Do you ever imagine that your poetry is like a tank, and you're driving around in it, but not like to destroy things? Just that it is that awesome?

The dream I had last night about trying to help Alice Notley find a bagel is based in something that really happened, when she stayed at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Milwaukee.

Last night I saw "Blades of Glory" and while it's not upto "Anchorman" standards (it doesn't have that cast, for one thing), I have to say that "I'll get inside your face" as a retort to "Get out of my face" is one of the funniest things I've seen in any movie recently.

Leonard Cohen named his daughter "Lorca". Should I name my daughter "Lord Alfred Tennyson"?

What is the appeal of black metal?

A dream where I had to go back to my dishwashing job, where somehow I was obligated to and there was no way to get out of it. And looking in The Sports Section at an article about how Steven Wright is actually a really great athlete. There's a picture accompanying the article that shows Steven Wright's rifle-like tennis swing. And also an article about a local couple who were involved in the Avant Garde in the 1930s and 40s, posing nude with their parts strategically covered. And I'm yelling at Ross in my father's living room, loudly complaining that there's no way I'm going back to that job. He's trying to explain to me how the person they have now comes in late, calls himself "Mr. Bumblebut" and uses the wrong exit to leave. And I'm getting really upset but then I wake up. And I'm very relieved.

My job interview at the Journal Sentinel was cut short today when it was determined that I only type 34 wpm. If I were Alice Notley I might have gotten that job! I guess that joke's not very funny. Just recalling how she once she said types very fast. I wonder what the words-per-minute on Alma is.

Ater that I went straight to try and secure Food Share assistance. It was... "sprinkling"?

Welcome to the future, poets!

I do "creepy" pretty well.

We are nearing the end of summer, when the blogging is dumb and the living, it's easy.

I have posted a possible a first step in my search for an antidote to 2 dollar word-itis here.

But I'd love to see some more monosyllabic coupons.

Thank you.

Somewhere in another dimension there may be a an alternate "bizarro" version of this blog, that is filled with all the entries I started and decided to abort. It may still be called unreliable zygote, or may have come under a gravely intense bout of influence by Billy Crystal movies, and have the title "baby fishpants".

I think I have 2 dollar word-itis. Can I write a poem with no 2 dollar words in it? Please leave some monosyllabic coupons in the comment box below.

I'm not good at knowing whether someone is joking. You might say, "Hey Mike, go fuck yourself." And I experience at least one moment of not-knowing.

This is funny because on New Year's Eve of last year, I became surly and drunk at the same time and I started yelling people's names out and then flipping them off whilst they looked back at me.

A few years ago, actually like eight years ago, I was with my friends Justin and Clay and one of them said that when you insult someone sarcastically, which we did alot, you actually mean it a little bit. So I don't know what it says about my personality, but I always take it a little personally when I shouldn't. I should say, "Ah fuck you, jagoff" or "Yeah well ya mutha didn't think so" or just "Ahhhh..."

All celebrities are weird and have weird twinkles in their weird eyes. You begin to think that they will bite you. But they won't. Their eyes reason with you as if you were some wild badger, raising Tom Hanks' iPod, in the wild. Their celebrity eyes totally glow in the NBA night. Which is/was their want. They are standing "at the crossroads", bottle of water, confidence bestowed by Tom Hanks. Their eyes leak iPod courage that is really neat. We're talking scarves, bandanas, babuschukas. Hot Pockets! Mellow grande appreciation of the foreform, Garrison Keiller's deft twaddle, radio knobs stabbed in corn cobs. Celebrity eyes floating down from Haven reassure you, appreciate you in value. Celebrity eyes glowing weirdly in streams and fibre optics, middle of night. Tom Hanks' car goes by on nerve. Cerebral cortex microwave. The celebrity eyes will close shortly, please save their work to a disc, they will appreciate in value. Weird weird nunchuck of green gables.

Why do I feel like someone out there is about to 'break it' to me? Please be gentle!

