Archive for the 'well anyway later' Category

Things I am cogitating,

Published on July 29, 2010 in Total Wreck and well anyway later. Closed

though I should have been asleep for the past two hours because it is very late and I have an early appointment:

now just fix Teach for America and we'll be all set

1. Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of D.C. Schools, who just dismissed 241 teachers, including 165 who received poor appraisals and 76 who were not properly licensed to teach, in an attempt to turn around a district with one of the weakest academic records of any urban school system in the nation.

2. The Austin Women’s Shelter SafePets program, which asks for volunteers to foster animals when their owner needs to go to the shelter. “In recent surveys of survivors entering shelters across the country, half report that their partner threatened, hurt or killed their pets before they left.”

3. The crowded Pima County morgue as deaths in the desert around Tucson rise with immigration enforcement. “As we gain more control, the smugglers are taking people out to even more remote areas,” said Omar Candelaria, the special operations supervisor for the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector. “They have further to walk and they are less prepared for the journey, and they don’t make it.”

obviously this guy was going to be a huge threat

Idiota

Published on June 17, 2010 in Total Wreck and well anyway later. 2 Comments

I’ve been staring at the same three hundred words for the past two hours. The coffee I made looks like an oil spill. I’m considering Top Kill. I’ve never liked running but lately I go out at the hottest part of the day, which is any part of the day in June here. It’s like bikram yoga but with running. The soundtrack alternates between Die Antwoord and DMX. I wonder how many people in the history of the world have had to run for their lives and what that would look like spliced back-to-back on YouTube. This should all be a list but I don’t believe in lists, paragraphs, or coffee. Once I ran because a homeless guy was chasing me, though I still think he was kidding around. Homeless guys in Phoenix have kind of a sun-addled sense of humor. I’d like to say more but that seems against the oink oink oink oink oink oink oink. Well anyway later.

Lanks

Published on April 25, 2010 in Behind The Blog, Reviews and well anyway later. Closed

Check out a Singapore subway map mingling with an early draft of a new story from a page in my journal, up with the collection at Di Mezzo Il Mare. Also up is a page from my friend Mark Barr’s journal, with a cool excerpt, quote, and what looks like an excellent recipe for yam salad.

Also, “Babies” gets a nice personal touch at Short Story Reader. I feel like the Short Story Reader should be a mini-column somewhere, online or off.

A pair of people will always act as opposing forces, one pushing and the other pulling. The key is figuring out at which frequency you most like to be pushed or pulled. We’re all harp strings with the freedom of choice. Well anyway later.

Is it possible to be anti-mango

Published on March 26, 2010 in Adam Robinson, Justin Sirois, Sasha Fletcher and well anyway later. 3 Comments

Stacy and I tried having a word party last night and it worked. New and old friends came out and we all got silly and talked large. It was feel-good. Today I keep thinking baby rabies.

I got a cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee this morning and read the whole of MLKNG SCKLS. Well wrought, with the kind of quiet ease to the lines that draws you close and surprises. He had two hair-related elements that intend to stick in the old craw.

Sasha Fletcher sent me his Greying Ghost pamphlet “We Are All Of Us Up To Something” and it tried to float into a cloud so I trapped it.

watching

I saw one of those hoarder cars outside the breakfast place today, the kind where someone piles up mail and blankets and fast food wrappers and plastic sink fittings and newspapers and styrofoam cups and books and sunglass cases and cardboard boxes and paper towels and dead leaves and stuffs it all in the car. This one seemed organized with credit card bills on the dash and blankets blocking all the windows. It was a little Saturn or something, stuffed to the roof, every space filled save for a compartment carved out for the driver. The car sagged on its axles. Well anyway later.

I don’t care what none of y’all say about Grape Nuts

Published on February 11, 2010 in Star Trek: The Next Generation and well anyway later. Closed

Two days ago I was in Singapore, then I was in Tokyo, and today I’m eating Grape Nuts at my friend Michael’s place in Albuquerque. My brain doesn’t feel scrambled exactly, but with the addition of some hollandaise sauce it would make a nice benedict. I dreamt that I was at an art show examining a retrospective of the life of Geordi La Forge rendered in lifelike diorama. Young Geordi clothed in white robes. I’m gonna read some Star Trek TNG fanfiction on the UNM campus Friday afternoon, come-on-out.

I don’t know what this Google Buzz thing is all about but I scrolled down to the bottom of my inbox and turned it off before I wasted too much time trying to understand.

On the plane I watched The Invention of Lying. I was disappointed that it got so dumb in the last hour. The first five minutes were funny but on the whole the concept would have been better as a two-season TV series. Do what you’re good at. Grape Nuts is the best cereal of all time. Well anyway later.

Turn that change into foldin’ money

Published on January 14, 2010 in well anyway later. 3 Comments

I feel like I know Italian today. I’m eating roasted Brussels sprouts and typing about online education. I have 33 tabs open.

I preordered MLKNG SCKLS by Justin Sirois. I remember this summer I picked up Matthew Simmons in a rental car and drove him to his house, and as we were getting into the rental car he was telling me some convincing words about MLKNG SCKLS. It was sunny.

