So many people seem to know about money; why is it these same people can't understand Christ?

...Straight from the new Joan of Arc album. Cutting, insightful, funny, brilliant. I had my workshop for this long poem I'm working on today. I'm never sure how those things go at first, but I'm slowly learning how little these workshops matter in the larger scope of things. And, interestingly, the term "workshop" that we use to call our classes in writing school comes from Michelangelo, when he'd gather together a small group of his best students and they'd just make shit out of iron together, talk about eachother's crap, and maybe support eachother a bit. I guess that's what we do here, but I don't like the name "workshop" and I calling it "writing school" is funny, but inaccurate--they don't teach you writing at all. They just put you with other writers at varying levels and let you hash it out with everyone, let you read a lot, and let you feel sheltered by the academy so you can work to develop your art and experiment. That being the case, today I proprosed to another MFAer here that the program simply be called "buddy time." Because that's really the point: hang out with other wanna-be writers and make up stupid stories while you screw eachother in the student lounge and at the library, tell crappy grammatical jokes, and drop names of critical theory bastards, etc.
So, yeah, buddy time is the best thing ever!

Happy 1984 and 2006

Ah, it's Sunday, I'm tired, everyone else is napping. I've got the Arizona Cardinals game (really?) on mute on the tv, I'm hitting the homework, and rocking Cowboy Junkies (really?) on the headphones. It's overcast and the air is kind of thick, like when you're right near the ocean, and it smells like rosemary and honeybees around our house.

Thin kids get a skinny neck hex (heads hang heavy)

This will be my first weekend in Tucson in a month, and it will be another month before I get a weekend here again. There are all the parties and crap this weekend for halloween, and I was planning on dressing up like one of the kids here in the program, but I'm now going to have to purchase Crocs for the thing--thought I'd be able to borrow a pair--and cut my hair into a bad, two-tone fauxhawk to pull it off. I think I'm just tired enough that a little trip to the Target for those shoes is enough to deter any funny stuff. By the way, sorry I've been subjecting everyone to all these near-naked shots of myself lately; I don't know what that's about.

Who's Afraid of Elizabeth Taylor?

The wife and kid are rocking the Phx today and tomorrow, and I'd like to think that translates into sleeping in, being able to work quietly at home, et al, but in reality it only means that I won't feel bad for being gone all day doing crap. It's only been an hour or two and I'm already 116 pages into a book that I'm presenting on tomorrow that I should have finished a week ago. Now, this is more to fulfill some stupid fantasy than for a real practical purpose, but I'm half-seriously considering spending the night in the library with a thermos of coffee, a laptop, and maybe--just to make it even more poetic and grad. school--some booze in the coffee or something. Yes, that would be all the college I can be.

I hope to get my arm finished on November 4. If that happens I'll post pictures after it heals. I'm ready for it to be finished. I can see The End of The Semester Light at the end of the tunnel. The fam. will be hitting the Oregon Trail to visit while I have finals week. This will be excellent--I'll get all my crap done without distraction and won't have to feel bad about the Laugherys being skipped over this holiday season. Jeez. Everything's just so easy in the abstract!

Let's Wrestle

Man o man o. I've been really into all this super sloppy early Joan of Arc crap, and American Football, and, please don't tell anyone, that Bright Eyes drivel, too, a little bit. Because I'm a vage, I think that I'll attribute it to the season Fall. Every fall, man, same five or six albums, just looping over eachother. Bring on the v-neck sweaters, bring on the bottles of wine and the typewriter!

