sunday morning

I've become afraid to write on my blog, or even to check my email. I don't know why. I have part of my novel here. This is in Noö Journal which I like very much. Also read Noah Cicero, a translation from K. Silem Mohammad, Bobby Farouk, and others. Re-reading this part of my novel has energized me to start re-editing the novel. I've edited the first three chapters. I will do more. I will finish by the end of summer. Someone should email me and ask for the novel in September. It will be done. Someone probably wants to publish it. I could make it more controversial. I could add porn. I could add hand-drawn porn pictures.

The Coup, Two Against One, Something

I'm listening the The Coup when I write now. I think it is changing what I write somehow. It makes me feel sad. I like Steal this Double Album, and Party Music, and Kill Your Landlord. I think the lyrics are melodramatic but I like them anyway.

I'm also reading Two Against One, but Frederick Barthelme and I like it very much. I think it is the most accurate depiction of relationships, from my point of view, that I've ever read. It's all the things that are embarrassing to write about, or that people don't usually write about because they are not exciting in of themselves. There are no flaming mini-van bank robberies, or jealousy murders.

I want to ride my bike. I will ride my bike over the Columbia River.

9:46AM

I'm listening to Buck 65 while I write this morning. I don't know what this means. It's meaningless. I've begun reading Americana by Don Delillo. Sometimes I really like it. He describes things, like a room, or people in a room very succinctly and I read very quickly, and laugh at his little jokes. Then suddenly there's a flashback, and I become bored. I set the book down and pace. I come back to the book and skim a paragraph. Eat some yogurt. Skim some more. Until I'm back to 'present-time'. I've read one-third of the book, which is good. I'll probably finish it.

I'm writing a story which includes chicken strips and Les Schwab Tires, and PETCO.

Everywhere in Oregon and Washington has Les Schwab Tires, PETCO, and Fred Meyer. I could live in Fred Meyer. Fred Meyer is like Target, but without the pretensions. I don't know what that means. Maybe Wal-Mart has the fewest pretensions. But Wal-Mart is overwhelming, and region-less. Wal-Mart is the same everywhere. At Fred Meyer I'm connected to all people. Similar childhoods in similar cities or towns or sub-city neighborhoods. We all know about the the eight lane roads with strip malls. I'm most comfortable at strip-malls, AM/PMs, 7-11s, and Plaid Pantrys.

7:32 AM

I just finished reading Joy Williams' Taking Care. I think I will read some Andre Dubus next. I don't know why. I'm reading a lot of short stories. Normal short stories. Who are the new writers I should read? I don't know.

I got my hair cut. My hair cutter was angry. She had an angry face. She cut more hair than necessary, but I didn't say anything. I didn't want to make her angrier.

I will start a new story today with a character name Hunter. I wish I could plan stories farther ahead than that. I read someone, I don't remember, a writer, saying that writer's should plan their stories more or something. I felt guilty. And like not a writer. I never know what I'm going to write. I write one sentence and then another and things happen. Sometimes I don't like sentences so I delete them. I do this for a long time, until I think I'm done. This may be why I'm not a successful, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. There could be other reasons.

I made a folder on my desktop called 'Professional Stories'. That is where I put my professional stories. Coming soon to Esquire and Teen.

Sometimes I think about becoming a Librarian. I would have to go to graduate school. It would cost money. I would be the only person in my family to go to graduate school. They would shun me. I would have to eat on the porch when I visit, from a little silver bowl.

Sunday editing

As I write a story, I must constantly edit the story. To write anything new, I have to read through everything I've written before, make little changes, and finally add a paragraph or two before I quit. This is taking for-fucking-ever.

I'm reading Michael Earl Craig poems while I write.

Defibrillator.

I just read a story from Taking Care by Joy Williams. I took a bath. I read a little from Americana by Don DeLillo. Who is Don DeLillo? Am I supposed to read his books? I feel like I'm reading a Vladimir Nabakov novel. Maybe DeLillo and Nabakov are the same person, or had their genes spliced somehow.