I'm SPOOKED

Today the library called me telling me that they had my floppy disc and I should come and pick it up. I thought this was a little weird, since I know I'm way too disorganized to have written my name on the disc, though I did remember leaving it. So the people at the library, many of whom I know and once worked along side must have gone into and found my resume with my info and called me based off of that. But then I get the disc and my name and number are written on it, only unmistakably in a handwriting that ain't mine. So I'm wondering if they did that. Maybe. I wait for a computer to open up. I go sit down, and I look at the disc. Now I remember this disc and I remember that I only put one document on it, my resume. But now there are three documents. One is a note to me from the person who found it, telling me that I seem like a great guy but resume is too wordy so they rewrote it. They also tell me in bold lettering that they mean me no harm. And I'm like, what? There's harm in question? Thanks for the reassurance I guess. So this person who means me no harm happens to know where I live... Hmm... Oh and they signed the end of their message, "your guardian angel on earth, S."

I guess this is what it took to get me to stop leaving discs at the library, so thanks S.

By the way, my resume does look more concise and professional now, so I guess, thanks for that too S.

So I'm minding my business, riding my bike, loving my bike in two worlds really, when whose playing in front of Beans & Barley but Perry Farrell, Mr. Lollapalooza himself. I'm all like, "Dude fuck dude.", so I stop, pull down my pants to get his attention and I'm all like flipping him off and yelling "Dude you suck, dude! Just quit dude!". And then I'm all eating a kielbasa no licking out the remains of my Dannon yogurt and Perry Farrell is on stage just like, "Oh my god! This fat truthteller does have my number! I say, old boy! I'm going back to Venice!" And I just yell, "Beyatch!", and that's it. I'm loving Beans & Barley in two worlds, and eating out this kielbasa, totally throwing "metal fingers". You know...

Then Perry Farrell all of sudden jumps off the stage and next thing I know, dude's fuckin suplexing me like I'm some fuckin cornish game corndog dude. And then I'm layin there with fuckin asphault encrusted yogurt all over my face, and Perry Ferrell's all back on stage and he's flying down, a tap-tapping his elbow, which is The Flying Elbow smash. I'm like "No!" The impact of Perry Ferrell's elbow was hard and fast, but then I look and I'm like "Whoah, dude hit his forehead on one of the lights!" So now's my oppurtunity, I smear yogurt and organic cream pie all up in his face, and he collapses and I collapse. In his arms. And now me and Perry Ferrell are loving each in two organic cream pie worlds, totally making out. He's buying me a plane ticket, one way. I'm like, "Dude, I've just been really frustrated and shit." And he's like, "No need to apologize old boy!"

TO BE CONTINUED

Who knew cooking a damn bratwurst could be so difficult.

______

propositions are integrated within
jet up to electric dog status
we pat on you on the back
your ears prick up
we call you hitler
and then kick you around like homogenized milk

-- The Fall

The reader is not Mark E. Smith. I wonder who it is.

______

A piece of paper was left next to this computer with "GNOSSIENNE 1" written on it.

Anne's right. To name something 'blue eyed soul' is more ironic than dumb. Is it that it's easier to be ironic than it is to be dumb? Dumb is hard. And easy at the same time.

And now I'm excited about gerunds. What is about that decade? I came in right at the end, so the 70s are somewhat of a mystery to me. But I do know that gerunds are rife for satire. Here are some gerundic titles:


Shoving The Hoarse Marsh

Spooning David Lehman

Spooning David Lehman In Two Worlds

Gathering The Wet Butts

Gathering The Wet Butts On Sunday

Gathering The Wet Butts On Sunday At Noon Because The Green Bay Packers Don't Play Until Three

Humping The Well

Cloning The Sheep For Jesus

Peering Into The Taco's Heart

Shlupping Around Venice With Andy Rooney

Loving Andy Rooney In Two Worlds

Diving Into The Pool

Fussing Over Procedure

Sweating Like Roger Ebert (not mine)

Breakdancing In The Afterlife

Fluting Miscreant Oboes

Shucking The Early Corn

Glancing Toward Midnight

So the list of albums, which can scrolled down to, is starting to get perhaps obnoxiously long. Probably no longer a 'desert island' collection. But I like trying to remember all these albums. I'm kind of ashamed to say I no longer own the majority of em. Moving to Milwaukee with no money in 2000 nessecitated selling alot of the 3-400 disc collection I had. Is Milwaukee worth trading all that music for? I guess. So the list is kind of a pasty nerd version of that Willie Nelson song. For All The Music I've Loved Before. And I'm serious about the last one on that list, tho it's strictly a sentimental attachment that goes back to my early adolescence. I can't really justify it any other way.

