Furniture staining and dragon literature

Matthew Savoca interviewed Kathy on his blog. It made me laugh a lot of times.

Kathy and Matthew are starting a movement. I'll let you guess what it's about.

i don't like pictures of killers who are also landmark seminar leaders

that picture on sarah's post is making my stomach hurt so i am posting something new. hello? people! the next book we are reading is 'a green light' by matthew rohrer. live it. love it. eat it.

also matthew savoca has two new poems in no posit that are super good. also, did you know that ken baumann (he edits no posit, keep up) is a movie star and is giving away money? sheeeeeit.

It's so nice out I have to do something to ruin my mood. and yours.

Is everybody else sticking their faces in trees to smell flowers and then having extended eye-based allergy attacks? Spring has made me happy. While walking home yesterday, I almost rolled around in freshly-lain sod.


I'm so happy I'm attempting to achieve equilibrium by reading stuff about serial killers and chatting to Kathy about serial killers. Check out this Radar article about this dude who pretended to be a little kid and wrote to serial killers for advice. Charles Manson is very, very crazy.


That pictured dude is a guy who killed his wife, and then was all like, "Wait, what about me? I lost my wife, too. You should probably feel sorry for me." That is not a direct quote. I learned about him in my chat with Kathy.


Also, let's all rally behind Kathy to start a new blog called "Chatty Kathy" in which she just posts her gchats. She already had that idea, but it was about celebrity gossip. I like the gchat idea better.

Congrats Maud Newton!

Maud Newton is my new bff, even though I've never met or talked to her and she probably doesn't know we're bff's. She is always linking to my stories, and recently, she won second place in StoryQuarterly's love story contest. I would link to it if I understood how. I could never get second place in a love story contest. I could probably be an honorable mention in a How to Write the Most Depressing Things That Will Make People Stop Talking to You contest. Anyway, congrats!

Seriously

we need a new book to read. What shall it be?

Swissotel Woman

See that there picture? It is of the Swissotel. That is where I am right now; on the 28th floor, exercising my rights as a hotel woman by playing on the internet and being glum.

Last night while I was waiting for Garrison to get done working I took a bath in our bathtub, which was not as gigantic as I had imagined; also there was no whirlpool, and the free bath products were not even Bath and Body Works or anything good: they smelled like air. The bath was sort of a sad experience. The lighting in the bathroom is really good, so I could see all of my slackerliness in full view: the darkest, longest leg hairs, the gunk under my toenails, etc. So I shaved off all my body hair. Haha, no I didn't, but I did clog the drain. No, I didn't, but the very white bathroom looked disgusting after I shaved, which had probably not happened in a couple of weeks. The hotel-light made me feel very guilty, but also very accomplished post-shaving. It made me want to go up to the penthouse workout room/pool, which you have to pay for, and lay on the floor naked with Wayne Koestenbaum and talk about red turtlenecks.

Also I didn't know there were Swissotel bathrobes in the closet, and was sad to find them after I was already dressed and sitting in front of our window, which looks out on a bunch of office buildings and a piece of the lake, staring out and thinking about where all of the people below were going. I decided all the people below had money, and that they were going somewhere awesome, like the businesspeople I'd seen sitting at Houlihan's having after-work drinks in a big group. They all looked happy and also beautiful and very tan.

Now it is thunderstorming. This is no fun. But it sort of is fun. I think I'll meditate or something. I think I can only meditate in hotels.

You guys, my eye hurts

I spent the better part of the morning whining about how much my eye hurts, splashing water into my eye in the bathroom, pounding on my desk, and whimpering.

Then Kevin got me eye drops. And now I am fine. This is like the time when my sunburned friend Pete discovered that aloe is soothing. Or that time when Pam had to crush up aspirin into Michael Scott's afternoon snack to countereffect the foot burn from his George Foreman grill.

Mostly there are remedies for everything. Many of them are over-the-counter.

Seattle is somewhere everyone has lived

I like Tao Lin's article in The Stranger about Seattle. All people do in Seattle is talk about Seattle and The Stranger. They don't like either, but everyone has written for the latter and no one wants to move to Portland.