I'm listening to old Modest Mouse albums and I feel like I'm in high school again. High school was more than ten years ago.

"Ofelia didn't answer. James moved in the next day. He quit his job at Target." This is the turning point in my story. I also wrote this sentence: "Minivans are a certain kind of despair." I will probably have to cut it.

This is like diary or something.

I like editing better than writing. I keep editing my novel and keep thinking I can make it better. I want to cut whole chapters and rewrite them. I want to edit. I edit every day. I have a problem.

Multi-tasking

I love adverbs. A sentence with adverbs is lonely and alone.

I'm multi-tasking. I'm writing a story and this post and reading.

"He isn’t sure if 'have to' reinforces the fact that they’re at work and might be a turnoff."

That sentence was from Eat When You Feel Sad by Zachary German, at Bear Parade.

I'm obsessed with marathons. I saw a marathon on TV. The winner ran five minute miles for eight miles.

"I pull my knife out from my pantyhose and stab him in the neck, and watch as he falls to the ground and dies. At that moment, I feel like there is something on television that I should have recorded." From Die Hard with a Vengeance by Gene Morgan.

I need to learn about these robot-dogs I see at the stores. Will a robot-dog make me feel more fulfilled as a person? Could I have a robot-dog career?

Sometimes I think about going to school to get a Library Science degree and then become a librarian. This is a strange desire.

I like the NCAA basketball tournament. I like Davidson. I want Davidson to take the whole thing.

I just wrote a sentence. And then another. I'm on a roll

I am writing a blog post because I feel guilty about not writing blog posts for a long time because I went to the zoo instead to watch the penguins

Good Morning. It's Saturday and I'm not working. I'm sitting around reading Bear Parade and also reading The Brothers by Frederick Barthelme which might have the same characters as some other Barthelme novel I read. I think maybe it's the characters from Painted Desert. I'm not sure. I just read Bob the Gambler. I liked it.

I'm writing professional stories now. I'm imitating Barthelme and Lori Moore, and Raymond Carver. It's easy to write like Raymond Carver, I think. I think you have to use the word "the" a lot, when you normally wouldn't. And also "said". If you want to write like Ernest Hemingway, you should use the word "very" a lot, especially when describing wine, or a fine meal after fishing or hunting.

I'm going to have a story in Noö Journal which will also feature Daniel J. Bailey, Benjamin Buchholz, Mattia Cerato, Noah Cicero, Stephan Clark, Patrick Duggan, Bobby Farouk, Elisa Gabbert, Fitz W. Guerin, Carrie Hoffman, Tim Laing, Justin Lovato, Deenah Moffie, J.M. Patrick, Andrew Michael Roberts, Kathleen Rooney, Peter Schwartz, Claudia Smith, Leigh Stein, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, and Sam Wharton.

I'm excited to be in something with Noah Cicero. He wrote this which I like and also The Human War which you should buy, right now.

Thank you.

Similes and Metaphors

I've decided that I hate similes and metaphors. I used to like them. Maybe I still like them when they're ridiculous and inaccurate. Inaccurate metaphors are enjoyable, maybe, sometimes, if I'm drunk on wine or something. But similes... Here are some similes from things I wrote that are terrible:

"There's a smell like stomach-acid."

"...funny big eyes like little black rocks..."

"...arms move like small insects..."

"...black hairs pushing out of its skin like little burnt sticks."

"Traffic has become thicker and the cars moves slowly, heavily forward, like little robot-glaciers"

"Anastasia's eyes were very large and round like billiard-balls, maybe..."

Anyway I kind of like "robot-glaciers" this morning, but only because it is a little meaningless. But it's impossible and false to compare one thing to another thing, and too easy, and when I read similes, or make similes, I find it too easy to begin to compare one thing to another thing and eventually each thing is the same thing and I can't see any difference.

It's 8:54 am. I drank coffee and our neighbor is playing music very loud because, I think, he's a little deaf, or, he has a new sound-system, and has not yet learned how to change the volume. I kicked the wall and it stopped. This was very satisfying. Every person should have something to kick sometime.

