Time For a New Post

Look at this picture. It's frightening, is it not? Just in time for Halloween, too. I have a small pile of books to get rid of. Among them is Descartes, a text called Teaching Grammar in Context, and A Teacher's Guide to African American English.

Now that I have finished the Comps, I actually want to read more poetry. The flow has resumed. Studying is one of the most loathesome and malignant activities one can undertake. I rank studying just below washing dishes and just above cleaning the litterbox.

Bands, Boobs, Bushy Beards

We went to a concert last night, the first we’ve been to in a long time. We saw Black Label Society, Static-X, Mudvayne, Suicide Silence, Bury Your Dead, and an accompanying freakshow called Hellzapoppin (a midget with hands for arms; an Australian crystal ball manipulator; an old fellow called the Torture King, who ran wire through his arms and other muscular tissue; and Betty Bloomers, a striptease sword swallower whose nipples were taped over).

I know that many people dislike heavy metal music. Dislike may be too mild a word for some. Regardless, one must love heavy metal in some capacity in order to tolerate it. There are those who simply enjoy pumping the devil horns in the air, slam-dancing, screaming obscene slogans, and jerking their head back and forth or in a violent circle. Then there are those who have grown past all that and just love the music. And of course, there are those who are insane enough to try to make a living as heavy metal musicians. The latter category loves heavy metal more than any of the others. To be a heavy metal musician is like being a poet: you will not make any money doing something you love to do. Yet they do it anyway.

I fall into the middle category. Moshpit days are well behind me. I don’t want to be slammed to a concrete floor by a dozen or more hairless three-hundred pound gorillas swimming in circles through the sweat haze. I just want to enjoy the music the way it’s meant to be enjoyed. The epileptic strobelights. The dull cigarette fog over everything. The air thick with the taste of beer. The bass pummeling through the core of your body. Such volume as one would find on a runway at O’Hare. The great buildup of energy that binds a group of four or five musicians to hundreds of drunk and sweaty young people for thirty minutes, goading one another on, feeding off the ruckus.

The concert was great. Zakk Wylde can play a guitar with all the effort involved in picking one’s teeth. The bass player of Suicide Silence resembled Clisbee in some of his more pained expressions, though I have a hard time picturing Clisbee bent-and-squat with an electric bass, swinging his hair and his entire head in great revolutions at 245 bpm. The singer of Mudvayne performed several songs whilst encased in a furry bear suit which I imagine was an entirely unpleasant experience. At least one member of each band had a beard of considerable bushiness.

I didn’t much like the Alltel Center though. Everything seemed choreographed to begin and to end at an early, reasonable, respectable Mankato hour (eleven p.m.).

So that’s part of how I spent my summer.

Legos Again

[This is an update of an earlier post, "Happy Boom Day".] I ended up buying my daughter two Lego sets. One is a basic set of blocks, which comes in a blue plastic box with a lid, wherein the tiny, cat-attracting Legos may be safely stored so as to prevent loss, or "shrinkage" as Wal-Mart calls loss (I have worked at Wal-Mart, in produce, and I hope never to work at any Wal-Mart ever again, but I digress). The second set is part of Lego’s "City" milieu; essentially, sets that, when put together, form a functioning Lego city. I bought a set of people. They include a deliveryman with a hand-truck; a woman with a ghetto blaster; a uniformed policeman with a megaphone, white hat, walkie-talkie, and a mustache; and one fellow who I can describe only as being a liberal arts professor, given the appearance of his hair, sweater vest, neck tie, full beard, and a briefcase. The city people set also comes with a traffic signal, three road signs, a park bench, and a fireplug (all of the latter must be assembled). It’s delightful! We’ve had great fun swapping the people’s hair. The professor wears the woman’s hair (which I assume is "Princess Hair") and she wears the professor’s hair ("Prince Hair"?). A bit later, Liz bought yet a third Lego set, a Front-End Loader, which comes with another Legoman. This one is a construction worker in an orange jumpsuit. He has a rough beard and a sly expression. He resembles an escaped prisoner. The Front-End Loader kicks ass. You can scoop things with it; namely, a pile of small Lego bricks. Thus far I have built many Lego vehicles of questionable utility. They generally have oversized tires and as many lights and funnels and tubelike devices attached to them as I can add.