Is this the dumbest name [above] I could have given this blog? For some reason I'm really into the idea of giving this blog the dumbest name possible without resorting to like 'poogie poo poo party pants' or something like that. I mean naming a blog after the genre of music Hall & Oates play is pretty dumb right?

Today as I was crossing an intersection on my bike, I heard one of the passengers in a pickup truck waiting to cross utter the phrase "moron on a bike". That's funny!

Mairead Byrne is a very very funny person.

There needs to be more flirting on this blog, besides just me with myself.

Actually on second thought, forget it. Flirting does me no good.

Well it's looks like all the blogs are closin up for the day.

I'm interested in your body fat.

Miscommunication

You look down, but I'm up here.

I'm in the mood for Kenneth Anger and Nashville Skyline.

Tom Petty

Why do people listen to Tom Petty?

There is an episode of Strangers With Candy in which all Flatpoint High students are assigned to submit a photo that illustrates what free speech means to them. So Gerri submits a nude photo of herself with legs spread wide. But upon seeing this photo, Principal Blackman exclaims 'Snatch it down!'. Well, ever the defendant of free speech, Mr. Jellineck offers a 'censorship' story of his own, in which he had some paintings on display, but no one bought any of them. So he convinces Jerri to go on a 'hunger strike', which consists of her sitting in the school display case until they 'win'. And once Principal Blackman offers to buy one of Jellineck's leaf collages, Jellineck considers the battle won. Jerri however refuses to end her hunger strike, which was a stipulation in Blackman and Jellineck's deal. Jellineck is outraged at Gerri's uncooperativeness and lashes out, "Why are you censoring me Gerri?!"

I want to know your favorite albums. Or least favorite. Or just what albums knocked you on your asses. Here is a list in no particular order. Ok so I'm getting a little carried away...

Pavement- Slanted & Enchanted
Beach Boys- Pet Sounds
Beatles- The White Album
The Raincoats- The Raincoats
Erik Satie- Played by Ciccolini
My Bloody Valentine- Loveless
Wu Tang Clan- Enter The 36 Chambers
Aphex Twin- I Care Because You Do
Aphex Twin- Ambient Works Vol II
Panda Bear- Person Pitch
Charles Mingus- Pithecanthropus Erectus
Pavement- Crooked Rain Crooked Rain
Billie Holiday- As Time Goes By (a generic CD my Mom got in the mail from the Bravo Network for some reason, but the recordings are amazing)
Nick Drake- Pink Moon
Elliot Smith- XO
Sonic Youth- Daydream Nation
Public Enemy- It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
Eric B & Rakim- Paid in Full
Van Morrison- Astral Weeks
Rolling Stones- Exile on Main Street
Can- Future Days
Love- Forever Changes
Zombies- Singles Collection
Mercury Rev- See You On The Other Side
Pavement- Brighten The Corners
Velvet Underground- Velvet Underground
Husker Du- New Day Rising
The Stooges- Funhouse
Lisa Germano- Happiness
Nas- Illmatic
Suicide- Suicide
Sonic Youth- Experimental Jet Set Trash & No Star
Joanna Newsom- The Milk Eyed Mender
Animal Collective- Sung Tongs
Animal Collective- Feels
Panda Bear- Young Prayer
Charles Mingus- The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady
A Tribe Called Quest- The Low End Theory
Lee 'Scratch' Perry- Arkology
The Fall- A Sides
Tricky- Maxinquaye
Plug- Drum & Bass For Papa
Wagon Christ- Tally Ho
Dances With Wolves- Soundtrack

Another poet I dug closely in my Serious Midwestern Young Man phase was James Wright. And when I read his poems I still like them on some level. I don't know if liking something is a problem or not. The guy has an ear for poetry. Listen to this:

Two athletes
Are dancing in the cathedral
Of the wind

Sonically that's pretty beautiful. Even if the line breaks are a little clunky. It's from "Spring Images", which can be found in The Branch Will Not Break.