I read a little of the book 'NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN' because my brother likes it and he lent it to me. Here is my imitation of it: "He took the satchel and set in the crab-grass and looked at it. He looked at it for a long time. The caldera was wide and long and gray fog-shaped shadows shifted across it like dead predators with steel teeth. He could see the teeth beyond the satchel and he thought about teeth and satchels and money. He thought about it a long time."

Art Nouveau magazine

interviews a bunch of people. You should probably read Tao Lin on technology Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and organic foods. After that, read Noah Cicero on the beauty, love, and art found in everyday reality.

I'm drinking coffee. This morning I read Frederick Barthelme's Natural Selection. Barthelme describes a car-accident and I think this is the most accurate car-accident I have ever read. I've never been in a car-accident so I don't really know. I don't have to work today so I'm happy.

Things I Like Today

• farout_library_software by Maged Zaher and Pam Brown. I have met Maged Zaher and he's very nice. He also wrote this and this and this and this and you can hear him read a poem here I don't know why I like these things so much but they make me happy.
  
• Bear Parade Gene Morgan wrote this and it's why I like Bear Parade very much right now. I like everything on Bear Parade. Read small pale humans right now. Read touch my omelet. Read yesterday i was talking to myself and i told myself that i was going to write a book and give it to you so i put paper in my bag and put a pen in my bag and rode my bike to the river bank and then sat on the ground and thought 'i will never write a book' and watched ducks swim away from me. Tomorrow you can read this emotion was a little e-book then the living and the dead and compassionate moose and hikikomori and transmissions from noah x to tao x and today the sky is blue and white with bright blue spots and a small pale moon and i will destroy our relation ship today and finish up with from the ideograms. I've made all the links for you so read all of these things and then tell someone else to read them for a while.
  
• After all that, go read alice blue.
  

Bear Parade

Read Small Pale Humans by Daniel Spinks. I'm reading this book this morning and it is making me happy. I just google-searched Daniel Spinks and he has three poems in Action Yes Quarterly but when I clicked on the link went to a medication advertisement [www.actionyes.org]. I wonder if the internet is trying to communicate something, and failing, sadly.

edit: Action Yes is back so I will go and read Daniel Spinks on Action Yes.

Also, I re-read Small Pale Humans this morning and enjoyed it again. I will read it again later.

Boise, Idaho

I've been in Boise, Idaho to visit friends such as Amber and Madison and it reminded me of how I miss Boise which is a beautiful, flat, and small city. I ate a Kabob.

We watched the movie Across The Universe and drank beer in the movie theater. The movie was designed to make fifty-year-olds feel comfortable with history and a little bit radical politically and to then feel more comfortable with today's day to day life.

The movie ends with the song All You Need is Love or something. It's a musical. It's very dramatic.

I also watched the movies The Darjeeling Limited and Children of Men.

I think that writer's should focus on writing movies [after the writer's strike or whatever].

I went to the discovery center and learned about DNA.

This has become pointless. People do things and then do other things and each things seems very important but upon reflection how can anything be important or not important. Everything is probably the same on some scale.

Lamination Colony

You can read the Lamination Colony here. There is fiction from Gene Morgan, Shane Jones, and Andrea Fitzpatrick and some other things by Mike Young, Sean Lovelace, and me. Everything on Lamination Colony should be read by anyone who reads this message.

Lamination Colony is important and will cause the world-empire revolution that will change some things and leave others the same.

myspace cancellation

I canceled my myspace account. It was hijacked by spam-robots who shot spam robot-babies at my myspace friends. I will miss my myspace friends. If you were a myspace friend, and you now feel rejected, I sincerely apologize. Email me or something or become my friend on facebook where there is less spam and spam guilt, but still some robots and robot-babies.

alice blue

There's a new alice blue and I read it and it had stories by Nick Antosca and Noah Cicero. These stories made me stab the mailman. You should read these stories and also, other stories by Greg Mulcahy and Matt Rittenhouse and David Gianatasio.