Habits

I am awash in bad habits. Sometimes I eat too much. This can elevate my blood-sugar. High blood-sugar makes me sleepy. I’ve been sleeping too much lately. Not tomorrow though. Tomorrow I refill another prescription for long-acting Vyvanse (12-hour speed). I have gone without these pills for more than a week. Withdrawl symptoms reinforce bad habits, it’s true. I have read a lot this past week. (Reading is a bad habit sometimes.) I finished Moby-Dick, along with two books of non-fiction (Methland and The Curve of Binding Energy). I’ve been growing a beard. A spider lives in the downstairs bathroom. We’ve finally replaced the van: now we own a 2008 Chevy Malibu. It’s a good car. Why have I read so much non-fiction this summer? Look at my list: Five books of non-fiction, one book of philosophy, two story collections, and but a single novel (albeit a goddamn great big novel). On a lighter note, one of the nestling robins I mentioned in a recent post did survive the opossum attack. I found the nestling at the bottom of one of the basement window wells and scooped it out. The parents were dive-bombing at the time. Baby birds are so ugly. It pooped when I tried to pick it up.

Happy Boom Day

My daughter is making the transition from toddler-Legos ("Duplo" blocks; or, oversized blocks) to the tiny, miniscule, easily lost, cat-attracting Lego blocks which we all know and love. She has two sets: The Krusty Krab (featuring Spongebob, Mr. Krabs, and Patrick Star Legomen) and a dump truck set (an oversized ore-hauler truck with two Lego boulders and a driver Legoman). She is playing with them in the den as I write. The cats are congregating therein.

The temptation to purchase more of these Lego sets tickles my pleasure center every day. (She just brought me the Krusty Krab to reassemble after the roof broke off somehow.) You should see some of the Lego sets available nowadays! One can purchase, for example, the Millenium Falcon Lego set, which has over 5,000 pieces (including Chewbacca!), for $500.00. Who would buy this toy which is obviously not meant to be played with? Also available is the Death Star (yes, Death Star) set, not quite as grandiose as the Millenium Falcon, but costing about $350.00 nonetheless.

No. For my daughter I’m thinking much smaller-scale in terms of cost and number of tiny pieces. I’ll admit this as well: I want to play with them too. I love Legos. I’ve never been able to build anything except with Legos or words. I am inept when it comes to construction, carpentry, putting together, taking apart anything generally. No good at it. Easily frustrated. Annoyed!

At the website you can order entire sets. Also you can order individual pieces, "bricks", as every piece apparently is called: "Beard for Mini Figure", "Bat", "Brick 1x6", "Brick 2x2", "Brick 2x2 White Dec.Eyes", "Brick W. Shaft 1X8x1", "Camera", "Cherry", "Circular Saw", "Corrugated Pipe 16Mm, Black", "Croissant", "Crossbow" [21 cents!], "Dragon’s Fire", "Dustbin", "Flat Tile 2x2", "Flower Transparent", "Flying Goggles", "Head for Skeleton" [24 cents], "Left Roof Tile 2x3", "Left Shell 2x6 W. Bow Angle", "Life Jacket", "Megaphone", "Metal Detector" [24 cents], "Mini Body Lower Part" [in black, white, blue, red, or green; blue and red cost 35 cents while the other colors cost 31 cents, for some reason], "Mini Cape", "Mini Head" [14 varieties, including a transparent Head, ranging in price from 8 cents to 24 cents], "Mini Upper Parts", "Mini Wig Man", "Parabola 6x6", "Plate 1x10", "Plate 2x10", "Plate 2X4x18°", "Plate 8x8", "Pneumatic Hammer", "Princess Hair", "Quiver", "Rim Narrow W. Hole Ø8", "Rim Wide W.Cross 30/20", "Rocket Step 4X4x2", "Roof Tile 1X1x2/3, Abs", "Roof Tile 1X2x3/73°", "Round Brick 1x1", "Round Plate 1x1", "Skater Helmet", "Skeleton Body W. Shaft 3.2", "Snowy Owl", "Space Skeleton Arm", "Spear", "Spider", "Swim Fins", "Technic Brick 1x8", "Tyre Low Wide Ø37 X 22", "Undercarriage 2X2x2", "Wall Corner 1X1x1", "Whip", "Wig Boy", "Wig, Ponytail", "Windscreen 2X4x2", and others among a total of 1,491 individual bricks. One can purchase accessories for cars; hardware; lumber; corpses, skulls, and body parts; deadly weapons; tools; food; animals; fire; rocket components; new identities; and a whole host of amenities. From nowhere else can you find and purchase such a broad range of things, legal or otherwise.

So anyway, I’m tempted to buy another set for my daughter. By which I mean: for my daughter and myself...I would like to buy skeleton heads, Mini Upper Parts, Mini Wigs, Mini Body Lower Parts, various Mini Helmets, tools, swim fins, spears, Princess Hair, and the like...Maybe I should just stick to a set.