Everyone leaves Seattle, and new people move in every five years. Seattle has 10 permanent residents whose job it is to send reports of Seattle to everyone else and keep track of the new names of bars and restaurants, which also change every five years. The list of new and old bar names is stored on an enormous mildewy scroll, underneath Mount Rainier.

The new library is a secret graveyard for failed Ikea furniture designs. The 10 Permanent Residents of Seattle know that the books are stored at Suzzallo Library (see above) at the University of Washington, which connects to Allen Library (named after Paul) through a secret passageway so you don’t fall on your ass walking from Suzzallo to Allen over wet bricks. These are the only bricks in Seattle.

If you take a plane from Chicago, the Seattle people stand around politely, planning where to move next, while stout Chicago people push to the front and honk. If you lived in one city your whole life, you might honk too.

My name doesn't rhyme with anything good.

Question: Did Jenny Boully start selling wool on Etsy under the name woolly boully because she genuinely has a thing for selling wool? Or was it all because of the name?

I feel sad that my last name doesn't lend itself easily to connection with a rhyming nonsense song from the mid-60s that also invokes crafting.

Also, those knots are perfect and beautiful. And I really like [one love affair]. You all should read it, and then we can pretend to talk about it.

cows and french fries are people too

There is a new Veggie Bite in Wicker Park, which is totally vegan and serves awesome french fries which remind me of the ones at Dick's on Broadway in Seattle (see the Sir Mixalot song where he raps about Dick's on Broadway). I haven't seen anyone I know yet, so I suspect the restaurant is hiring vegan actors or just importing vegans from other states until Chicago has enough vegans and vegetarians.

Also, cow burps are worse for the environment than my poor excuse for a car. And also, gross.

on publishing

I get tired of rejection letters from magazines no one reads. A lot of times those magazines will reject something, and I just change the title and send it a magazine I like, which usually works.

I don't keep very good track of things, so sometimes I think I'm being rejected, and really, nothing is happening. It's hard to tell the difference between rejection and nothing happening.

Sometimes I come up with theories about why my stories are being rejected, but actually, I haven't sent them anywhere. My theories usually are related to the perceived lack of interest in hallucinatory visions of Gumby.

Some magazines make you mail things, but I am too impulsive to mail anything, except seasons of DVDs to relatives who have shingles and are tired of everything on cable. Sometimes an activity like that can take all day, and I don't even have shingles. I'm not convinced mail ever leaves Chicago.

Anyway, I've included this rejection letter from Disney. I would like to receive a rejection letter like this. Perhaps I already have, but I don't check or open my mail.

"An angry hamster looks exactly like an unangry hamster because the anger is within."

yesterday i got tao lin's new book "cognitive behavioral therapy." i read it last night. i really like it. after i read it i felt like i had been inside his head for six months, sitting in his room, drinking his energy drink, feeling kind and confused. here is one of my favorite lines:

my favorite emotions include 'brief calmness
in good weather' and 'i am the only person alive'

also my absolute favorite is "hamsters are heads with little characteristics on the head, part two." it's about a hamster taking a shower and feeling sad, and i really want to type the whole thing here, but i feel like i can't. can i? if enough people say i can, i will.

i am a fan of cognitive behavioral therapy. i have been doing metta meditation, which i think is kind of a cognitive behavioral therapy. possibly that is an offensive statement. but anyway.

metta meditation is when you say blessings for yourself, and learn self-compassion. and then once you've got that knocked out, you say blessings for a friend, a neutral person, then an enemy. and then you gradually come to feel compassion or "lovingkindness" for all things.

it's good for people who hate themselves. you might not think you hate yourself but odds are you probably do.

They are going to remodel your favorite bar

They are going to turn it into a cold stone dungeon with higher-priced drinks. There will be girls in there.

Old Cork.

