thousands of readers are out there waiting to see if Rilke Week makes a comeback.

Needless to say, I'm feeling ambivalent, but I could sure use a close encounter with Rainer Maria Rilke right about now. I have found more than once that the close reading of poetry (well, not too close) sparks my imagination and focuses my thoughts. And these days, if I must change my life, then I must bend this life toward a more single-minded devotion to writing fiction. Seven years ago, family life dragged me away from the writing life. (Oh, woe am I.) Now it's time to drag myself back.

It's all so inspiring, no?

Rilke Week is on. Or not. I'll keep you posted.

"The Color of Sound": An Interview with Lisa Gerrard

2011-02-28T13:12:00.005-06:00

Once or twice a year I plumb the depths of Google to see if anything new turns up with my name in it, and just now (deep, deep down there) I found the last piece of music journalism I published professionally: an interview with Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance, called "The Color of Sound," in Minneapolis City Pages. Though it happened fifteen years ago, I remember the publication well. My home newspaper had unceremoniously dumped me when I broke up with its ad director. Apparently her seeing me on a daily basis somehow threatened the paper's bottom line, despite the fact that the editor and publisher had just told me they were grooming me to take over the paper a year or two down the line. But I'm not bitter. No, not at all.

Anyway, I left town to visit my uncle and an old friend in Minnesota. I had with me a tape recording of a phone interview I had conducted with Gerrard on my last day at the old paper. I stopped by the office of City Pages and asked for arts editor Will Hermes. I pitched the interview with an eye toward an upcoming concert by Gerrard, and he approved it. I sat down, transcribed the interview in half an hour, and wrote the whole article within the hour. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Humm....

I don't know that there's anything especially worth passing along, but here's the copy anyway:

The Color of Sound, October 11, 1995

DON'T TELL LISA Gerrard of Dead Can Dance her music sounds Gothic. Ignore the shadowy hordes of black-clad fans who, weaned on Anne Rice novels and still mourning the demise of Bela Lugosi, crawl up through the cracks when Dead Can Dance drift into town. Gerrard, the yin half of DCD whose debut solo album The Mirror Pool saw the light in September on the 4AD label, insists her songs have been misunderstood.

"For one thing, I'm not Goth," she says by phone from Bremen, Germany, where she and her band (mostly members of DCD, minus her main collaborator, Brendan Perry) are wrapping up the European leg of their tour. "When I look at some of the things that are written I just think, 'Darling, give me a break.' That's why I wrote my press release myself."

The single-page autobiography sent out by 4AD recounts her 15-year collaboration with Perry, whom she met while working in an Indian restaurant in Australia. The declining energy of punk rock sent the pair digging for inspiration through Perry's field recordings of African music.

There, and in the traditions of the East and the Middle East, Gerrard found her voice: a raw, passionate, unself-conscious spirituality sung in a language she invents as she goes along. The music, meanwhile, utilizes acoustic instruments from around the world in conjunction with synthesizers and guitars to make something that's not quite world beat, not quite trance-like, and not at all rock & roll.

Composed of outtakes from DCD albums (some of which turned up on the recent live album Toward the Within), The Mirror Pool explores more of Gerrard's gentle side, and combines symphonic soundscapes with the international scope of her influences. But Gerrard avoids talk of influences, labels or even specific instruments. Grounded in the moment ("I'm in bed in a hotel room eating an apple, talking to you") and concerned with moods captured within her music, the singer says, "Every sound has a color. This is the architecture, the dresses of the work, and the dress points to what's inside, don't you think? It's what's inside the dress that matters."

And though she won't define the term, she sees spirituality as commonplace in every music. "It exists in integration with people," she says. "It's the kindling of spirits, the kindling that takes place when you create a playground of sound. I feel that my work comes from human experience, and when people are confronted by the work, endeared to it or warmed by it, those are the practical things within the work."

Gerrard's musical education began with a piano accordion when she was a child. "It's so amazing, when you start off playing music you feel that bell ringing, it's your calling, 'I love this.' In this concert, I'm playing one of the songs I wrote when I was 11 years old. I was in Brendan's church (his home is in Ireland) and I picked up this dusty piano accordion that hadn't been played for years, and I knew, I just knew that this is why I've endured ridicule and why I've subjected myself to the past 18 years. It's because of this love of music! You start off knowing everything, and it's like you throw yourself into a hole and then you spend the next 18 years trying to crawl out of it. It's like I've come full-circle," she says.

This solo project doesn't signal the end of Dead Can Dance. Gerrard is touring with several musicians who backed DCD in 1993. Brendan Perry's album will be released in late '96, only after DCD complete another album and a five-month world tour. "I've been working with Brendan for seven months and we've just gone into the studio to do some [DCD] recordings," she says. "The new music is very percussive, and it has a lot of voices, but I'm not going to tell you more. I want it to be a secret."

For now, Gerrard's work walks the line between the darkness of the band's early 4AD recordings and the epiphanies of recent albums. She already regards the recorded version of The Mirror Pool as a thing of the past, and sees this tour as an opportunity for her and the band to enjoy themselves with the material and explore it further, along with a number of new songs.

"This concert is just gorgeous, really," she affirms. "You paint the things you sense more than the things you see. Do you know what I mean?"

Lia Ices, "Daphne"

2011-02-17T15:50:00.000-06:00

I'm still trying to make heads or tails of Lia Ices, and this strange video (though lovely) doesn't help me sort things out:

Not much, anyway.

"Wow, this town is horrible. I wish I could find some way of escaping."

2011-01-28T11:41:00.001-06:00

I just discovered this essential piece of rock history in the form of an elaborate, high-end puppet show:

A Brief History of XTC

I would critique it, but, really, if anything were ever beyond comment...

And, to cleanse your palate, here's the hit single from that album:

Blink Once if God, Twice if No God

2011-01-24T14:48:00.003-06:00

I feel a strong and earnest (oh so earnest!) desire to knock the previous post off the top spot. This blog deserves better, as do you. With that in mind, dear reader, I will confess that it has taken several months for me to find my way into Joanna Newsom's most recent album, Have One on Me. Or was it the other way around? Yes, perhaps the music took its sweet time to find its way into me. Now that these songs have entered my bloodstream, I'm not sure what the hold up was all about. I posted my favorite song a few weeks ago, and here's another:

And here is Newsom performing "On a Good Day" and being a good sport on Letterman:

I also want to sound a note of sympathy for the long-suffering Newsom, as she apparently lives from day to day with a psychological affliction of the worst kind:

Deeply unfortunately, the song Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile, from Annie, has been lodged in my head for 20 years. It’s there permanently. No matter what’s happening it is softly playing in the back of my mind and one fifteenth of my mind is singing along. It is a nightmare.

May she find peace in this lifetime. Oh, and may she never find this blog post to remind her of that song.

Elgar Cello Concerto vs. The Energies of Dullness

2011-01-21T15:49:00.001-06:00

Here's Elgar's haunting cello concerto, performed by Jaqueline Du Pre and conducted by Daniel Barenboim, interspersed with selected, obnoxious right-wing TV commercials. I must grant that the deck is stacked and the referee is biased. And I have no doubt this battle to the death amounts to some sort of sacrilege, but I can live with that.

Wednesday Miscellany: Blogging, Writing, Songs, and Stories

2011-01-19T14:45:00.002-06:00

Three weeks ago I had the grand idea that I'd start blogging again. But then I started a facebook group devoted to the exchange of good, new, and old "alternative" music (we don't really use that term), and that group simply took over my online life. It has been rewarding beyond anything I expected when I opened the group and invited a dozen or so friends on New Year's Day. I've discovered great new music, shared some great old music, and come to know some very good bands I had overlooked in the eighties and nineties. If you like the songs I've posted on the blog and you're serious about music, by all means, join us. You should be able to search for the group name: "P.I.G.S.T.Y.2011" (that's the Project for InterGenerational Swapping of Tunes in the Year 2011) and request to join. If you can't find the PIGSTY on facebook, email me. We'll work something out.

And, by the way, the PIGSTY has inspired me to pick up my guitar and rediscover that I'm bored by my rudimentary guitar-playing. I can write lyrics. I can sing. I'm interested in seeking a songwriting collaborator with the hope of recording music together. I'm not all that interested in performing out (though performance comes easily to me) but I'd love to put some songs on record.

-----

Anyway, I've probably neglected to post links here to the stories I published in 2010. This indicates poor self-promotion, perhaps. There weren't many stories, and all were very short, but here you go (listed in the order I like them best, because I'm kind of a jerk):

1. "Mallard" at Wigleaf

2. "From the Canyon to the Driveway" in Night Train

3. "The Spoils" in The Collagist

4. "Trinkets" in Corium

I feel good about each one, and it seems silly now to see "Trinkets" in last place. But I won't delete the list to avoid looking dorky. On the contrary, I know who and what I am.

Oh, and there were two more things worth mentioning: this "postcard" in Wigleaf (the journal has a tradition of publishing little notes from its stories authors, and often the notes are just as good as the stories) and this FlashFiction.net reprint and analysis of "Onion Ring" (originally published in Snow Monkey a few years ago). That's four flash fiction publications proper, plus two other items, bringing the 2010 grand total to six--which is six more than 2007, 2008, and 2009 combined. This writer's back in business.