I was heavily influenced by stuff like this for awhile. I tried to write a poem called "Inviolate Child", that was filled with long, mellifluous lines about a kid who lived under a tree in my Dad's backyard or something. I eventually abandoned the project.

Have you ever had a teacher, who inspired you at the time, and you needed that, but then you look back and realize that you are now in complete disagreement with much of what they said. For example, "you should read Robert Bly", which I did, and so for awhile I was one of those aspiring faux deep image poets, all hung up on 'image' and such.

An important breaking away point for me was reading The Sonnets, which somehow fit in with my weird worldview and nascent buddhism, I liked it immediately. But The Sonnets also allowed me to see all these other tributaries in plain view from where my writing currently was. To my mind it had some 'leaping', actually a dazzling, breathtaking, heartbreaking amount of 'leaping', but it was also much more free in it's associations and syntax then most work I was into at the time. And eventually of course, I came to realize that the whole concept of 'leaping' is actually pretty questionable, and that the whole deep image thing was basically an appropriation of the 'raw' by the 'cooked'.

I have serious 'earworm' from that Tegan and Sara song from last night's Conan. Even tho it's obviously snugly in the category of what I have pompously referred to, among friends, whilst enduring Iron & Wine, or getting snagged on any number of Grey's Anatomyesque tv dramas, relationship music. I don't quite know what it is, but I feel a palpable difference between music that is responding to or invoking a feeling of love (say to use an obvious example, Pet Sounds, or perhaps ironically but not reallly ironically, Loveless), and that music that to me just sounds like two Generation Y hipster-yuppies who live in say Williamsburg, Brooklyn or on the East Side of Milwaukee having a fight. A type of music that more than anything just alienates me, maybe from lack of that kind of experience. But seriously, there is a vein of 'indie' music come along in the last decade that resembles James Taylor and Carly Simon in sentiment and sound, no?

But all that said, the chorus of 'I just want back into your head' is at least not too cliched, and that terse piano line is about a good a hook as I've heard in a long time. And I find the way they sing way less grating actually than the Iron & Wine wispy-hope-you've-never-heard-Nick Drake mode of earnestness. You can interpret this in whatever way you like, but I think a woman's perspective is just more interesting when it comes to this proto-Garden State type Indie Rock.

Getting back into this album-- oh my GOD is it hot!

"There are blue shadows between people, there's a comfortable forest of legs."
-from Waltzing Matilda, "My Bodyguard", by Alice Notley

I'd have to say that Zodiac is one the best "Hollywood" films I've seen in a long time. It's just so meticulous. By far the best approximation of a period I've seen in a film. As for the chemistry between Mark Ruffalo's raspy bulldog cop and Jake Gyllenhall's boy scout with whiskers, it's maybe the lone weakpoint. Gyllenhall's earnestness just ain't as fun to watch as Ruffalo's slow boil. Robert Downey Jr plays a character who's exactly what you would expect a character played by Robert Downey Jr to be like- whimsical, cranky, jokey, flippant (as in flipping bird while leaving San Fransisco Chronicle copy room etc). But he hardly phones it in, and no one else does either in a cast that includes two of my favorite character actors, Elias Koteas and Philip Baker Hall. And there's also some of the best use of music in a film I've witnessed, especially in the murder scenes that are almost as well executed as HItchcock. And that opening song is by Three Dog Night? Does that I mean like them now? Oh well.

Fatables.

Shouldn't athletes just be allowed to do whatever drugs they want?

I know the arguement get's made that they're 'role models', but these 'role models' are already multi-multi-millionares living in a country where most of their fans will soon be looking at the concept of upward mobility as a quaint notion from the past.