Also I ordered Aaron Burch’s chapbook HOW TO TAKE YOURSELF APART, HOW TO MAKE YOURSELF ANEW. PANK is contributing all proceeds from all sales (between now and 2/13/10) of the chapbook, and PANK 4 to the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières.

Tonight I’m meeting with Stacy and others to do the last round of Five Things contest judging. We got some very strong and varied entries and I’m proud of Austin writers. Well anyway later.

“Life is an onion and one peels it crying”

Published on December 9, 2009 in Cooking and well anyway later. 1 Comment

On the French Onion soup’s first day it was reduced with wine and on the second day I put a little dark beer in there. I took a picture of the onions in the pot because there was an impressive amount of onions.

not to brag but it was a lot of onions

not to brag but it was a lot of onions

It turned out okay but I should have cut the onions a lot thinner. In a good potato soup you get a nice hearty potato soup, but you don’t want to chew on a hearty onion in an onion soup. Like chewing on an earlobe.

I’m thinking of making Christmas cookies but buying the icing Central Market makes for their gingerbread houses and mixing that with food coloring for cookie frosting. Let me know if you have experience making Christmas cookies and what you recommend to save your sanity. Sorry I’m prattling on about food.

A friend of mine is doing a clothing swap party wherein everyone brings clothing and household things, drinks wine, and takes turns picking among the goods. It was a recession party idea but it is surviving the times. I’m bringing some shoes I love that pinch the pudding out of my toes, some jewelry I put on and take off about once a month, maybe some dresses.

I was listening to Wesley Willis earlier. He is inspiring me to make my sentences stark. I was also listening to Philip Glass (free sampler, worth the hassle for a track from The Hours). I can’t write and listen to music unless I’m familiar with the music. I wrote some of my thesis to Beck’s Sea Change album in my earbuds because the coffee shop was too loud. Now I work from home and listen to the sound of typing and the heater switching on and off. Maybe a noise machine would be nice. I like the silence too.

I also took a picture of strawberries last night. I was trying a trick I learned from the awesome Parind Vora at Restaurant Jezebel in his equally awesome strawberry shortcake: when sugaring the berries, add a dash of cracked pepper.

sparkle vision

he said "it makes them sparkle"

Tasty with cream, even on the biscuits that I messed up. Even on an off cooking night, there are some bright spots. A silver lining to every cloud, friends. Well anyway later.

Tofurky looks like Combos

Published on November 26, 2009 in Behind The Blog, Cooking and well anyway later. 3 Comments

Combos looks like Snausages. Everything is eventually meat. My story “Waste” in Annalemma 5 is “basically about” how pigs turn into pork. Someone give me a grant and I’ll present a lecture on this to a major research institution while sipping from a tureen of gravy.

I’ve got meat on the mind. I bought a sixteen pound turkey and sunflowers. I am brining the turkey tonight and roasting it tomorrow. I was thinking about buying one of those grain-fed, air-chilled turkeys that is raised by a farmer with a kindly face who gives them a minimum of three compliments a day, but then I remembered that I didn’t want to spend eighty bucks and I bought the other kind instead: an Honest turkey for Honest times.

Yesterday I sold my old dining room table and all my old chairs to a plumber named Bubba. My new table is currently at a secure holding facility, preparing to serve eight. For one week I was the owner of two tables and ten chairs. I could have hosted a very small state dinner if that dinner was presented in two locations.

Behind The Blog: A couple weeks ago I was blogging and I wrote “neurosis is boring” and then I deleted that and stared at the blank part of the page for about ten minutes. That was the blog about Tobias Wolff selling oatmeal.

Yesterday Jac Jemc texted the words  “ham face” to me and I felt real tender.

I read A Jello Horse a few evenings ago before dinner. I had just finished another book which had ended up being far too detailed in the real for my taste, and the jello horse was a refreshing digestif. I wanted the strange things to happen for 600 pages.

I’m going to Taco Bell. Well anyway later.

“Getting in trouble is a fake idea.”

Published on November 15, 2009 in Work and well anyway later. 1 Comment

Office hours. The adjunct behind me is doing a lot of grunting. Another came into the office, picked up the stapler, said “Did you staple things in college? I did,”  and walked out.

I’ve been away in Oregon and North Texas. November in Rockwall is warm like springtime but with brown leaves, which makes for disorienting feelings. In Portland I kept eating macaroni. Now I’m home. I live in a tree.

I like how when kids keep journals on paper they end each entry with “Well anyway later” or similar. Somebody start a literary journal where all the stories have to end that way. Somebody start a literary journal where the stories are all already written by the editors and writers have to pick one attach their names. Subtitle “Redefining the creative process.”

One of my students gave me a flyer advertising a Tobias Wolff reading that happened last week. I’m kind of sorry I missed the reading but the picture of Tobias Wolff on the flyer makes it look like he’s selling oatmeal.

don't start none won't be none

don't start none won't be none

All author photos should depict the authors as their true selves instead of propped up pre-dead. Some would still be stuffed but the best would be destroying. Raymond Carver would be ripping apart a phone book with his teeth. Tobias Wolff all driving a herd of bulls over a cliffside. Barry Hannah setting an armoire ablaze. Joyce Carol Oates severing the fingers of a youth. Hopefully it goes without saying that this goes for all people and not just writers. Everybody’s an artist. Well anyway later.