-----

And, speaking of facebook, I'm thrilled to have made arrangements to block my access to that site from work. Though the I.T. department here said they couldn't do it, I asked my wife to change my facebook password. It's saved on my home computer, but not here at the office. So far this has felt liberating. I don't have an addictive personality, but I'm easily distracted. Facebook has been a drain on my fiction writing, I will admit, for the better part of two and a half years. And I do 95% of my writing here at the office.

And I'll go even further with this confession: sometimes I fear I'm a better facebooker than writer.

In any case, maybe the lack of access to facebook will lead to a wee bit more blogging. I'd feel good about that.

-----

Here, have a song--one of the great hidden gems of rock history: "The Dolphins & The Sharks" by Crime & the City Solution (sorry, "embedding disabled by request").

("That's what she said.")

"Music is...is God."

2010-12-23T12:59:00.000-06:00

How can I entice you to watch this? Trust me. It's the kindest thing you could do for yourself now, as you sit at your computer. If you have time to surf the Web, give yourself the gift of twelve minutes with this woman and her story, then share it.

It's Happening Again

2010-12-22T14:55:00.002-06:00

I'm blogging. It's December. Same pattern as last year.

-----

This semester kicked my ass. I developed a new course (Transcending Gender), submitted a series of proposals ranging from more new classes to a writing workshop/retreat in Italy, taught a flash fiction workshop, banged out the greater part of the final draft of my book (still banging out the remainder), and did the usual: crammed four weeks from top to bottom with student conferences, worked a second job, helped raise two kids, took out the trash on Tuesday nights, that sort of thing. With all this to take care of, I had to let go of something. Blogging and marathon training fell by the wayside. For the running, there's always next year. For the blogging, there's now.

-----

This has never happened before: three of my students mentioned this blog in their end-of-semester evaluations. How odd. Why? If you're reading this, O former student, what brought you here? Drop a line, whoever you are.

-----

I can't get over how much I enjoyed the Transcending Gender course. I'm not a gender scholar--not really. But I teach in a writing program that allows its faculty to expand the range of their course offerings by pursuing their interests. And, as both a fiction writer and actor, I've long been interested the world between genders. Gender crossings. Cross dressing. Rocky Horror Picture Show. I'm intrigued still, and I look forward to revisiting the subject (and the course) in the coming months.

For now, though, I should write. Back to work!

-----

One more thing. If you're about to die, Joanna Newsom will save your life:

Don't die.

-----

Thanks for stopping by, dear reader, whoever and wherever you may be.

Consider Green Lakes and the Idiocy of Clocks

2010-12-21T00:06:00.003-06:00

Tonight, for the first time since 1638, we get a total eclipse of the moon on the longest night of the year.

TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE MOON
(originally published in In Posse Review, a long, long time ago)

Zack is alone and naked in the outhouse. He peers through the door's crescent moon window at a sun-drenched patch of weeds scattered with beach toys and badminton racquets. His family's dilapidated A-frame stands about fifty feet away. A duck quacks overhead. Girls' voices shout "Marco!" and answer "Polo!" at the lake's edge, just out of sight. Zack cries, "Mom?"
Twenty minutes ago Zack's cousin Billy stole the T-shirt, cut-off jeans and fruit-of-the-Loom briefs Zack had left on a hook in the outhouse. Without noticing, Zack had pulled the outhouse door almost shut behind him and hung his swim trunks on a hook. Billy sneaked up, snatched the trunks, and ran off, cackling, into the woods.

Now Zack rises to his tiptoes, puts his mouth to the crescent moon, and whispers, "Help!" His head begins to whirl from sweat and the stink of the toilet hole. He could bolt for the woods, but the trees hide a jungle of poison ivy. He could sprint for the cabin, but someone would spot him. Tearing off two sheets of toilet paper, he wipes his dripping forehead.

All of a sudden the crescent moon goes dark. The door rattles against the flimsy latch. Uncle Bruce, who talks as if every word is crammed up inside his nose, says, "Hello?"

Zack shuts his eyes. "Just a minute!"

"That you, Zacky boy?"

"Yes!" Zack wraps a few layers of toilet paper around his sweaty groin and buttocks, but the paper instantly clumps and dissolves. He wads it up and tosses it into the toilet hole.

"Hustle your butt! I gotta take a dump." Uncle Bruce whistles "Born to Run" as he leans a shoulder against the door. The boards creak. "Come on, Zacky! You get your little pecker stuck in the hole?"

"I'm fine!"

Uncle Bruce crams his face against the moon hole. "You alone?"

Zack squeezes his naked backside into the corner. His forehead brushes an ancient strip of fly paper suspended from a nail. "Of course!"

The latch shakes free and the door flies open. Bruce's chubby head thrusts into the outhouse. Zack slips through the crevice of open air between the door frame and his uncle's enormous belly. Bruce's fat fingers clutch at his shoulders, slipping off in Zack's rush of sweat and panic. The boy hurdles a beach ball and sprints toward the cabin.

Uncle Bruce shouts, "Zacky! You're naked!"

Zack stubs his toe against a rock in the weeds, but loses only a step. His mother comes onto the porch with a gin and tonic in one hand and a bag of potato chips in the other. Her big brown eyes meet Zack's. She tosses back her head and squawks with laughter. Potato chips scatter.

Zack veers left toward the woods. Billy steps out of the bushes. He has Zack's swim trunks draped over his hair like an Indian headdress. He cocks a handful of mud at his ear, ready to fire. Zack pivots and dashes for the lake, but old Mrs. Alstead from next door stands directly between him and the water. A wicker basket filled with driftwood tumbles from her trembling hands. She screeches, "Zachary Norris, put on your clothes before I call the cops!"

Zack's cousin Ellie and three other girls rise from the water in pastel bathing suits; one by one, they point at Zack and scream. He wheels toward the cabin, leapfrogs the croquet mallets, and darts for the far corner of the house as Uncle Bruce's voice rises above the cacophony:

"Get him, Billy!"

Something cold and wet slaps hard against Zack's bottom. As if in slow motion -- with his mother's laughter and the little girls' shrieks echoing in his ears -- Zack's knees buckle. He trips and falls toward the weeds, toward years of shame and humiliation, toward wretched interviews for pathetic jobs, toward belittling breakups with women he truly loves and who never really love him back, toward a lifetime of scratching his way to some semblance of respectability -- down, down, down he falls through a thousand holidays and gatherings when the story of this long ago summer day gets told and retold, when the family hoots and laughs because there he landed, face-down in the weeds with his pale buttocks exposed to the world through a thick, dark splatter of mud.

-----

That one won't be in the book.

I Can't Think of a Title for This Post

2010-12-16T22:31:00.001-06:00

Nine songs come up when I search the word "untitled" on my iTunes library. Tonight I went looking for the R.E.M. song "Untitled," knew I'd get the Cure, but didn't expect this many. Here they are:

(Sadly, the only version I could find of the next song--R.E.M.'s "Untitled"--is an instrumental cover, but it's not a bad one.)

[The next is an alternate take of "Sugar High" but it's listed as untitled on the CD. Couldn't find it, so here's a live version with an interview for Japanese TV. Duffy was big there, I gather.]

I have a great memory of hearing this last song in concert. I was there the night Peter Himmelman first publicly performed this ballad. It was nothing short of spiritual. Devastating. Awe inspiring. Also life affirming. I can't speak for this video, but the song itself will blow you away if you give it a shot.

November Spawned a Monster

2010-11-29T12:17:00.000-06:00

I've withdrawn from online life--first from the online writers' workshop I belong to, then from this blog, a couple months ago, and my other, and now from Facebook. It feels right, right now, to keep to myself. All that online strutting and fretting grew tiresome and bleak. No doubt I'll come back to the blog and Facebook, in phases, as I have for some time.

But for now, I'll stay quiet. Sort of.

Here's this, from Morrissey, with interesting additions by...someone else:

I Have No Purple Shirts

2010-10-20T15:00:00.000-05:00

...nor pants, nor socks, nor shoes, nor sweaters, nor underwear, nor glasses. So today I wear my daughter's purple Mardi Gras beads and stand ready to bust the heads of bigoted bullies.

By the way, when I went for lunch on campus, I saw precious little purple. It's a shame, really, that I was surprised by this. I should know by now.

It Gets Worse (Take #2)

2010-10-11T10:35:00.004-05:00

Here's the higher-quality, tightly edited version of my "It Gets Worse" video:

Though I had the idea last Saturday, I was slow to put togehter the video. On Wednesday evening, someone else beat me to it and scored the ~~20,000~~ ~~60,000~~ 85,000+ views and attention from everybody's hero, Dan Savage. But I got over it quickly. That other guy and I had the same idea, more or less at the same time. And the point has been made.

Here's the competition:

IT GETS WORSE
Uploaded by FirstLastName. - Explore international webcam videos.

I think it's funnier than mine but perhaps less cutting.