New Cork.

chicago earthquake teaches us an important moral lesson

In Seattle, we had an earthquake once where the building hopped up and down for two terrifying minutes. I stood in a doorway, like they did during the earthquake episode of Beverly Hills 90210. Some of my coworkers had panic attacks or crawled on the floor, awaiting death. All I could think about was: why didn't I buy a latte this morning? I was going to die all uncaffeinated.

After the pathetically small earthquake in Chicago this morning, I invite you all to reconsider how you could have spent the earthquake, such as delivering a baby in an elevator, like Brandon did, or going to therapy, like Donna did at the suggestion of that boyfriend who threw her down the stars.

UPDATE: I guess we had a second earthquake about 20 minutes after I posted this. I didn't notice at all, though the projector in my classroom looked a little wonky.

call me when you're 25

I just watched that pregnant teenager movie, and Ellen Page and her sweater vests are so adorable. I want to give her the pinch-punch. Not in that way, sickos. She is like 12 and was born in 1987. 1987! Ellen Page, please call me in 2012, when you are 25, and I am, uh, 29. Yeah right. 29.

today's celebrity crush is elimae

I just read the newest elimae. I think everything in it is perfect, just like a crush. I always like elimae, but this one is exceptional and even inspired me: a person who is incapable of inspiration these days.

I always have crushes on inspiring people, like Kim Kardashian and her enormously inspiring ass, and the rest of the Kardashian family, too.

my celebrity crush is patricia arquette

i love her blond bob and soothing voice. also, she is my psychic role model. please recall the i-dreamed-sarah-dyed-her-hair-and-then-she-did incident. also i like how she can dress in businesswoman suits without looking like a d-bag. also i like her in the movie "human nature," because if there's one thing i love more than psychics it's werewolf syndrome.

REAL celebrity CRUSH

I am my own celebrity crush!

Did I mention that these photos have NOT been retouched?!!? GOD! Look at those teeth.

My hair is as soft as a duckling-butt and my nose as cute as a kitten's nipple! My chin is as smooth as the knee of a Great Dane taking its first breath after emerging from its mother's womb. My brows are fuzzy but neat like the belly of a chimp. I smell like....are there any animals that smell good....umm...a chihua- no. I smell like the flower-scented beak of a hummingbird collecting its sweet, sweet nectar. My bosom is supple and firm like the shoulder of a champion race horse. They call it animal magnetism...you need it to be a celebrity.

I'm psyched about the new Portishead album

I'm psyched that there's a new Portishead album. People born in the 1980's might think of Portishead as a "fondue band" (see the above-linked article from the New Yorker), but they are cheesy in the best sort of way, intense, like that roommate you had in college who was always scribbling into an ugly velvety notebook and having deep intellectual thoughts about the universe while doing too much speed. You might wince a little, but you know you love it.

My celebrity crush ensemble

MI-5, the British spy series, is awesome. Everybody on it is totally hot, especially when they're performing admirably under pressure, or being really smart or brave or cruel.

The picture is of Ruth (her name in real life is Nicola Walker). You may look at her and say, "Wha? This does not seem like celebrity crush material." You are dead wrong because you do not know Ruth like I know Ruth. Everybody underestimates her, and then her brain leaps up and kicks their asses.

Also, I just learned from her imdb page that she is practically six feet tall. That's hot.

I also have raging crushes on David Oyelowo and Keeley Hawes and Rupert Penry-Jones, but Ruth has my heart.

Celebrity Crush Week?

Something just occurred to me: we have not been devoting nearly enough of our blog to celebrity crushes. I hereby designate this week Celebrity Crush Week, if no one is opposed. We can look at beautiful people all week in celebration of spring and breeding.

My first contribution is the beautiful and delicious Rocco Dispirito, which if you don't watch Top Chef and you have Bravo, you need to watch it for the rare moment when Rocco makes an appearance. (And also for Padma Lakshmi, who is actually probably hotter than Rocco, except that she used to be married to Salman Rushdie, which diminishes her hotness.) You can also see Rocco on Bertoli commercials, which diminishes HIS attractiveness for sure, because he can totally cook and in the Bertoli commercials cooks things that come in plastic bags. And his cooking is even hotter than his perfectly-chiseled cheekbones.