On a non-emo note (so feel free to check out if you need to at this point--it might get quasi-polotical, here, for a moment), I went around touring the schools that I will be working at for my new jobie job. There are five of them, all featuring, prominantly, at-risk students that Len Munsil doesn't even know exist, and if he did, he's dig up some Agent Orange and spray it on the mashed potatoes for their lunch. These kids are pretty much societial throw-aways, and my new job is to go in to their schools and teach them how to write, and, more imporntantly, to let them know that college is something real, and tangable, and something that they can realistically make their own. In one of the schools we visited today, the three of us (our guide, me, the other dude that has my job) spoke spanish exclusively while at the school. And, you know, you're not supposed to speak spanish to the kids because they are there to learn english and all, but, damn, what the hell do you do when they seriously don't speak a lick? Well, you say, Screw this noise, and speak to them in spanish and find out that they're really sweet kids and you help them figure out how to use the Shortcut for Save As on Word so they can back up their story on disk. I'm pretty excited about trying to make a difference with some of these kids--just when I felt I had broken free from Idealism and embraced the darking dark of nothingness, I end up being the chick teacher in Dangerous Minds or whatever, trying to make a difference in the face of the gears of the killing machine (keep turning keep turning).

OK, back to sap-rock, mid-90s style. You got such a pretty voice, but you gotta get so/fucked up to-o sing...

When I was in prison, you bought me cigarettes every day.

I can't believe I'm up right now. It feels so, so early, but it's probably the latest I've slept in this week. Last night I went to a poetry reading for school (as in, students from my school read their crap) at Casa Libre (which you can check out on the links). Afterward a few people stayed on to hang out with the couple who own/run the place, most of them drinking drinks and complaining about the cold. I have the distinct feeling that drinking around most of the people in the program will get me in a world of dramatic, lame, pain--and I'm getting tattooed today--so I keep the water with bubbles in green glass around most of the time. There was a fat cat that only sits on the laps of people whom are allergic to cats, and I found myself brushing her off me more than once. People kept coming to the back, where we were, that we didn't know, but knew the runners of the place, and when they started stripping down to hop in the spa, we knew our time had come.

Off to Club Congress, where like 1/2 the program was drinking and complaining about their girlfriends, who were about fifteen feet away from them, laughing about how they have their boyfriends dialed in to the point where they almost, almost, feel bad. One of the boyfriends said that a random girl at the place was so hot, and had legs so long, blah blah blah, and just gave her the long drunk stare until I gave him a great pickup line: "Dude, go up to her and say, 'you know why the yankees always win? because of the pinstripes'" and then you can talk about how her legs are winners for their pinstripes, too. Surprisingly, he went right over and did this. Not surprisingly, it didn't work at all, his girlfriend saw, and he had to go home while she stayed out with The Girls.

The point of all this was to say that I had to walk around for an hour and a half after I had wanted to get home because I was supposed to get a ride from someone and it ended up being a little more involved than anyone wants a ride home to be. Keys lost, dramatic drunk people, a cellphone turned off--standard Friday night fare. I'm home safely, thankyou, and tired. The coffee should be done brewing, and that's my cue.

(me) plural

For better or (most likely) worse, I bought a denim jacket yesterday while out shopping for secondhand sportcoats for my new jobie-job. I've always wanted, but had better sense than, to rock the denim suit with the black crap underneath--you know, shoes, shirt, etc., but I'm probably not a hard-enough man for it. Eh, I'm doing it, and it's Tucson, so it can't really matter that much anyway.

For the longest time I've been a prude about buying records--I think it's actually called having a family--but things have come out and I've hit the listening station or whatever and that's been the end of that. It's probably like having a subscription to Maxim or some crap and being married: sure you can look and be whatever it is you want to be, but it's not going to help you in any meaningful way. You can't donk the plastic chicks, and you can't get it in limited-edition, colored vinyl (unless you're BJ#2 and vinyl just miracles itself to you--sometimes, man, sometimes...). Speaking of that guy, man, he's got a class down here on Mondays but I haven't seen him yet. I don't know what getting a PhD is like, so I'm definitely not complaining that he hasn't returned my calls, but I'm kind of complaining, too. And by calls I'm pretty sure I mean I called him once and didn't try again because I hate the telephone more than stepdads hate the proverbial red-headed one of the bunch.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm excited to buy the new Make Believe album this weekend. Then I'm excited to see them play on November 5th. I know there are a bunch of other records I'm really excited about getting, but when you open up the first Maxim in a long time, you gotta just sort of start out slow--a few pages at a time--working your way up to the really really hot one at the very back or something. If you don't, you just go on overload and the album never has time to unfold its potential. Man, I can't believe I wrote this much. For some reason when I get this tired an odd reserve of energy comes on just as I settle in to home. It's probably just the life of a jean-jacket wearing mothafucka.