Yesterday I was listening to 'Range Life', and this line just hit me like a gut punch, which it always does.

'school's out, what did you expect?'

This just somehow completely encapsulates life for me. And not just cause I'm not attending school. Maybe it's that the line's preceded by:

'but I've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame

don't worry, we're in no hurry'

Since Malkmus is saying 'but I've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame', the bridge of 'don't worry, we're in no hurry/ school's out, what did you expect?' could maybe be looked at as a response, maybe even like a Greek chorus of... no, no, I won't say slackers, but people who're somewhat drifting thru life. But then there's the response-within-a-response of 'school's out, what did you expect?'

The tone of the song ultimately seems like one of exasperation, 'if I could settle down, then I would settle down'.

Does anyone else like Freaks & Geeks? Wasn't the way it ended kind of lame? I mean c'mon, a Deadhead?!?

I think the posts on this blog fall into two categories, with some exceptions of course. One category is where I attempt to write a certain kind of prose, say in the area of poetics or criticism. And the other is usually a one-sentence explanation of why for whatever reason I'm just not up for an 'attempt'. Today I guess I was up for one of those attempts.

One of the most fascinating things to me about Clark Coolidge's work is the ark of his career. It's seems like one can divide it into roughly these phases: 1) in the late 60s, the early work, radically disjunctive, sort of word nuggets that form short jigsaw narratives like in Space, 2) in the early 70s, longer endlessly recombinatory works like in Polaroid, The Maintains and to somewhat of an ebbing-back-into-narrative-mode extent, Quartz Hearts, 3) in the late 70s, the more narrative Solution Passage, Mine: The One That Enters The Stories, 4)in the 80s, serial texts like At Egypt, and The Crystal Text. But it's also evident that as the work progresses, Coolidge is able to utelize all these various modes in more of an overlapping way. This 'career-ark' mutates to somewhat of an extent. On The Nameways Vol. 2, for example, utelizes disjunction, narrative and seriality. A Collected Coolidge, tho it would probably have to more than one volume, would go a long toward putting all this into focus.

I get hogtied in self-examination. You can definitely do that too much. But then I feel as tho I've let alot of people down, including myself. So now what, do I just write more poems? I mean I'm sitting here and I have a life. You're sitting there, and you have a life. But the thought tends to go something more like, "I'm sitting here, and you're over there working." I think work is important but I can never quite trust it. Last night I watched Manufacturing Consent again, and Chomsky said something like, "I just don't think people should have to rent themselves out in order to live." And then of course the response is always, "Ha ha, well yes Mr. Chomsky but you are a little naive about the world." Tom Wolfe in his fucking dandy suit endlessly placing everything in an imaginary context, and then still having the nerve to call what someone like Chomsky says 'patent nonsense'. So what is work? And where is this all going? And why do I feel like Sarah Jessica Parker, posting questions on my blog? I suppose I am naive. My left arm hurts.

We want poems that show us how much of the world?

For some reason I really want to listen to Phil Collins right now. The library is closing.

WHOAH!!!

Looking forward to appearing, sans glasses, in this film.

Ah... AH CRAP!!

John Coletti's wikipedia page.

Something that occured to me last night:

Would humans have domesticated animals if clothes hadn't been invented?

I mean, would you feel comfortable with a kitten your lap if you were naked?

Five Simpsons episodes and leftover shrimp fried rice. Eat out your hearts workaday types, or umm are they hiring there?

Some kind of weird sinus thing here, like I just squirted water out of my nose or something.

Today as I was crossing the Locust St bridge, I saw two DPW workers standing next to a red fire hydrant vomiting yellow water from it's mouth.

Crying while dialing the phone. Crying while drinking water. Crying near a zebra. Crying while smoking. Crying while quitting smoking. Crying while looking at candy. Crying while it's raining. Crying in a barn. Crying backchannel. Crying while sleeping.

WAH WAH WAH!

WAH WAH WAH!

etc.

Crying while eating a peanut butter sandwich means.... get help?