Also there are poems. I like the poems by Zachary Schomburg and by Mark Cunningham. These poems made me chew on my heater-vent.

Other people on the roster include Sarah Bartlett, Matt McBride, Joshua A Ware, Anne Marie Rooney, Betsy Fagin, Arlene Ang, and Emily Kendal Frey.

Read alice blue, please.

Thank you for your consideration.

I wrote a story for paper wall. It's in #6. The story has Madison as a character. It also has a bridge and a car.

I didn't start editing my novel yet because I'm lazy and also because I'm afraid. Sometimes I imagine the novel walking around with a pitcher of water and a large kitchen knife. Pacing probably, in the hallway and I'm hiding next to the bathroom, behind the clothing hamper and everything smells bad. Or maybe with a taser and an uzi automatic-gun.

note

I wrote the story below and it doesn't make sense. I tried to fix it but I quit. I quit the story below.

Today I read all of the novel 'Less Than Zero' by Bret Easton Ellis. This novel is about getting tired of drugs because your friends are strung out all the time on summer-break after your freshman year in college. It might be about other things. The sentences are simple and I read the sentences very quickly until there were no sentences left. Some parts are all in itallics which was hard to read. On the cover there are quotes from reviewers about MTV and this novel and music-videos and the style of putting together a lot of short parts. The word 'staccato' appears. MTV is also in the novel a lot, along with 'Betamax'.

After reading 'Less Than Zero' I suddenly thought that I could write 50 novels very quickly. Maybe two or three a year.

Someone should pay me to do that.

Saturday

The neighbors are having a party and the music is very deep and base-y, or something, and with drums, and the neighbors are happy, now, I think, but bored. So they're drinking beers and I can hear the beer-bottles banging.

I went to the book-store to find 'To Have Or Not To Have' but they didn't have it so I bought 'In Cold Blood' instead for two dollars. It was very old and used and with little notes in the margin about something.

Now I will ride my bicycle down by the water and I will sit by the water and read Amber's book and make little notes for her and then read 'In Cold Blood' for a while or also 'A Scanner Darkly' which I received on my birthday and have not yet read.

Today is warm and I am bored.

I read about poetry subverting authority for a while. Then I stopped.

Horoscope note

Amber finished her book Horoscope which is a book of poems with umbrellas and balloons and other things and every person that exists should go to Amber's blog or email Amber and ask her for a copy of Horoscope and then read the copy and then ask every person they know to publish Horoscope.

I don't know what to say about poetry. I think I like poetry for no reason and it's nice that not many people read poetry because then there's no audience really and it doesn't matter what a person writes so a person could just write anything like I should write a poem called 'Fuck you, kill everything, including your lawn and pets, and resurrect everything, and put the resurrected everything in a boat in the Pacific Ocean but move the Pacific Ocean to space with complex rocketry, and then destroy everything again tomorrow, please.'

I wrote the two poems below this note by using things I abandoned from the rough-draft of my novel or other things I abandoned while writing the novel like short-stories and poems that were not entertaining to me.

I think everything is true. Do you think everything is true?

Note about sentences

I like Hemingway sometimes a lot because of certain sentences and the word "very" which he uses very well.

I can't finish the war books like 'A farewell to arms' or 'For whom the bell tolls'.

I like the short story 'The killers' because of the way the killers talk which is very menacing and violent and the story is slow and not a lot happens but the killers are very violent and I can tell by their words.

I like 'A moveable feast.'

I'm also reading some Nabokov now and I feel guilty because reading Nabokov's over-writing is fun but it maybe shouldn't be fun because it's a kind of deceptive mannerism, I think, that is trying to deceive me with pretty sounds but sometimes the sounds are pretty and I want to be deceived which is nice and comfortable.

It's sunny in Idaho.

I think I'm supposed to like Beckett but usually Beckett's boring and trying to trick me. Some guy told me that Beckett used to give Andre the Giant rides to school.

Lately I like Philip K Dick because he's kind of like Kafka. But his sentences are only okay.

The translation of Kafka's sentences are very good.