I discovered in my photo-hunting, though, that he's beautiful on film but not all that photogenic in regular photos. Just like me. And there are no pictures anywhere of him with his shirt off. Boo hoo.

They are going to close your favorite bar

The best part about returning to my college for Abby's class reunion this weekend was walking around the library. Nothing had changed. There were flat screen monitors and a couple of new chairs (and hopefully some new books), but the exact same polyester jackets that hung in Special Collections (where I worked) were still there after 10 years. I always thought of those jackets like starter dollars in a tip jar, like maybe we were trying to entice people in by proving that someone else was already in there. Except nobody ever was.

Otherwise, my favorite bar was gone, my favorite video game was gone, my other favorite bar was gone. Disappointing.

I spent the morning trying to email myself I picture I took on my phone of The Acrobats so I could post it here. It never worked. So I gave up and found it on a page from the university web site that I compiled. How weird is that? I in the past helped myself in the present.

We called it the funky statue. My friends and I always met there. I didn't like it when people dressed it.

this is what I think of when I think of Indiana (which isn't often)

This is what I imagine Indiana to be like. There are lunch pail trees. I think Kathy would be Fairuza Balk in Indiana.

i am going to indiana today

i like to announce on this blog when i go to indiana. i want everyone to know where i am and where i'm going to be. usually i post pictures of cornfields when i announce that i'm going to indiana, but the truth is that i'm going to indianapolis and there really aren't cornfields there. but this is supposedly a picture of wildflowers that grow along the highway, and there are highways in indianapolis and also i recall seeing flowers along the highway, so this is the most accurate of all the google image search results.

The kind of day I'm having

I just licked a droplet of Diet Coke off my desk.

fat tires

I have not had a beer in 22 days. How does that make me feel (thanks for asking)? Bored. And boring. I don't know when I will have a beer again. I'm going to start a support group for people who don't want to give up beer forever, can't submit to a higher power but who also can't drink beer for a certain amount of time, or whatever their doctor says. Everyone in my cult, er, group will have to wear sensible, environmentally friendly shoes like mine. Get the ones with dots on them. I tried, but those look like a Volkswagen bus in my size.

read my story

Ok, whoa, this is not as exciting as all The Vus that are going on in Sarah and Kathy's office. But I have a new story, "Requiem for an Almost Lady," in The Mississippi Review movies issue.
It's page 27.

Maud Newton mentioned it on her page. Yay, thanks!

The movies issue was edited by Jürgen Fauth & Marcy Dermansky

Play jamais vu with us

My office just played jamais vu. You should play it, too.

Write out the numbers 1-30. Then write the word "door" beside each of those numbers, as fast as you can. Did you start to doubt that "door" is a real word? Then you've been jamais-vued!

It's an experiment that this doctor named Chris Moulin did. Apparently, 68 percent of people experience that feeling.

Also, have you ever felt like your mom got replaced by someone who looks exactly like your mom but isn't your mom? That's Capgras delusion. If you've felt that, you might be schizophrenic.

Kevin just said, "I feel like I'm running as fast as I can with shoes made of popsicle sticks." When he was little he made little barking noises when it was too quiet.

Read My Stuff

I have stuff in the new BlazeVOX. You should read it right here. Probably you already have read it on my blog. But you should read it again. Because I haven't published anything in a loooonnnngggg while.

You should also read things by these people there. Mark Cunningham, Steven Zultanski, Mare Mikolum (a cool collaborative effort by some college kidz in Buffalo, NY) and especially Alan May, because he has pictures in this super-effed-up series called "3 Dreams After The Father's Death." Pictures of guns, bullets, and roller coasters.

Thanks Maud Newton!

Maud Newton put a link to my story Pittsburgh on her blog. Maud Newton is super cool. Then Gawker linked to it (page down to right before the picture of Jezebel). I think my book ran away from home and is secretly living in Brooklyn