Boo.

Turkey Crossing

This week my daughter began going to a summer school program for three hours in the morning, Monday through Thursday, at the edge of civilization in North Mankato. After I dropped her off this morning I was heading home, careening down Lookout Drive, when a large bird moseyed out from the foliage and into the road. At first I thought the bird was a peacock. But when I slowed and finally stopped, the dangling wattle clearly spelled out turkey. Okay. I waited for the turkey to wander out of the road. Another van was approaching, actually hauling ass uphill in the other lane. Not slowing down. Then a gaggle of chicks (if I had to guess, I’d say there were twenty of them) burped up from the grass and scattered aimlessly into the road. I had stopped; the oncoming van had not. The mother turkey seemed confused. The chicks seemed confused. I could hear them peeping. At what appeared to be the last moment, the oncoming driver braked. No birds were squashed. The man rolled down his window and ogled the turkeys, shaking his head as if they were trying to wash his windshield. By now the hen had returned to the brush from whence she came, but three or four chicks continued to run in circles. They peeped. They stood as tall as they could and looked around. They peeped some more. At last the chicks retreated in the proper direction, and joined their mother in the bushes.

Eine Schlange ist durch den Holzhaufen geschlängelt

"A snake slithered through the woodpile."

Today. A few hours ago. From the bathroom window I saw a snake, about the length of my forearm, slither into view from under the porch. It crept along, over the dwindling woodpile. I got my daughter and we watched the snake from the back door, until it disappeared. The snake was black, with yellow racing stripes along the length of its body. Beautiful.

Stop All Other Activity and Read this Book

I don’t know how Wells Tower learned to write the way he does, but it’s fortunate for the rest of us that he did. His debut collection of stories, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, demands that once you begin reading, you do not put it down. (I might ask: Why would you put it down?) The collection begins and ends on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In the first story, "The Brown Coast", Bob Munroe incorrectly builds a flight of stairs in a new house. A man falls down the stairs, files a lawsuit, and Bob is fired. Then his wife finds out he’s been cheating on her. Thus the theme of self-imposed exile is set in motion: Bob moves to his uncle Randall’s fixer-upper on the tip of a small island. A neglected aquarium begins to fill with sea life that Bob fishes out of a tide pool. His wife may or may not divorce him.

In "Retreat", the narrator exiles himself to an unfinished mountaintop cabin in Maine, spending much of his time drinking with an old local named George. This is a story about brothers: Matthew, the narrator, invites his little brother, Stephen, across the country to see the mountain and the cabin, part of a continuous state of sibling rivalry.

A man’s father is forgetting his own family members and the short-term details of his life in another story. In "Leopard", you are an eleven-year-old boy who hates his stepfather with a passion. And of course the title story must be experienced for itself.

Wells Tower has a suprising eye for fresh images. The sun, in "The Brown Coast", looks "orange and slick, like a canned peach." The eighty-three-year-old narrator of "Door in Your Eye" describes what he used to write in his diary: "...when I looked back on what I wrote, I noticed I’d become like a cheap newspaperman about my life, only telling unpleasant things–-when I fought with my wife, or how much money I had given my daughter, or a time I was eating at a restaurant and a woman fell off her chair from a seizure." Tower describes a flock of geese calling to each other "in voices like nails being pulled from old boards."

I cannot do this book justice with these few meager examples. How much simpler it would be if you just read it yourself. Please do. Buy a copy new, and support this man’s writing. I hope to see another Wells Tower collection or a novel forthcoming someday soon.

They Came in Leopard Print

Meet the Giant Garden Slug.

The last house we inhabited in southern Illinois had a basement. The foundation was cracked. Water stood upright on the floor. Camel crickets dotted the walls. Mold, black spots of it, along with miniature forests of small mushrooms, grew on the walls. Brown recluses scuttled about. And, at night during the summer, Giant Garden Slugs came up the stairs in a great swarm. I fed them cat food. They seemed grateful for the sustenance. These slugs grew to immense proportions, some longer and fatter than any one of my fingers. Seeing this silent and glistening host at the top of the basement stairs filled me with a sense of paternal pride. They were like my subjects! Never once did I salt them. I miss them today. The Giant Garden Slugs are the only other nonhuman inhabitants of that house that I miss.

In St. Paul, and other Niceties

We visited the Science Museum in St. Paul yesterday and looked at dinosaur fossils, the Quackery Museum display, the Visible Woman, and so forth.