_____


Last night Calvin Johnson moved me and 40-50 others upto, and past the point of tears. He's one of the most incredible performers I've ever seen in my life. He did a capella versions of a couple songs, interpretive dancing while singing.

_____

The Trusty Knife are also amazing to me, whatever that phrase means. After spending most of my night upto that point feeling sorry for myself and passive-aggresively interacting with others, they started in on "Long Distance Song". I'd heard it, but this time I got this burning feeling while listening to it, that I am lying to myself, that I don't even have the ability to be truthful with myself, and that in fact we're all lying to ourselves.

Time for me to write about The Tiny, which I'm in, but never mind that. This is the only magazine I can think of where in every issue I like almost every piece at least a little. And Gina Myers and Gabriella Torres hit a home run by placing John Coletti's amazing work up front:

I miss you with tomatoes

over your eyes tattoed valentines

on your trachea zippering

each of my ungainly comments

Just about every Coletti masterwork blows my head off with a nonchalant cosmic whoosh. Detail woven with sensory perception, joined to a kind of emotional pull that's stitched into it so intricately you almost feel it on a subconscious level.

it's getting dark

in masculine wilderness

American Hydrant

little high, little low

Coletti's work never shys away from apparent obscurity, but the ink-blotter feel of the poem is always a product of devotion. A reader can feel as though they're in strange territory, but it is never unfreindly territory. Obliqueness need not be a cold thing, and one can see Malkmus, Ceravolo, Dickinson etc, for further proof.

C.J. Martin's poem here does a neat job of addressing the act of making art, without seperating art from life:

BUSHEL MECHANISM -
else than mechanical draft,
if to increase the between
(touch & thing):
this means drafts, chances.

I'm very allured by passages like this, which almost combine the sensiblities of Emily Dickinson and early Clark Coolidge. And The Tiny specializes in this kind of modern lyric steez.

Also great in this issue is work by Edmund Berrigan, Joseph Massey, Brenda Iijima, Andrea Baker, Dustin Williamson, many more. The Tiny is a contender. Dig it!

I watched Wild Style for the first time last night, and yes it was good. That time period, late 70s early 80s, also presented in Style Wars among other films, was a pretty major ferment of creativity. But you probably don't need me to tell you that. Wild Style can easily be forgiven for abruptly turning into a concert film at the end, since the music is so fucking inspiring. I keep thinking, even tho alot of poets have been listening to hip hop since the start, maybe poetry hasn't fully explored the possibilities of that culture. Or maybe in some way poetry shuns them, for not wanting to seem "performancey". After that we watched Wu Tang's "comeback concert" from a few years ago, which tho very sloppy, has some of the old flava. I always saw Wu Tang as one of few cases where the feeling of it being a throwback- certain bounce to the ounce, a large crew, tag team MCing- was a good thing. I think the music's aged better than groups like Jurrasic 5 to say the least. Not to mention how the old skoolness of it was balanced out by RZA's incredibly innovative production. And there's the very sad and heartwarming recurrence of Ghostface trying to cheer up ODB, who's literally slumped down on the side of the stage for most of it.

Joe, meet me at the Tool Shed.

Open to aesthetic experiments. Any proposals?

When I get asked 'Who is your favorite poet?', I say Joseph Ceravolo.

And this one is dedicated to him.

Currently seeking employment.

Mike Hauser/Weldon Hunter
Saturday June 23 7pm
at Woodland Pattern Book Center
720 E Locust St, Milwaukee

"Hauser's manic hoo-ha has left us all a little disgusted at times... Cocksure yet demurely Al B Sure when oppurtunity knocks, he can bring home the wet t-shirts when it's crunch time. Take a ticket. Get drunk beforehand. Bring your own slide whistle."

--Rufus T. Firefly, International Player

"Since Hunter's ejection from Major League Bowling, he has shown us that one can and should go too far when pursuing sweet sweet bay marie. Where his poetry is lacking in gumption it is chockfull of the kind of lyric roughshod Welsh Corgies are awoken from nightmares by."

--Captain Jeffrey Spaulding, African Explorer

Gummi meanie.