IT GETS WORSE

2010-10-07T10:10:00.001-05:00

Having established my credentials as a part-time, whenever-inspiration-strikes, fly-by-night satirist, I thought I'd direct my special gifts toward Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project. There's a higher quality, tightly edited version in the works, so consider this Take #1:

Kurt Vonnegut's Final Interview

2010-08-23T00:46:00.000-05:00

"The cause of hair loss in males is adultery."

And other gems...

I can't count the levels of Sad.

Antony & the Johnsons, "Thank You for Your Love"

2010-08-21T01:33:00.002-05:00

Earnest music, just out, for which my love knows no bounds:

(Updated 1/31/12 with a different video player. The original was apparently deleted. Also, I needed this song today. Thank you, Antony!)

Venice is Sinking

2010-08-19T01:53:00.002-05:00

...and going down in style.

BTS: Venice Is Sinking Takeaway Show from BLVD Magazine on Vimeo.

Open for Business

2010-08-18T15:27:00.001-05:00

My new blog for writers, The 39th Draft, is now officially open for business. Click over, check it out, add it to your favorites, and if you've got your own blog then please add a link. Comments are invited!

Can short and long stories coexist?

2010-08-08T16:35:00.000-05:00

"Flash fiction and long short stories don't work together in a collection. It's nice to have a shorter story after a longer one."
- [a writer whose opinion I respect, posted in a private discussion forum]

At the moment, my story collection includes nine longer stories (1,200 to 7,000 words--most in the middle of that range) and sixteen short-shorts (100-1,000--again, most in the middle). I like the rhythm this creates. But it may be jarring for the reader who dives in on page one without noticing the differing page-lengths on the contents page. I suppose that reader would adjust soon enough. Anyway, I've done away with the sections that once divided the stories by length, and this way feels right. In some cases, now, I split the longer stories with one flash, sometimes two, once even three. And the final "long" story is the shortest. As it stands, never does the book go from one long story to another.

I like this. And I worry about this.

Dear reader of story collections: What are your thoughts on books that include both flash fiction and longer stories? The best one I can think of is Stuart Dybek's The Coast of Chicago. Should the short and long be segregated?

Thanks for your time.

Here, have a Tom Waits concert.

2010-08-07T22:28:00.000-05:00

And don't say I never brought you back anything from one of my trips to Youtubia. This was recorded at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, on 30 October 1999.

Part 1

Part 2

M-A-R-T-I-N-A

2010-08-06T10:18:00.003-05:00

I'm not a big tennis fan, but this one goes out to Martina Navratilova, who has this to say about her life (in this piece on her fight for survival against breast cancer):

I think anybody that survives the communist system, they're pretty tough! And then being gay on top of that, that wasn't helpful. As they say, that which does not kill you makes you stronger, so I am pretty strong.

And here's my phavorite iconic, gender-bending, Jewish, Lesbian folksinger, Phranc singing Navratilova's praises:

I met Phranc, by the way, at a tiny little concert she did at the Colorado College in Colorado Springs. Talked to her for several minutes after the show, and we exchanged a couple of notes and postcards after that.

I miss mail.

Godspeed, Martina!

UPDATE: Now I'm on a Phranc kick today, and I just rediscovered this awesome adaptation of an awesome song:

Thanks, Phranc and whoever put this together. Brilliant! And you gotta love the Ernest Hemingway moment there.

Rostropovich and Rumi

2010-08-05T17:07:00.002-05:00

The Steambath
(a poem by Jelaluddin Rumi)

Steam fills the bath, and frozen figures on the wall
open their eyes, wet and round, Narcissus eyes
that see enormous distances, and new ears
that love the details of any story. The figures dance
like friends diving and coming up again.

Steam spills into the courtyard. It’s the noise
of resurrection! They move from one corner
laughing across to the opposite corner. No one notices
how steam opens the rose of each mind,
fills every beggar’s cup solid with coins.
Hold out a basket. It fills up so well
that emptiness becomes what you want.

The judge and the accused forget the sentencing.
Someone stands up to speak, and the wood of the table
becomes holy. The tavern in that moment is actually made
of wine. The dead drink it in.
Then the steam evaporates.
Figures sink back into the wall, eyes blank,
ears just lines.
Now it’s happening again, outside.
The garden fills with bird and leaf sounds.

We stand in the wake of this chattering and grow airy.
How can anyone say what happens, even if each of us
dips a pen a hundred million times into ink?

Shanked

2010-08-05T14:32:00.000-05:00

The following video is graphic and, if you follow its instructions with the speed and vigor with which I attempted it, quite violent:

Someone should make a proper, real-world how-to-sew a button video, one that begins with several calm reassurances that you can do this, it's really hard, and you'll feel shame and embarrassment that you've lived this long in the world without making yourself even minimally useful, and moves on to slow-motion, multi-angle shots of each step. Such a video would run approximately twenty minutes long, but at least it would not require dozens of stops and starts and herky-jerky jumps back a few seconds to pick up where you left off.

Until that video becomes available for instant and frequent viewings, the Internet will never be my home.

Talk Talk, "Ascension Day"

2010-08-04T11:00:00.002-05:00

Here is one of the best songs. Period.

That's a fanmade video shot in Beijing. Found it on Youtube, of course. Adore it, of course.

I am loving the music of Shearwater lately (Thanks, Axton!), but this song by Talk Talk effortlessly does everything Shearwater's working hard to do, and more.

Related post: "It's Getting Late in the Evening"

These Thoughts are the Thoughts I Think I Think

2010-08-03T11:29:00.004-05:00

This sentence is the sentence I thought for hours and hours would be the first sentence of all the sentences in one of my novels:

These thoughts are the thoughts I think I think.

When I roll those words around in my skull, they sound good. They feel right. Their internal reptitions resonate with layers of meaning. They have texture and depth. But when I see them on the page, they slouch there, flat and lifeless. They die before they are born.

And so it goes.

-----

I received notes from my publisher/editor last night. Though I was braced for the possibility of something jarring, almost everything she suggested makes the book feel better.

And we move closer, closer...

-----

Apparently the bathroom down the hall from my office here at the university is adjacent to a bathroom on the other side of the wall. I'm in a somewhat obscure, out-of-the-way building--an old, converted dorm now serving as office space--and it's very quiet here. Usually.

But today I heard voices through the vent. Not professors' voices, but the voices of men who labor with their hands. They joked about taking their boss for a drive, tying him up, stuffing his pockets with rocks, and tossing him into a lake.

This was a joke. They laughed then spoke fondly of the boss then expressed sympathy for what he is going through at home with his disabled daughter or wife--I couldn't tell which.

Then they talked about plumbing.

The episode jarred me a bit, not least because it shook me out of the cerebral mental space I drift into when I'm here. This is where I write. This is where I read essays and critique essays and write essays and devise new strategies to more effectively teach the art of the essay. And it's where I concoct stories. This is not, for me, a place where real voices speak of murder and plumbing and other men's wives.

-----

This violent clip from Barton Fink came to mind.

-----

If I had seen either man, I might have felt obligated to report this incident. But, based on the compassionate discussion that followed the murder plot, I'm confident what I heard was idle jest, nothing more than the venting of tension.

-----

Six years ago, I abandoned the novel I mention above. I got about 25,000 words in. It's the best thing I've written, but I couldn't continue in the narrator's first-person omniscient point of view. Somehow he could read the thoughts of others, feel their feelings, and see them in places when he was not there. His compassion was stunning, but I know that sooner or later I'd have to account for his apparent superpower. Or so I thought.

But maybe not.

-----

These thoughts were the thoughts I thought I thought.

Monday Miscellany

2010-08-02T11:25:00.000-05:00

- It's bloody hot here.

- I miss the ocean.

- I woke up this morning ("and I got myself a beer!") and thought, 'It's August. The book is scheduled for publication in October. Ack.' Or something like that. For my own sanity, I promised (myself) to go through the thing once more, word by word, sentence by sentence, and set it all free. That seemed to ease my mind a little.

- All too often, when I revise, I delete. I get out the scissors and cut. I slash away at the language, at the scenes, at the story, in an effort to stretch every sentence to its tautest point. I trim for tension. I cut for consequence. And sometimes I overdo it. This last run through the book has to be about releasing tension and letting every word fly.

- I think about other things--say, my family, my job, my dog, my hygiene--but mostly now, when I'm alone, I think about the book.

- I'm meeting this afternoon with a group of student writers who seem to want to work with me to enrich the creative writing community at O.U. I say 'seem to' because they've got their projects, and I've got mine. Fortunately, we also have enthusiasm for the other's ideas. So off we go....

- Despite having hosted a monthly flash fiction workshop for a decade, it's surprisingly challenging to consolidate my thoughts about the genre and approach it as a teacher.

- That's a symptom of a larger social malady of mine. Whenever anyone wants to talk to me about fiction, I resist the impulse toward expressing expertise. And it's not just that I want to avoid coming across as arrogant. It's that deep down I know what a monumental, daunting task it is to shape experience and impulse into readable fiction. It's by far the hardest thing I have ever tried to do. So if it's so difficult for me, the feeling goes, then why on earth would I presume the role of expert? Yet I'm a writer. And I'm a teacher. What the hell else am I supposed to do? It's a conflict. I'm working on it.

