News, publications and blog for the author of AM/PM (Featherproof Books) and Museum of the Weird (FC2).
Good morning, world. Please find a triptych of new stories at 52 Stories today. Thanks owed to Cal Morgan for the opportunity.
It’s forever morning in this blog post. The cat is looking out the window at the street sweeping machine. The squirrel is sitting over his drey, holding his heart. The sun has found all the windows. I am sleepy, working, thinking about oatmeal, forever, in this blog post.
Judging with John Pipkin while spelunker Spike Gillespie reads
Death match fun in Austin. There was a location mishap with one of the judges and so I filled in, sitting between an erudite John Pipkin and a gregarious Owen Egerton. It was a wild fun night and I got another chance to see a seasoned host in Todd Zuniga. I held Owen’s chair steady while he stood on it to holler. Everyone had a great time and wants to see the show come back again soon.
Owen Egerton & co look on at Tyler Stoddard Smith in Sarah Bird's dress
Todd and I took the taco/threads tour of Austin the next day (Tamale House, Stag, Buenos Aires Cafe) and he kindly helped Jon move my old futon out to the curb. We also got to experience some classic Texas weather, with clear night skies yielding to a ten-degree drop in temperature marking the arrival of a sudden thunderstorm.
This little scratch in my throat makes me afraid that all this busy is catching up with me. Time to nap frequent and lay low until Tuesday’s Teleportal.
Plus, I’ve got the old superstitions about Halloween. All those drunks driving, the blood, black cats, strange noises. It’s too much. Last year, I was committed to be an integral part of a classic “Gwen Stefani and her Harajuku Girls” group costume, but backed out at the last moment in favor of hiding at home. Without Gwen Stefani, the Harajuku girls are just Gothic Lolitas, and that’s not fair.
cut to Sarah Silverman
All this half-assery and paranoia must end. This Halloween, schedule willing, I’m supposed to be doing a reading, meaning I’ll actually have to leave the house, wearing an actual costume. The opportunity presents to follow some kind of lit theme. Now, do I go as Sexy James Joyce or one of those vampire kids from Twilight? I bet Angeline has something cooked up. Maybe she has an idea for me.
This is why I'm rot
Spent the day alternately sneezing and looking dubiously out windows. No allergy attack can rightly convince me to step into a 103° Texas afternoon.
The rotting peach pit broke in half, revealing a sliver of a seed that looked like an almond. I peeled it out. It was soft and alive and I couldn’t bear to throw it away, so I stuck it in the peach flesh and threw the self-composting bomb into an abandoned lot. Maybe it will survive the drought.
I’ve been reading The Complete Butcher’s Tales by Rikki Ducornet. It’s so dead-on and risky, perfect nightmares. Kids putting dirty coins in their mouths, pious dogs, talking growths. Seriously feeling weird and good that Rikki Ducornet is out there in the world and that she was the inspiration for a Steely Dan song.
Here’s what happened on Weather.com when I tried to look up today’s temperature:
well okay
School starts this week and fittingly, Stanley Fish posts a blog about what English composition should teach. It’s a real tinderbox of an argument, a must-read for comp teachers.
I need to write four thousand more words by Friday. All I want to do after is read celebrity news. My brain is made of steel-cut oats. This will be the year we all get genius grants.
My fat cat Turkish woke me up before dawn this morning by throwing herself at the closed blinds and wailing. I opened the blinds and she sat and looked out the window for a while and had a wheezing fit and left the room. I rolled out of bed and bought four blackout curtains on Overstock before I knew what I was doing.
Damn you Turkish
The fellows at HTMLGIANT are always on the lookout for interesting things. Of note, McSweeney’s is holding a contest for a new columnist. The top three selections will each receive $500 and a one-year contract to write your column (twice a month or thereabouts) for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. (Also of note.)
I think someone could write an interesting article about Twitter. You could quote interesting or funny Twitter feeds, like Shaq‘s feed or that senator who can’t spell words. You could write about how Twitter is good for newscasters to talk about on CNN, because they get to say fun phrases like “Tweeting the News” and still get paid. You could talk about how interesting it is that 10% of all Twitter users create 90% of the content and how 99.5% of that content is made up of stuff nobody cares about ever.
In later columns you could start suggesting that Twitter makes a low buzzing sound when left alone in the dark. You could write speculative fiction about what the world would be like if Twitter was the only way we could communicate. Maybe you could write a column composed entirely of what Kafka would Tweet.
boycott tacobell (please RT)
1:09 PM Jun 8th from txt
wtff taco bell dosnt sell steak burrito
1:08 PM Jun 8th from txt
1st sign of begn. of understanding = wish to die
12:45 PM Jun 8th from txt
@heykim shhhhh dnt tell nobody
11:05 AM Jun 8th from txt
This week, I am writing short articles for children. I’ll be writing about rare flowers, Kobe beef, a magician named Juliana Chen, and the Rockettes. I bought all my tickets for travel this summer, including my first train ticket (Seattle to Portland). If I had a Twitter you’d best believe I would be Tweeting about all of this.
Ryan posted my Word Space over at the HTML Giant. Sam Pink wanted to know more about the lemon so I took some more pictures of it.
The lemon is getting old but is still enjoying its days in the window. We are seeing more lizards and fewer baby birds as the weather heats up.
It rained a little last week, which was nice.
Here is the lemon’s skin.
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