Ga mi mi nee.

G' me, me knee.

Gimme me, knee.

G' bee bee bee.

Gum me, Mimi.

Gun pee me, me.

Gumbie me Mimi, me.

Gun pee please meme.

Guppy please me, meme.

G' bye Mimi.

Love Gary Busey.

Song confessions:

Santana " The Game of Love"

Ok. If you said, "Dude that song sucks!" I might be inclined to agree with you, in any case I'd find it hard to disagree. But I was in Y Not II with Zack on Saturday afternoon and I realized that I really like this. And I told Zack there on that spot/stool, "Uh oh, I think I really like this song!" Like the scene in Revenge of The Nerds where the cheerleader comes to the sobering realization "I'm in love with a nerd!", only some strange reversal. All the Santana shit I don't care about, let's get that straight. It's the way Michelle Branch stretches out 'whyyyyyyyyy-hyyyy don't you come around no more?' that gets me. It makes me cringe with a combination of swooning pleasure and revulsion that I can only identify as love. A peculiar kind of love, for that of a song with at least one moment of beguiling 80s-reminscent vocal histrionics to rival anything from Aha, Howard Jones, Ariel Pink or...

Til Tuesday "Voices Carry"

This is my favorite song on the Polish Falcon jukebox. I know there are more tastefull things on it, The Beatles, a Dylan's Greatest, even the Everly Brothers (tho no "I Know We'll Love Again" or "You're Gonna Be Lonely" or even "Dream") but this is just a perfect fucking pop song. The cautious, ephemeral fade-in, ghosty keyboards, Aimee Mann's long-since abandoned yelpy vocal style. This has that quality from 80s songs that I find fascinating in that they just seem to leave plume in their wake. Zack said it would be better if the chorus said "This is scary". But that would defeat the whole premise of the song, which is that Aimee Mann's boyfriend is making her suspicious, always wanted her to keep her voice down, keep a low profile. "Fuck THAT!" she essentially says, by the end mockingly yelling "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP", throwing the corsage he gave her back in his face and just generally making a scene at the opera house. If I were a DJ I would play this back to back with "Shut Up Shut Up" by the Residents. I don't think I'd be asked back.

Ariel Pink "Oceans of Weep"

Rain sounds. Piano sounds. Very plaintive vocals sung over the phone (sounds like anyway). This is one of the songs, like My Bloody Valentine where I'm thinking "What are they saying? And do I even want to know, based off prior experience, and also just the fact that this emits a beautiful sound?" I think Ariel Pink's greatness lies partly in his consciousness of the way music sounds coming out of an abyss. You have a stereo sitting in your room and put this disc in it and it produces music. Is that too reductionist? I think this song is close to what DJ Shadow wanted when he was in his "80s period". Something I admire in a performance is when a performer is willing to just vomit out whatever's there to vomit out and see how far it goes, when art reverts to an infant state, from Suicide to Will Ferrell shrieking in a phone booth.

Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie

The premise of the film is hilarious: A man named Dr. Manzini owns an antique store in which there's a pail that contains, ala pandora's box, a bunch of ugly "kids". When the kids get out of the box, wackiness and chicanery ensue. But the real message of the film becomes clear when the "kids" are persecuted for being ugly. They're taken to a prison where the ugly, weird and fat are kept. Up to this point, Dr. Manzini, whose attempts at writing a jingle that will 'send the kids back in the pay-ole!' have fay-oled, so he and a little boy, whose post-adolescent love interest has dressed him in a glittery bowtie and vest sans the shirt ensemble, must free the "kids". The little boy enlists the help of some local bikers from The Toughest Bar in The World, to help him and Dr. Manzini break into the prison. While they're at, they also free Santa Claus and a man being held in a cage marked "too weird". The man does resemble Weird Al Yankovic a little. Is the film a comment on 80s conformity and fashion? (The kid's love interest is an aspiring fashion designer who goes out with a tough lad named "Juice".) And was it written, as my friend Casey suggested, by a flunkie at Topps? Maybe the person who also writes the texts on the back of the trading cards from which Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie was adapted? Someone also pointed out that the girl who vomits (they have superpowers, so to speak) doesn't do so until the end. I forgot how it ends.