- I'm also working on making more productive use of my time. Which tells me I ought to move on to something else. I hope to come back throughout the day to add to this post. In the meantime, what's your favorite Colin Moulding song? (See the post below.)

King for a Day: The Songs of Colin Moulding

2010-08-02T10:26:00.002-05:00

I'm such a devoted Andy Partridge fan that I often fail to appreciate the simpler, smoother work of his XTC songwriting partner Colin Moulding. Truth be told, I must admit that Moulding suffers in comparison. On any given XTC album, you'll find, say, eleven songs by Partridge and three by Moulding. For my money, Partridge stands as the best pop songwriter this side of Lennon/McCartney; so, naturally, the less ambitious and far more accessible Moulding ends up looking and sounding somewhat pedestrian. But recently I made a list of Moulding songs for my iPod, and his work holds up beautifully.

I was surprised to learn that he was responsible for several of the band's early hits ("Making Plans for Nigel," "Life Begins at the Hop," and "Generals and Majors"), and he wrote some of my favorite XTC and Dukes of Stratosphear songs, including "Ball and Chain," "Vanishing Girl," "Grass," "Sacrificial Bonfire," "The Smartest Monkeys," and "Boarded Up." And I imagine that working and getting along with Andy Partridge wasn't the easiest thing a person could do for 25 years or so. I bet Colin's a swell guy, too.

Here's an example--"King for a Day" from Oranges and Lemons, complete with an eccentric and horrifying introduction by Andy Partridge, himself:

(Gotta love the shorts.)

And here's earlier Moulding masterpiece--"The Meeting Place" from Skylarking:

In fact, Moulding may have peaked on XTC's best record, Skylarking. He contributed "The Meeting Place" (above), "Sacrificial Bonfire" (at the end of this post), "Big Day," "Dying," and this glorious song, "Grass":

This one isn't a proper video at all, but I love the song--"Boarded Up" from the final XTC album, Wasp Star:

And here's an unofficial, fan-made video for my favorite Moulding song, "Sacrificial Bonfire" (also from Skylarking):

For he's a jolly good fellow!

Time

2010-07-31T09:08:00.001-05:00

...passes.

Rootsy Music

2010-07-26T01:55:00.001-05:00

Stephen Duesner gets in the best zinger I've read in a music review in a long time--at the expense (and to the benefit) of Blue Giant:

Their understanding of indie pop music remains as strong as ever, but their take on roots doesn't get much further than the Cracker Barrel off the interstate.

Makes me want to buy the album anyway, because sometimes that's as far off the interstate as I want to go.

-----

Here's an older, sweet one from Blue Giant:

WE'RE HOT! HOT! HOT!

2010-07-19T00:46:00.006-05:00

WE DID IT!!!!! Congrats to everyone for pulling together to break the WORLD RECORD! Yay for us! WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Great work, team. Great work! Now let's see if we can top ourselves in July. Come on! Less than two weeks left!

UPDATE: The original version of this post included an embedded video of the song "Hot! Hot! Hot!" by The Cure, which would play automatically for anyone and everyone who arrived at the main page of this blog. That was obnoxious. It was also inadvertent. Our sincerest apologies go out to anyone adversely affected by hearing this song.

Laurie Anderson's "How to Write"

2010-07-17T22:42:00.000-05:00

Finally, I understand.

Blogalicious Word of the Day

2010-07-15T17:19:00.000-05:00

"Portmanteau."

Pax Ravenna

2010-07-15T16:19:00.005-05:00

My book's publisher, Ravenna Press, has a new blog called PAX RAVENNA: News emanating from the veins and arteries of Ravenna Press. If you enjoy my work--or if you don't, I suppose--I encourage you to wander over to show your support as a follower of the Ravenna blog, too. The followers' widget is near the top of the right-hand column. Ravenna is a fine press with many excellent books under its belt; and the blood flowing through those veins and arteries is some hardy, vital stuff, let me tell you. I'm proud to become a part of Kathryn Rantala's empire.

Come to think of it, I've been part of it for some time. Rantala published "Onion Ring," a short-short story of mine, in her journal Snow Monkey, back in 2002 or so.

-----

While you're in a clicky mood, check out the latest "chapter" of Kathryn's current project, Anemone Sidecar.

-----

And while I'm in a linky mood, Ravenna Press published one of my favorite books of fiction from the past couple years: Kim Chinquee's Oh Baby. If you read flash fiction and prose poetry, you must have this book. Chinquee is a master of both forms and the gray areas betwixt and between.

-----

By the way, my book, Magnificent Mistakes, is scheduled for release in October. After four years of tinkering, I have finally put a full manuscript in the publisher's hands. In it, the stories are selected and sequenced, as opposed to one big pile of stories for potential inclusion. Yet I continue to tinker as I await a final-ish set of notes from Kathryn; and in the meantime I'm working with the cover designer. I'm also collaborating with an animator on a hand-drawn cartoon adaptation of one of the stories. Watch for it, you, on a tube near you this fall.

It's all coming together. I want to say I'm thrilled. And I am. But honestly I'm equal parts thrilled and terrified. I suspect I'll feel this way until an actual copy of the book rests in my hands. Then I imagine I will find peace, hear a choir of angels, burst into fireworks, and ascend to Author Heaven.

Simple Minds, "Hunter and the Hunted"

2010-07-15T10:52:00.000-05:00

This song is almost thirty years old. That means I am really old. Pass my walker, Edith, I'm gonna dance to artsy, angsty, ambitious new-wave pop.

Whatever Roxy Music did, Simple Minds did it better. There, I said it. Now make me regret it, Edith. Make me regret it.

With Half-Closed Eyes

2010-07-14T17:03:00.001-05:00

It's bloody hot here. I can't wait for night. In five minutes I must leave the chilly confines of my office, step into the sauna and the sun, and bike home. That five minutes will be my least favorite part of this day. I hope.

-----

It's been a long time since I was last moved by a Depeche Mode song, but I found this version of "Waiting for the Night to Come" this afternoon and suddenly felt just a wee bit better about my world. Because night will come, and I'll be here to meet it.

Come on, thunder!

2010-07-14T14:10:00.005-05:00

This just in: James (my favorite band of the nineties, bar none) has announced a tour of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to go with the North American release of this still-thriving band's new double album, The Morning After the Night Before. Sadly (for me, certainly, but perhaps not for Tim Booth and company), the closest James will come to Oklahoma is Atlanta. Or Denver. Not sure. Either way, I'll miss the show. Ah well. I am used to it, and missing out on the tour does nothing to diminish my enthusiasm for the new songs--which are FANTASTIC! I'll post dates, a promo video with interview and live clips, and a new song below.

But first, here's an oldie--a live (or semi-live--it's hard to tell) performance of "Sometimes" from Top of the Pops in 1993:

One chord. Five guitars. And the truth. Oh, and plenty of spinning.

The Morning After The Night Before Tour
USA, Canada, Mexico ~ Autumn 2010

September:
20th – Fort Lauderdale, FL – Culture Room
21st – Lake Buena Vista, FL – House Of Blues
22nd – Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse
24th – Philadelphia, PA – The Trocadero Theatre
25th – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club
27th – Washington DC – 9:30 Club
28th – New York, NY – Webster Hall
30th – Toronto, CA – Queen Elizabeth Theatre

October:
1st – Royal Oak, MI – Royal Oak Music Theatre
2nd – Chicago, IL – The Vic Theatre
4th – Denver, CO – Bluebird Theatre
5th – Salt Lake City, UT – The Complex
7th – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom
8th – Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom
9th – Seattle, WA – Showbox at the Market
11th – San Francisco, CA – The Regency Ballroom
12th – Anaheim, CA – House Of Blues
13th – Los Angeles, CA – The Music Box
16th – Mexico City, MX – Corona Capital Music Festival (with the Pixies, Interpol)**
18th – Guadalajara, MX – Teatro Diana**
19th – Second headline show in Mexico, venue TBA

And here's a recent promotional video for the European tour:

Finally, "Ten Below":

Generic Link

2010-07-13T07:52:00.000-05:00

This is a generic post, meant to convey some deep cultural significance to my Facebook friends along with a glimpse into my soul. They may or may not click through, and may or may not 'Like' this link. But it exists as testimony to the fact that I am thinking of them, thinking of you, reaching out to you, offering to entertain, enlighten, move, or motivate you. Though this post offers vaguely political implications, it does not preach. It affirms your worldview and mine. It secures my sense of participation in that world. And it accomplishes precisely nothing.

Up from Shadows

2010-07-13T07:44:00.001-05:00

Though unsure how or why, I have fallen into a deep funk since the completion of my manuscript a week and a half ago. These past few days, I've felt unable to claw my way out of this hole, unable to connect with even my family in meaningful ways. And worse--I began to suspect the world was trying to break my will to live. Not that I had become suicidal, mind you--the impulse to care for my children is far stronger than any darkness to be found in this heart. But I have wondered who I am and what I'm doing here and why I do the things I do and do not do so many of the things I want to do. Yesterday, I hit rock bottom. Alone in the house, I shouted at no one and wept for no good reason. Shortly after that, I drove to work (a rare event, as I usually walk) then sat in the car to wait for heavy rain to pass. It passed. I got out of the car and locked my keys in the ignition.