Steinway and Hemingbeck

I've been, for the past week, taking a picture of my face every day. I want to keep this up for a month at least, and see if I can learn anything about myself by looking into my spirit or whatever. I've always wanted to take a close-up polaroid of all of my close friends where they just look in to the camera and expose themselves. I think it's kind scary and sexy--that might be pretty lame or sick-sounding.

Right now I'm reading a book called Animals in Translation, about this retarded chick that can talk to dogs. The book as a concept is pretty crazy interesting, but the chick writes like she couldn't care less. I don't think you have to be "a writer" to write well--it's probably just the opposite most of the time. If you have personality, you're probably worth reading; but if all you do is talk with dogs it's probably a let down to have to spell it all out for us humans.

How can I love you if you don't lay down?

I spent the majority of the weekend in Flagstaff with my brother, Daniel, and it was pretty nice. We stopped by my dad's place the first day, shot the crap, walked the woods, then his new wife Phyllis (Phyl for short) fried up some squirrels for dinner. Dan tried to steal the two boca burgers I had on my plate, but that silly idea was roundly squished with no hesitation. I spent the rest of the weekend talking with Matt about philosophy. It was very interesting and challenging, but not very uplifting at all. We've actually been dreading some of the same problems, but from different approaches, and it was wierd to see where we diverged. Suprisingly enough, the past two weeks have been the first time that I've ever really been taking my own, original, philosophical notes in a journal. I'm pretty positive they're worthless, but it's nice to pretend, I guess.

In other news, the literary journal Blood Orange Review has taken one of my poems for publication. It's an online journal, so I'll link that crap up when the time comes. It's a small journal, but this early in the game it's almost impossible to get out of the slushpile, and having more publication credits will help that in the future. This is a start. Spellcheck isn't working, hmmm.

Post Coitus Rock

I have a new, grownup, job. I don't know much about it--I get to kind of make it up as I go--but it should be interesting and rewarding. Man, you go from being a jobless, sonofabitch grad student who drinks coffee and doodles in a notebook all day to wearing a tie and having the money for all the tattoos you want in a day. It doesn't cover up existential crisis, but it's nice to know that rent's covered. I'll tell you more as I learn more.

Grace grows in winter.

Five bucks to the first person to comment on where the subject line comes from (if you have their lyrics tattooed on your body, you're disqualified--even if they're hidden under monster-flesh on your back!). I'll send check, or well-hidden cash, your choice.

I've been feeling the weight of existence lately. I think that's a good thing, but, without trying to sound dramatic, I'm hoping that it will lead to a greater understanding of how to live life. That still sounds dramatic, but, really, I think I'm just being challenged emotionally and artistically. We all do it at different times in life, and when it comes to me, I gotta say I hit the mid-90s hardcore that we all know and love, go for a run and pretend that I'm jumping over Brad Rhoades and pointing along to an Overcome show or something. A test, a trial...

NYC--yeah you know me!

alright guys, i'm excited to see you. i'm going to new york.

Back in black, saggy sack, boy that's wack

Ah, weekend. It feels so damn good. Put on the cowboy boots, light a cigar, go for a walk--but never too far.

Xanadu--so can you!

Man, having a kid can be pretty cool. Sure, sometimes they crap their pants, but you get over that quickly. Just keep them away from the vinyl--you know, love can only extend to cover so many things...

Zounds wind sounds!

Man, I've been writing a lot. I don't think I've had a burst of creative energy like this since about a year ago. I have started writing a long poem about the sexual life of one James Joseph. I don't think it will end up being about that, but it's giving me a springboard for now. This sounds silly, but the poem's in 26 sections, and each section will start with a letter of the alphabet, in reverse order, from Z to A. Then the last line from each section all fit together to form a coda, but from A to Z, to form a final section or whatever. I don't know if it will work, but it's what I'm working on right now.

I just got my Spork 5.1 in the mail yesterday--I'm excited. Keep on truckin'.