Who wasn't fascinated with dinosaurs in childhood?

She has excellent bone structure.

This device was purported to aid in curing indigestion or somesuch ailment, among others. It's a chair in a box. I do not understand the purpose of the window. There is also a vibrating chair, and some kind of plug that is inserted rectally and connected by a wire to a blue light bulb. I would almost say "You can't make this stuff up" but someone already has and tried to profit from it at the expense of a gullible public. Thus, some things just don't change.

Reading List: In No Particular Order

A large number of books are waiting for me to read them:

The Collected Stories of Leonard Michaels.
Rock Island Line by David Rhodes.
Celebration by Harry Crews.
The Gospel Singer by Harry Crews (reading now).
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (reading now).
Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams (reading now).
The Accordionist's Son by Bernardo Atxaga.
Flickers by William Trowbridge (reading now).
The Collected Stories of J.F. Powers.
***
Harry Crews writes in such a way that the story moves quickly without losing the reader. I just finished Body. I never once got lost. The novel, many times, made me laugh out loud. Body meets the criteria for what I consider quality writing, fine writing. 1: Moves quickly. 2: Does not lose me. 3: Keeps me interested. 4: Makes me laugh. 5: The end is surprising but, yes, inevitable.

Not many writers are able to do this. Harry Crews and William Maxwell are two. Not even Joy Williams meets all of these criteria (I am enamored of her writing for different reasons I am utterly unable to explain). Have we all read Harry Crews’s novels? I know some of us have read Childhood: A Biography of a Place. But the novels? My god, the novels! A Feast of Snakes! Body!

The Latest Obsession

Let's you and me take a walk through the information mud, squish it between our toes, a jowled hound tracking us together across the goo, and we'll stop to pop the bubbles along the way. It's a sculptor's dream. Grab a trowel.

*

So long, house & a Catnip Orgy

Controlled Burn at the corner of Fairfield & James.

. . . as seen through the trees.

CATNIP ORGY!

. . . Resting after the seizure by Dionysus.

VERBS

You who have read my stories know how much I love verbs. Verbs make a story go. The right verb at the right moment is like a small magical explosion, or a glamer of gnomic wizardry, or a burst of forbidden fruit on your tongue.

There are two stories in particular (neither of which are mine) that make especial use of verbs: Steve Almond’s My Life in Heavy Metal (sensory verbs) and Leonard Michaels’ The Deal (action verbs). I’ll start with Mr. Almond.

wag (pp. 1): to walk suggestively; said of the narrator’s fiancé
punch (2): the effect of a powerful odor; in this case, lard used in Mexican cooking
glow (2): said of lighted swimming pools; "glowed like sapphires"
bang out (3): to type against a deadline
blossom (4): said of the effect when the Mexican lifeguard switches from English to her native tongue, Spanish
dance (4): said of the tongue moving against teeth (linked to the example of ‘blossom’)
vault (7): the motion of a woman’s pelvis moving suddenly upward at orgasm
beard (23): wrapped, or enveloped, in an odor; "bearded in the smell of Claudia"

More examples lie scattered throughout the story, but I find these in particular impressive. Almond’s use of verbs in this manner gets me thinking about how I use verbs. How might I describe, say, the feel and taste of capsaicin on a character’s tongue? Rather than saying something like "The hot pepper set his tongue on fire" or "...burned his tongue" or "tingled intolerably" (geez, that last one), I would try to find a sensory verb that does the job in an unexpected-yet-fitting way....Of course nothing comes to mind immediately. It’s hard to do. I’ll figure it out.

Now on to Mr. Michaels (I didn’t keep track of page numbers):

Jammed. Poked. Tucked. Cut. Rode. Slipped. Cracked. Plucked. Looped. Tipped. Nudged. Tilted. Swelled. Yowled. Swivelled. Snapped. Hooked. Cackled. Swept. Steeped. Trotted. Sprayed. Banged.

The verbs in this story wield hard edges. Hard edges and small motions, almost twitch-like in their animation. Which works, because the antagonist(s) is "a raggedy monster of boys", twenty boys total, "jammed together on the stoop." Yowled? That’s the verb used to describe a truck’s gears shifting. Steeped? "The sun was low above the river and the street three quarters steeped in shade." Lovely. After being drenched in summer sun all day, the street is almost relieved to be soaked in shade, itself like water. The angle of light is steeper than the angle of the street, and the shade is now thick, as if one could walk up the incline. Beautiful!

If we haven’t read The Deal, ask me for a copy and I will supply one. (Mr. Camel Cricket has read it. He knows what I’m talking about.)