Somehow, that goofy mistake broke the spell. I recognized my depression for what it was. And that recogition is always the point at which the journey back begins.

Today, though I have much work to do, I will set aside time to write in my journal and read poetry. Then I will work on a story that has been lurking in the shadows for days. Then who knows?

----------------

Captain Beefheart

2010-07-09T11:19:00.000-05:00

My friend Pete has been patiently persistent in pointing me toward and into the music of Captain Beefheart. Today, I found the door...

Now I know that Tom Waits wasn't abducted by aliens in the early eighties. He just discovered Captain Beefheart.

I know...

2010-07-06T00:54:00.000-05:00

...I'm neglecting the blog and pretty much everything else, and have been for a month. Finishing this book has been hard. And I know now it will never be "finished." But the manuscript is now a whole manuscript, and as I move past this milestone I'm starting to feel like a whole human being again.

Which is not to say I'm all sunshine and cheer. Let P.J. Harvey speak for me now:

A PUFF OF SMOKE

2010-06-30T15:20:00.005-05:00

[This story was originally published by Small Spiral Notebook in 2002.]

Midnight. We stare at the moon through rain trails on the windows of Scott’s VW Beetle parked behind the Fort Missoula cemetery. Violent Femmes blast on the stereo and the vinyl seat vibrates my back. Danny’s got three earrings and wears streaks of mascara. Scott’s got a short blond Mohawk. Anthea has hair the color of a ripe mango. She sits in back with me and her jeans rub against mine. Danny leans over his seat and pushes a joint at my face. I wave my hand through cobwebs of smoke.

“Come on, Kurt,” he says. “I care about you.”

“No thanks,” I say.

“If it sucks, you never have to smoke again.”

Scott nods like he too might never smoke again. His Mohawk scratches the dome light. Anthea’s red-orange hair sticks to the window. She’s already high and stroking my leg with her fingers. This would feel good if she weren’t gawking at gravestones. Spittle trails from her mouth and shines in the moonlight.

“Quit drooling, dope fiend,” Danny says. “Quit looking more freaky than you are.”

Anthea giggles and wipes her face with her sleeve. She smiles at me. “You gonna smoke, sweetie?” She puts a hand on my chest and says, “You don’t have to.”

I take the joint in my fingers. It feels like a dead moth. I suck on it. Nothing happens. Scott flicks his lighter and singes my nose hairs.

“Breathe deep,” Anthea says. “Hold it.”

I suck in till my lungs burn and I choke.

Anthea takes the stub of my left arm and puts it in her lap. Danny and Scott face forward again and we all sit there watching rain slither down the windows.

Danny turns to me. “Why’d your dad blow his brains out if he was such a great guy and all?”

Anthea smacks his head and says, “I’m hungry for Pop Tarts.”

“Cherry Pop Tarts,” Scott says.

Five minutes later we climb out of the car at Rosauers.

“I don’t feel high,” I say. “I’ll just crash by the fertilizer bags.”

They go inside. I sit on a pallet of Weed & Feed out front. The Coke machine glows red on the wet part of the sidewalk. The handicapped parking sign’s pole is bent. After a minute or two a bald guy with a white isosceles triangle mustache walks over to me. He has a box of chocolate milk in one hand and a pack of Dolly Madison buns in the other.

“Hey there,” he says. “How do you like this town?”

“It’s all right,” I say.

“How long you been here?”

“Three months.”

“Yeah? Where’d you come from?”

“California.”

He winks. He’s got a blue Oxford shirt like my dad’s. It’s weird to see Dad’s shirt on some bald guy.

Two jocks in a black Mustang cruise through the lot. The driver has a roll of fat like a hot dog bun around his neck. He tosses a cigarette at the pavement and cranks a Def Leppard tune. His arm hangs out the window and his fingers wiggle in the rain. The Mustang squeals out of the lot and heads south on Reserve toward the golf course.

The bald man chuckles. “What’s your name?”

I think for a second. “Kurt.”

“Hi, Kurt. I’m Roy.” Roy looks at me like he’s trying to remember where we met before. “Do you know Jesus?”

I take a deep breath and the pot hits me. My fingers go numb and my lips get all fat. “Not personally,” I say. I can hardly spit out the words.

“I don’t mean to pry, Kurt. I’m in town visiting my daughter.” He waves his cinnamon buns at the neighborhood across the street. “Just thought I’d come for a midnight snack. Couldn’t help but notice the questionable crowd you arrived with.”

“Yeah?”

“They seemed sorta wild, is all.”

“They’re a pack of wild animals all right,” I say. Or that’s what I try to say. I’m not sure Roy can understand me with my lips all fat.

He goes on about the Gospel of John and the afterlife and how good deeds aren’t enough because Heaven isn’t something we earn. Heaven is a gift given by the grace of God. Roy thinks I’m the reason the Lord brought him here tonight. A stick of gum is still in its foil on the sidewalk by Roy’s foot. I reach but Roy steps on it.

“You look like a nice kid. Tell me, Kurt, were you born without a hand?”

“No,” I say and hold up my right hand.

Roy’s white mustache curls up over his smile. “I mean, were you born with only one?”

“Yessiree, sir.”

“Well, maybe the good Lord will bless you with two hands in the afterlife. Would you like that?”

“I would not know.”

“You bet you would! Maybe he’ll give you three hands, Kurt, or four. What church do you go to?”

I tell him the first one that comes to mind. It was a place we went on Easter back in Cleveland. “First Methodist.” It had a brick fireplace in the back. All through the service some guy in a polyester suit tossed logs on the fire and for a while I forgot about the three feet of snow outside.

Roy sips his chocolate milk. “Do they talk about being born again at First Methodist?”

I scratch an itch on my ankle. “Don’t think so.”

“Well, you’re what? Fifteen? I was all of 33 years old before I figured out I was just warming a seat in church and not getting any closer to Heaven. Then, Kurt, I let my Lord and Savior into my heart and never not once did I look back. Every single day has been a gift, I tell you. Every day.” Roy steps closer and takes the last bite of his first cinnamon roll. “Do you have any idea what I am talking about?”

“Not really.”

“It can be the same for you. Revelations says Jesus is coming to separate the good from the bad. The goats will end up on one side of the fence, Kurt, and the sheep will end up on the other. If that happened tonight, Kurt, if Jesus came down to judge you, which side of the fence would you be on?”

“I try to be a good person.”

Roy crumples the empty milk carton in his hand. “That’s not biblical. When Jesus comes, goodness and niceness won’t have anything to do with it. The believers will vanish in a puff of smoke and the unbelievers will be cast down into eternal flame. You hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“You can choose the other side of the fence, Kurt, right here, right now. You know what day it is?” Roy raises his second cinnamon roll above his head. “Today is the day the Lord has made, Kurt. Today is the day you will change your life.”

It’s just me and Roy and a kid in a blue apron pushing a train of grocery carts toward the automatic doors. I’m standing but don’t remember getting up. Roy has his hands on my shoulders. His eyes are dark green and too close to mine. His breath is all coffee and puke and cinnamon and yeast.

“Kurt, buddy, you can drive a stake in the ground right now. From this day forward you can walk with the Lord. It’s simple. No need to close your eyes or anything. Will you take my hand and open your heart to Jesus with me, Kurt?”

Roy has splotches on his forehead. He looks happy and gloomy like he’s trying to change his luck but knows he can’t. And I want to make him happy. So I imagine having another hand. This makes me laugh and not because it’s funny but because all of a sudden I feel a hand on the end of my left arm. I clench the fist. I wriggle the fingers.

Now Roy looks worried.

“You look funny,” he says. “Are you all right, Kurt?”

I try to stop laughing. “Which ones are the goats?” I ask.

“The goats?”

“You said Jesus sorts out the sheep and the goats. Are the goats on the Heaven side of the fence or the Hell side? Because I don’t like sheep. I’d rather be a goat.”

Then Danny and Scott start making goat sounds or maybe sheep sounds. Bahh! Bahh! They waggle their heads and bleat at the sky. Anthea has one foot in a grocery cart. She rolls it in circles through the Handicapped Parking spot. I laugh so hard snot flies out of my nose and lands next to the stick of gum on the sidewalk. The gum still has Roy’s boot print in it.

I look around for Roy. He’s walking away with the bun I had hoped he’d offer me if I let Jesus into my heart. Roy cuts through the parking lot and stops at the streetlight. Scott and Danny tell me to get in the car. Roy jogs across the median. He doesn’t turn to wave goodbye. Then it’s gone—my new hand—as quick as it came.

_______________

Deep Thought for a Karaoke World #317

2010-06-30T02:28:00.002-05:00

If everyone gets to be a Weird Al, then Weird Al no longer gets to be weird.

A Handful of Obscure Tom Waits Songs and Video Clips

2010-06-30T01:21:00.003-05:00

I call them "obscure" only because they're new to me. Here are some live performances and animations culled from youtube's vast library of Tom Waits' music. Enjoy.

"Smuggler's Waltz" or "Bronx Lullaby"

"Take Me Home"

"Angels in Heaven"

"The One that Got Away"

"More than Rain" and an interview with Letterman

"Russian Dance"

"Edward"

"No One Knows I'm Gone"

"Lullaby"

G'night.

Nina Nastasia, "Cry, Cry Baby"

2010-06-29T23:12:00.000-05:00

This song's been out for two or three months, but the new album has arrived. So turn up the volume, watch, listen, watch and listen again, then go buy the record.

Mimi Goese and/or Persephone, "Elegy"

2010-06-28T16:21:00.001-05:00

I'm catching up with Mimi Goese of Hugo Largo (or trying to), but I haven't yet figured out whether Persephone is Mimi's new band or she's just guest-performing on this song. Either way, I love it.

Can't help wondering how much bigger Hugo Largo would have been if Mimi's ambitious singing and intense onstage antics had been paired with her more recent ability to stay on pitch.

No insult intended there, by the way. Mimi freely admits this, herself:

We used to be called precious, and I think it’s because we were full of shit. Our violin player, Hahn Rowe, was the only one of us who really knew how to play. He produced and engineered our stuff, too. The rest of us were posers. I listen to Hugo now and wonder why no one told me I couldn't sing on pitch.

Good interview all around, that one.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to find the story of how Michael Stipe ended up producing Hugo Largo's first album. I'm sure the band was asked this question in a hundred interviews around the time. And I'm sure I was one of those interviewers when Tim Sommer and Hahn Rowe came to see me at KSJS. But I cannot for the life of me find the tape.

Sopping Up the Mildness

2010-06-27T11:49:00.002-05:00

I enjoy the travel articles in the New York Times, but they address an entirely different budgetary scale than mine. Almost invariably, when I reach the end and the author offers up hotel and restaurant suggestions, I come away feeling deflated and left out.

Nonetheless, when I read a passage like this (from a piece on traveling Tuscany and Umbria in the footsteps of Henry James) it's hard not to start pricing tickets for a surprise, late-summer jaunt we can't afford:

By the time he reaches Arezzo, James has surrendered entirely to the charm of Tuscany. He mentions the museum, the “stately” duomo, and the “quaint” colonnades on the facade of Santa Maria della Pieve, but only in passing, in an apologetic aside, as if he knew that in the neighborhood there were monuments and artworks of importance to be studied, but, really, he’d rather just lounge around near the ruined castle that sits at the top of the town, just as he did in Assisi and Cortona, and sop up the “cheerful Tuscan mildness.”

No one who has visited Arezzo on a warm day in late spring can blame him — the settled, unforced, somehow inevitable beauty of the place demands unhurried, disinterested appreciation — though some would prefer to while away the hours in the lovely Piazza Grande, a sloping, comfortably enclosed space not unlike Siena’s famous Piazza del Campo, only more intimate.

Sighing, scrimping, saving...

[UPDATE: The editors at NYT kindly removed the hotel and restaurant recommendaitons from the James article. How very thoughtful.]

Google Would Know

2010-06-24T15:48:00.004-05:00

If a google search for the terms "Rilke" and "Scholar" is any indication, I suppose it's time to humbly upgrade my unofficial title from "America's leading Rilke scholar." Henceforth, whether interviewing me, quoting me, writing about me, or writing to me, please refer to me as:

the world's foremost Rilke Scholar.

And, by the way, I'm also America's best and most gifted undiscovered novelist between the ages of 41 and 42. This post makes it official, or will soon enough.

Bring on the googlebots!

We Interrupt This Silence

2010-06-21T02:12:00.002-05:00

...with not-quite-breaking news: Laurie Anderson has a new album called Homeland. It came out a month ago.

Now back to our regularly scheduled public service announcement:

Found It! (Michael Stipe sings "Harpers")

2010-06-20T22:27:00.000-05:00

I went looking for Michael Stipe's a capella, encore performance of Hugo Largo's "Harpers" a month ago, found nothing, and finally stumbled upon it by accident this afternoon (while searching for a live performance of R.E.M.'s "Moral Kiosk"):

ASK ERIC: How to Unspoil a Surprise Party

2010-06-16T15:50:00.006-05:00

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Today we roll out a new feature here at Everything is Beautiful, and Nothing Hurts. It's "ASK ERIC"--an advice column open to questions about anything and everything. We hope to make this a regular feature, so by all means send in your questions!]

Dear Eric,

I feel bad. I've been planning a huge surprise party for my wife's birthday, but she walked up while I was reading a Facebook email exchange with one of her friends. Well, Facebook locked up (again!), and my wife figured the whole thing out in about three seconds flat. It didn't help that I entitled the email "Shhh! Surprise party!" I'm embarrassed and angry and disappointed in myself and the whole situation. I hate to give up on the surprise, though. Is there any way to pull the wool over her eyes now? Please help!

Desperately Unbelievably Magnificently Banal And Surprisingly Stupid

Dear DUMBASS:

Yep. That was dumb, and you're an ass for letting her suss out the surprise so easily--but your situation isn't hopeless. If you truly want to surprise your wife now, then steel your heart and commit to a course of action that risks permanently damaging your marriage. But in this case, based on the sad tale you've told me, it's a risk worth taking.

Here's what you do:

1. Tell your wife you want a divorce. I'm serious. Convince her you've met someone else, fallen deeply in love, and you can no longer bear to be apart from this other woman. And because you're an honorable, decent human being, you don't want to betray your wife. So divorce is the only option. Oh! And don't forget to snap pics of her reaction(s). You'll both get some good laughs out of these later and for years to come--maybe.

2. Establish a date to move out, and--this is extremely important--set the move-out date a day before your wife's birthday (but not more, because that would be cruel).

3. Reset your Facebook relationship status to "Single."

4. When it comes to divvying up belongings, play your cards close to the vest. Don't let her keep all the Tom Waits. Definitely don't let her keep the eighties discs. And for god's sake do not for one minute let her get her hands on the Bob Dylan. Sure, she loves Dylan as much and possibly even more than you do. No matter! If you want this plan to work, you've got to be a hardass for a while. But don't worry, that's what might make the surprise/reuinion that much sweeter.

5. Rent a truck and recruit several friends to help you move out on the appointed day--but not your wife's friends, you dolt! If you let them in on this little subversion, then they will be sure to comfort her with the truth when she comes crying to them. That would ruin the surprise.

6. The night before the appointed day, serve your wife a nice meal with a fine bottle of wine. Reminisce about the good times you've had. Tell her you will always treasure your time together, and add that someday you may regret this decision. Sadly, though, there's no turning back now. Kiss her, even make out with her, but do not sleep with her. You have to leave her wanting more.

7. On the appointed day, move out.

8. Store everything in the truck. Park it at a friend's house, and sleep there. That evening, call your wife to see how she's doing. Tell her you need to come by the next day to pick up a couple things you forgot in the garage. And set a time.

9. That night, prepare large quantities of your wife's favorite foods.

10. The next morning, arrange for your friends and your wife's friends to meet you around the corner from your old house. Give your friends the full scoop, but tell your wife's friends to meet you there because you're worried about your wife's fragile state of mind. Tell them you want them to stage a grand show of love, during which you'll slip out the door so she'll see how much love there is in her life without you.

11. OK, it's crunch time. When everyone meets around the corner from the house, tell the entire group the real plan, then--at the time your wife is expecting you and you alone--march the group en masse over to the house. It's your wife's birthday, after all, so urge everyone to look joyful.

12. Ring the doorbell.

13. When she opens the door, shout, "SURPRISE!"

I'm telling you, your wife will not see this one coming. There's a decent chance she will take you back with open arms and feel forever grateful for the tremendous effort you've put into orchestrating this elaborate surprise.

Best of luck, DUMBASS, and please let us know how it turns out!

-Eric

Give Me the Ring

2010-06-15T22:24:00.000-05:00

Neither rain, nor nuclear war, nor the devastation of civilization, nor creepy small children can stop the Sisters of Mercy from donning goth gear and rocking the hell out.

Of course, this is only a test. In the event of an actual apocalypse the band would perform the full ten-minute album version of this song.

GOD HATES SOCCER!

2010-06-15T11:38:00.010-05:00

Like any adult heterosexual male who, in the misguided exuberance of youth, experimented with soccer, I feel deeply conflicted about soccer's coming-out-of-the-closet party:

As an American committed to social justice, I support soccer's right to be gay. I do. In fact, I would fight and die for soccer's freedom to live and love as it chooses. Far be it from me to interfere. You know? Love the sinner, hate the sin, and all that.

Which is fine and good. But seriously, people, why does soccer have to rub our noses in it? Why must soccer thrust its lifestyle in our faces by flaunting those faggy uniforms and all that prancing and high-kicking and sweaty hugging, when the soccer lifestyle clearly goes against the rules by which God has told us to live our lives?

You doubt me in this matter? Here are God's own words on the subject:

1 Cor. 6:9-10 - Do you not know that the wicked shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers nor attackers nor midfielders nor defenders nor particularly active yet limp-wristed goalkeepers shall inherit the Kingdom of God.