There are an infinite number of ways . . .

More things in life ought to be made of Play-Doh. If you disagree, then you are wrong. Look at these tools! They are made to resemble octopus arms. They cut, they roll, they impress patterns in the soft clay. Unfortunately, once a multicolored amalgation of different Play-Dohs has been created, the colors are impossible to separate.

Three-dimensional shapes are both a challenge and a delight! Imagine a green Stonehenge. Imagine a purple cityscape, complete with cellular towers. Imagine neon-blue palm trees on a dinosaur-infested beach.

And, in case you missed seeing it, here is the snow.

A Word I Needed To Look Up, To Satisfy My Curiosity

clusterfuck: n. coarse slang (chiefly U.S.). 1. A sexual orgy. Also Mongolian cluster fuck. 2.orig. Mil. A bungled or botched undertaking; (also) a situation, state of affairs, or gathering (esp. a military operation) that is disorganized or chaotic.

cluster: n. 1. A collection of things of the same kind, as fruits or flowers, growing closely together; a bunch. a. Originally of grapes (in which sense bunch is now the usual term.) b. Of other fruits, or of flowers; also of other natural growths, as the eggs of reptiles, the air-cells of the lungs, etc. 2. A rounded mass or conglomeration; a clot, a ‘clutter’, Obs. 3.a. A number of persons, animals, or things gathered or situated close together; an assemblage, group, swarm, crowd. b.fig. Of immaterial things. c. A group of faints stars forming a relatively dense mass, appearing as a nebula to the naked eye; a star-cluster; also applied to larger coherent groups of stars, nebulæ, and galaxies. Also attrib. d.Linguistics. A group of successive consonants.

fuck: v., n., adj. Too numerous are the definitions, phrases, constructions, and mysterious etymological origins for me to repeat them all here. We all know what this word means, don’t we?

---

Good. Now my curiosity is satisfied, to some extent. So don't go and fuck up your holiday.

Drei Katzen

Since folks enjoy pictures of cats so much, here are my three ingrates posing as if they care.

What can you read over and over again?

Every short story in each of Joy Williams' three collections.

Martin Amis' Time's Arrow and Einstein's Monsters.

Padgett Powell's short stories (most of them but not all of them).

G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy.

Some things I have never heard but would like to hear before I leave college forever

"Please rewrite this paper in the future tense. I can't make heads or tails out of it as it is."

"I agree with you completely. T.S. Eliot was a goddamn lunatic for writing that nonsense."

"We in the administration value you as a student, not just as a dollar-figure."

"Please put your pants back on."

"Yes, your student health insurance will cover that."

"We don't know how they escaped. But you'll need tomato sauce, believe us."

"The university has decided to play 'opposite fiscal year.' This year the English department gets the athletic department's budget, and the athletic department gets the English department's budget."

Ein Laterne, ein Lausejunge, der Lautsprecher: lautlos

Don't read this. This isn't worth reading. This will tell you nothing you don't already know. This might land you in court, in jail, in detention, in solitary confinement. This is the hard way to update your computer. This is the 25% more, free, without purchase of the rest of the product. This is a test flight. This is a sparrow or a bat carcass stuck in the grill of your truck. This is a lanky cat showing you its asshole. This is moldy bread. This could lend you money or take money away from you. This theory makes no sense. This guy's acid trip went splat after twelve stories. This means don't drop acid in a high-rise dormitory. This will understandably lead to rhetorical grammar. This is the fourth edition. This smells like teriyaki chicken. This check will not clear without personal sacrifice. This commendation to the First Marine Division, Reinforced, at one time will have been rendered pointless to anyone who isn't a Marine. This is a laxative. This is a doohickey or dowackle or skeezix or gobbledygook or twiseasess or zusammenpassen or Nasenbluten or nichtsdestoweniger or Verbindlichkeit. This box contains monkeys. This loudspeaker doesn't work. This fucker has only one eye. This louse lives in his skin. This hope is unconscious. This fortune will be squandered. This time around we have ways of making you talk. This deodorant is unscented. This much is true: the Chinese eat no cheese. This sugar cookie has a toenail in it. This year we try harder. This wanderer knew where to go but not from where. This finger smells funny. This state park toilet facility is home to twelve species of spider. This news does not bode well. This distant relative wrung his hands. This is an attempt to collect a debt. This is your mother. This rash should clear up before Thanksgiving. This coming January shows promise. This time let the clutch out slowly while giving it some gas and don't worry if it hops. This war will get worse before it gets better. This never happened.