The Lord could not be more clear (and thankfully He refrained from being more explicit) in his prohibition of this gay sport. Look it up yourself if you still don't believe. Soccer is an abomination. Yet its proliferation runs wild like a herd of bareback stallions across a vast, extravagently decorated field of green.

Open your eyes, America. Soccer is everywhere. I mean, just today, while walking to work, I passed an athletic field teeming with dozens and possibly hundreds of young children--boys and girls!--all dressed in flamboyant neon jerseys, homosexual-style shorts, and those feminine black socks, and all participating in that scourge of modern youth sports: soccer camp.

Soccer camp! Can you imagine?

And from what I understand, soccer is even taught in public schools now. This mass indoctrination must be stopped. We must not let our fragile and impressionable little boys and girls fall into the grubby gay hands of this sinister homosexual sport that has taken hold of the rest of the world.

Once again, America is God's last, best hope.

So I say: Soccer, fine, be gay. But don't flaunt it. Get some decent uniforms or get out of our televisions. And get your hands off our kids. Restrict yourself to San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Little Rock, Paris, Central and South America, Africa, and other gay meccas. Go kick your little penalty kicks at each other in the privacy of your soccer-loving cities, and let decent Americans get back to wholesome sports like football and cheerleading.

Because if you don't, we will huddle up, we will bend over, we will reach our hands between the massive legs of our center, we will hike our oblong ball, and we will knock you on your ass.

Then again, that's probably what you've wanted all along. Isn't it?

-----

POINT OF CLARIFICATION: I said at the top of this post that I experimented with soccer as a boy. I should add that this happened when I was seven or eight, and I played goalie for a very strong team. In fact, that team was so good that opposing teams did not take a single shot on goal the entire season. I'm serious. I sat idly by and watched my team dominate those poor, submissive boys from across the city and throughout the region. It seems disgraceful in hindsight, but it's my inactivity then that keeps me on the up and up with God today.

O God of Car Repair

2010-06-14T11:23:00.002-05:00

I bend and set my ass upon padded armchair at a Honda dealership's service department lobby and implore thee, OGoCR, to have mercy on my car. The CR-V has been good and true and loyal lo these eight years since we bought it in Colorado Springs. Ye have blessed us with repairs both few and far between, both quick and inexpensive. And ye have granted us safe passage from Montana to Kansas to Oklahoma and into Texas and Missouri (not to mention through Wyoming, Nebraska, and New Mexico). And now, as the CHECK ENGINE indicator alights, OGoCR, grant us please a code that calls for the most minor of repairs. We offer unto thee this $95 diagnostic fee as a token of affection and devotion, and we await your annointed representatives to bring us the revelation of of your Word and Will.

UPDATE: I do not take the flooding all around me as an encouraging sign.

UPDATE: Total estimate--$1,800. Fuck thee, OGoCR.

Hammock

2010-06-12T21:58:00.001-05:00

I spent a few minutes in our back yard hammock this evening, shortly after weedwhacking the edges of the yard, the patio, the swing set, the garden beds, the other patio, the sewer-sticking-up-thingamajig, and the water meter. Oh, and I had the distinct pleasure of disposing of the freshly killed body of a mole. The dog was proud.

A pair of toads live under my wife's elderberry bush. They are elegant toads, serene toads, not prone to over-reaction.

After a few minutes on the hammock, I wasn't alone. First my wife came and sprawled across my body. Then our son climbed on top. Then the mosquitos took flight. Then we did.

The sun has gone down.

Tonight's soundtrack...

"Shipwrecked" by Hammock

"Losing You to You" by Hammock

The Cure, "Underneath the Stars"

2010-06-11T00:36:00.001-05:00

I've been rediscovering The Cure's last album (2008's 4:13 Dream) this week. I don't know why I ever drifted away from this band. The quality and beautiful strangeness of their songs have never lapsed. Robert Smith's voice is as good as ever. For whatever reason, I dropped out after 1989's Disintigration--probably their best album, and certainly my favorite. I need to circle back and reacquaint myself with Wish, Wild Mood Swings, Bloodflowers, and the self-titled album that came out in 2004.

Here's the first single from 4:13 Dream, and the last we've heard from Robert Smith and company:

Despite the intrusive logo business that happens two or three times throughout, it's a beautiful video for a beautiful song. Sounds better live, though:

Death is Just Another Path

2010-06-08T09:14:00.006-05:00

Today is the fifth anniversary of the passing of my dear friend Paul Vaughn. My wife and I treasured that man long after working with him for a couple years at a residential treatment center. I have too many great memories of Paul to list them here, and I don't think I could bear to make such a list, anyway. Not yet. Paul was, for a time, my closest friend, and he and his wife Patti were our daughter's there-is-no-god-parents. Paul is still dearly missed.

Among his many passions (which included his wife, filmmaking, the Boston Red Sox, seventies rock, and intentionally offensive jokes), Paul was a movie lover. His tastes were not as European and independent as mine, though he knew a good film when he saw one. Paul loved big-budget Hollywood escapism, grand adventures done well--especially the films of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and, in the end, Peter Jackson. For the two couples (Paul and Patti, Rachel and myself), The Lord of the Rings Trilogy became an important bonding experience. We saw the first two films together, then watched the extended DVD versions together, as well.

Sadly, Rachel and I moved from Colorado to Montana, so we couldn't watch the Return of the King together in the theater. We flew down to Colorado Springs with the baby, though, and watched the entire trilogy in two days. Paul sat on the sofa, nursing the sore spots he had from the tumors that came roaring back a few months after the amputation that was supposed to keep them away forever. He had to tolerate the rest of us chatting, moving in and out of the room, taking care of baby Cora, but somehow we did it. And doing that--watching all three movies back to back in a marathon screening session on Paul's big, wall-mounted flat-screen TV--meant the world to us.

Rachel had the idea of watching The Fellowship of the Ring tonight in Paul's honor, and I'm all for it. We're inviting Paul's other friends to join us in this somewhat whimsical act in memorium. Paul would be tickled. I'm sure he went several times, with several friends, to each movie. Maybe you didn't see any of these with Paul, but no doubt you knew of his love for them.

No obligation, of course, but if you knew Paul and you want to do this, please let us know. And even if you're not up for this movie tonight, I invite you to share a memory of Paul in the comments below. And the invitation is ongoing. Stop by any time. Share your memories.

-----

I tried to find video for this, but embedding was disabled at youtube and the world over, no doubt for copyright reasons. So I transcribe. Here's what Gandalf has to say about death:

Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way.

Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path--one that we all must take. The grey rain curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass. And then you see it.

Pippin: What, Gandalf? You see what?

Gandalf: White shores...and beyond. A far, green country under a swift sunrise.

Pippin: Well, that isn't so bad.

Gandalf: No. No, it isn't.

For obvious reasons, this scene meant the world to Paul.

A Promise: Some time this summer I'll bring The God Particle back online. That will include the restoration of an archive of Paul's writing--especially his journals around the time of the amputation. He essentially blogged us all through the traumatic experience, and his posts are invaluable. I will update this post with a link when the time comes.

First Impressions of Brendan Perry's ARK

2010-06-07T15:56:00.004-05:00

After eleven long years in the wilderness, Brendan Perry has finally released another album. And this one feels like a decade condensed into an hour. Ark is dense, moody, political, and cerebral. The songs are both finely polished and raw at once, as if Perry had labored long and hard over demo tapes then decided not to bother making full-on studio tracks. Nothing's out of place here, but something's missing.

Which is not a complaint. Perry does nothing groundbreaking in these long, dark songs. In fact, some of the music sounds a bit dated already. He emphasizes guitars and keyboards, and occasionally the rhythms sound less organic (and certainly less native and acoustic) than those of Dead Can Dance. But only occasionally. At least half of these songs are worthy of a DCD album, both in songwriting quality and in their musical aesthetic.

I'm still taking in the record, though, and if I write a full review (which I doubt I'll do) it won't happen until I've heard the album at least ten times. So far I've listened once.

With that in mind, here's a tentative endorsement, a hesitant yet enthusiastic thumbs up. Ark sounds good. And it sounds a lot more like Dead Can Dance than Perry's previous solo album, Eye of the Hunter (a record very near and dear to my heart).

If you're a true Dead Can Dance or Brendan Perry fan, though, reviews don't matter--Ark is essential listening. Let me know what you think.

-----

Here's a favorite song from my first glance:

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If you've read this far you might enjoy my earlier post on Dead Can Dance and Lisa Gerrard Rarities.

UPDATE (8 June 2010): Another listen has gone a long way toward convincing me this is exactly the record I've wanted since DCD broke up in the nineties. Great songs! Some of the lyrics still feel undercooked, but the music and performance and production are all first-rate. I've missed this voice! He hasn't lost a step.

Hearkening back:

Joy Division, "Atmosphere"

2010-06-02T01:19:00.000-05:00

I'm working on the book this week, as much as I can. Will return to blogging soon, when I feel productive and free to let my focus drift a bit.

Endless talking, life rebuilding, don't walk away....

Cindy Lee Berryhill, "These Twisted Kicks"

2010-05-28T16:20:00.000-05:00

As a postscipt to yesterday's ode to Cindy Lee Berryhill, here's her beautiful, recent song, "These Twisted Kicks":

"The Butcher's Boy"

2010-05-27T14:29:00.000-05:00

Oh dig my grave both wide and deep.
Put a marble stone at my head and feet,
and over my bones put a snow white dove
so this world will know that I died for love.

I Used to Have the Biggest Crush

2010-05-27T11:17:00.036-05:00

...on post-punk, beatnik folk singer Cindy Lee Berryhill. I knew, just knew, that if only Cindy and I could meet in person away from one of her concerts we'd fall deeply-passionately-eternally in love. When I listened to her songs on my car stereo or in the solitude of my crappy college apartment, Cindy's yearning spoke to me. I probably mistook her yearning as longing for me. Or maybe I adopted it as my own longing and projected it back on her. Or whatever. Ms. Berryhill was the closest thing I ever had to a pop star crush. And she was no pop star. Farah Fawcett had nothing on Cindy.

I can't locate video or audio for the first Cindy Lee Berryhill song I heard back in 1987: "Damn (I Wish I Was a Man)." It was brainy, funny, and quirky--love at first listen. The rest of the album Who's Gonna Save the World changed my world. She took a form I had rejected (folk music), infused it with wit, cynicism, irony, and just a smidge of heartfelt sentimentality. That album will make my top-ten albums of the eighties list, whenever I get around to pulling it together.

Her second album, Naked Movie Star, was just as good. Or better. The sprawling epic "Yipee" became my favorite late-night DJ ace-in-the-hole, and I'm pretty sure its "bump on the head of Bukowski" aesthetic eased more than a few KRCC listeners through the night. I hope so. One never knows. Here's "Indirectly Yours," the sweet, sad single from that album

I have Cindy's first two albums on vinyl but no way to play them, except in my head. I can run through every note of every song when left alone in a dark, quiet room. Which doesn't happen often these days.

I've outgrown my crush. Cindy and I are Facebook friends, and though I admire her from afar I'm sure neither of us would fall madly in love with the other now. She's married. I'm married. We both have kids. I love my wife to death. So to speak. But I know Cindy and I would have a hell of a good conversation if we met now.

-----

The rest of Cindy's career is a blur to me. Her album Garage Orchestra took a long time to work its way under my skin. Too long. I foolishly traded in my CD. Then bought it back. Then traded it again. Years later, I yearn to hear those songs too. I wasn't ready for the musical leaps she was making, but I like to think I could keep up now.

Here's the song "High Jump" from what I believe was Cindy's fourth album, Straight Outta Marysville:

And here is the great video for her most recent single (though it's probably five or six years old now)--"When Did Jesus Become a Republican?":

You can download the MP3 for that song at Cindy Lee's official site, which has an announcement about a new album coming soon. And you can get to know her better at her blog, Beloved Stranger: Adventures with a brain-injured spouse, musical musings, and whatever else comes to mind. Or visit her myspace page to hear more.

-----

Final note: I once read an interview in which Cindy Lee Berryhill described her fans as pretty much just "guys with glasses." Ah, to be pigeonholed!

Perhaps that was the moment my crush died.

My Correspondence with President Obama

2010-05-27T10:49:00.003-05:00

Dear President Obama,

Sometimes my children take business baths. A “business bath” is a short bath, reserved for times when it’s late and we have to hurry. Sometimes a business bath means no toys, and sometimes one or two toys are OK. But during business baths the kids never play with goggles and a snorkel. However, my daughter Cora believes she and her brother should be allowed to play with goggles and a snorkel during business baths.

What is your opinion on this matter? Please let us know.

Sincerely,
Eric Bosse
Norman, Oklahoma

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Dear Eric Bosse,

Your kids should be allowed to have the goggles and the snorkel. Playing with toys is fun.

Love,
President Obma

-----

Dear President Obama,

Thank you for your reply, but have you considered that goggles and a snorkel would considerably slow down our business baths? This would make it much more difficult for us to get to bed quickly when it is late.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Eric Bosse
Norman, Oklahoma

-----

Dear Eric Bosse

But goggles and snorkels are fun. And you should not be asking the President of the United States. You should ask President Mama.

Love,
President Obama
White House, Alaska

The Lonely Book Reviewer

2010-05-26T23:35:00.002-05:00

If I'm Brady Udall, I'm a little disappointed that my awesome new novel, The Lonely Polygamist, received a New York Times review so uninspired and so poorly written it wouldn't have gotten past most editors' desks. I mean, the review is fairly positive, and the book's a bestseller (on the rise at #30). But this review. Meh. And I don't use "meh" lightly.

I'd quote passages, but that would require rereading the piece. Go see for yourself.

The Divine Comedy, "Absent Friends"

2010-05-26T15:40:00.000-05:00

Old People

2010-05-25T01:07:00.001-05:00

C'est moi.

Too often, lately, I forget about Godard, Truffault, Malle, and the rest. I hereby swear off television (as soon as Breaking Bad is done for the year) and pledge to watch as many French and Italian films as I can get my hands on this summer.

UPDATE: Like, three or four, at least!

The King of Pain and the Princess of Paradise

2010-05-24T13:01:00.000-05:00

[dialogue with my daughter while listening to "King of Pain" by the Police]

Cora: Is he a real king?
Eric: He's the King of Pain.
Cora: Is that a real kingdom?
Eric: Pain is real.
Cora: I know, but it's not a kingdom.
Eric: True.
Cora: Does he hurt people?
Eric: Yes. Everybody hurts people, and everybody gets hurt.
Cora: What's his real name?
Eric: Sting.
Cora: Why? Is he a bee?
Eric: No.
Cora: Does he sting people?
Eric: No, that's just his name.
Cora: That's a ridiculous name.
Eric: He's a ridiculous man. He lives in Tuscany.
Cora: Oh.
Eric: Tuscany is in Italy.
Cora: I know, I know, I know!
Eric: OK, sorry.
Cora: My kingdom is called Paradise, and it's a different kind of kingdom. Instead of one person making the rules, everybody makes the rules. Even the servants. I'm the princess. I said, "Let's share everything," and everyone in the kingdom agreed. Except for two people. We put them in the dungeon. Now everyone is happy.

Everything is Beautiful, and Nothing Hurts

What About Theft of Stolen Intellectual Property?

Everything Counts in Large Amounts

Congratulations, America!

Poetry Slam in Norman, Oklahoma

Free Advice, Worth Every Penny

My Mother Received a Wound

Parachute Man

My New Blog

I Am the Weak Link

The Re-Education of Eric Bosse

If you have a moment...

Ark and the Black Opal

Men with Big Mouths and No Guts

Free Ink Squiggles on Smashed Wood Pulp

The Birds of Leaving Call

How to Argue for Occupy Wall Street

Ten Reasons to Occupy this Shirt

We Are the 99%, and We Reproduce

A Challenge to Every Reporter in America

Occupy: Police Violence Against Peaceful Protesters

Dick Gregory's Do-It-Yourself Acceptance Speech

Magnificent Mistake

Cowboys and Indians and Theme Parks

Magnificent Bird "Superdark" (video)

"My Mother Received a Wound"

The Home Stretch

New Flash Fiction Publication

In Your Wake, Inc.

Pigs Will Fly

Painfully Overextended

Rilke Week Redux?

"The Color of Sound": An Interview with Lisa Gerrard

Lia Ices, "Daphne"

"Wow, this town is horrible. I wish I could find some way of escaping."

Blink Once if God, Twice if No God

Elgar Cello Concerto vs. The Energies of Dullness

Wednesday Miscellany: Blogging, Writing, Songs, and Stories

"Music is...is God."

It's Happening Again

Consider Green Lakes and the Idiocy of Clocks

I Can't Think of a Title for This Post

November Spawned a Monster

I Have No Purple Shirts

It Gets Worse (Take #2)

IT GETS WORSE

Kurt Vonnegut's Final Interview

Antony & the Johnsons, "Thank You for Your Love"

Venice is Sinking

Open for Business

Can short and long stories coexist?

Here, have a Tom Waits concert.

M-A-R-T-I-N-A

Rostropovich and Rumi

Shanked

Talk Talk, "Ascension Day"

These Thoughts are the Thoughts I Think I Think

Monday Miscellany

King for a Day: The Songs of Colin Moulding

Time

Rootsy Music

Recommended Read: "The Husband Across the Hall"

WE'RE HOT! HOT! HOT!

Laurie Anderson's "How to Write"

Blogalicious Word of the Day

Pax Ravenna

Simple Minds, "Hunter and the Hunted"

With Half-Closed Eyes

Come on, thunder!

Generic Link

Up from Shadows

Captain Beefheart

I know...

A PUFF OF SMOKE

Deep Thought for a Karaoke World #317

A Handful of Obscure Tom Waits Songs and Video Clips

Nina Nastasia, "Cry, Cry Baby"

Mimi Goese and/or Persephone, "Elegy"

Sopping Up the Mildness

Google Would Know