Please use this in speech from now on: "TOTALLY WOTALLY!"

What should I have for lunch?

Have you imagined what it would be like watching yourself trying to get out of trouble?

I wonder if the other patrons can hear me under my breath.

I considered trying a longish post about the last three days of my life, which if they haven't been hell, they were in the vicinity. That's right, I actually consider beforehand what I'm going to post about. Which means I've officially made this blog my surrogate therapy session. Congratulations, unsuspecting visitors!

30 hours of slinging dishes in three days. When they say that physically grueling work takes the life out of you, they are right. But I remember now my rule, tho I never follow it, about wiping the memory clean to a spotless shine after leaving that place, which may or may not make things worse. It's all like counting how many needles are falling into the many haystacks around me.

All I can say about the last three days is, I won the wet t-shirt contest!

Please say this out loud:

JOURNAL JOURNEY

Wherever you're reading this, please say the following phrase out loud:

BUTTERY BIB LETTUCE

Does blogging remind anyone else of shadow puppets?

Does anyone else want to see K. Silem Mohammad do the Nestle song, with the 'Chaaaaawwk-late'?

Feeling naughty. Deal with it, America!

Sandra, everytime I try to live as variously as possible, I get rejected!

I'm afraid of you too.

Summer scares me. Seriously it does. Something about the warmer weather making lots of people take there clothes off. Going swimming. Males competing for females' attention. Showing off their virility. 'Peacocking'.

I love swimming, but summer scares me. Why is that? Something psychological as all get out I'm sure.

These are my favorite songs at the moment:
Rolling Stones "Let It Loose"- Besides the beautiful guitar part at the beginning, this song is fascanating because it's really just barely there. It builds and then at the end different singers come in and it's really moving. But apropos of the title, the song is very loose; a strictly maintained beat underpinning a miasma of moaning, cooing singing, and what really amounts to noodling, good noodling. I had a professer who complained that when Keith Richards and Chuck Berry jammed, Richards couldn't keep up. But Chuck Berry didn't write 'Jumpin Jack Flash', 'Loving Cup' or this song. It's like an orgiastic funeral procession. Only ye old Stones could pull that off.

Pavement "Rattled By The Rush"- Has a similar feel, or tempo anyway. And Malkmus had better lyrics. Makes me get weepy toward the end in a similar to 'Let It Loose', when Malkmus keeps saying 'makes you wanna say your prayers'. Spiral Stairs was an underrated guitarist for sure.

Jana Hunter- It's on the mix cd my friend Amanda made for me but she didn't write down the title. But it starts out with the lyrics 'Laughing and crying are the same thing' and it's a capela.

Oh Hi. I was just wondering if you're alive. Or if you're alive later, maybe we could be alive together. I'll be alive for a while so call me.

Last week I saw Animal Collective play for the second time at The Metro in Chicago. Robert said he felt ecstatic at certain points in the show and so did I. The Metro is a nice theater too, more reverberant than the venue I saw them at the first time at the U. of Chicago. Animal Collective are one the few reasons compelling enough to get me to visit Chicago, and maybe for that matter, get out of bed. Sorry Chicago people. Bed, I ain't madatcha. The first song was 'Doggy' from Campfire Songs, a sample of the guitar part from that song on a loop accompanied by various pulses and electronic noises from Geologist, and of course Avey Tare and Panda Bear singing. There was no guitar in the show, which was a departure from at the U. of C. where they were a full band, and the songs were more like slow-building My Bloody Valentine walls of sound. They played alot of new material, which was good, tho Robert said they didn't play 'Reverend Green', which he had been talking to me about. The songs would start at a pulse, with some whispering sounds and various noises, then swell to at points deafening volume. Robert said it was the lowest bass he'd ever heard. Me too. You could feel it penetrating your chest, almost replacing your heartbeat. There was a lanky blond guy in a baggy shirt who was dancing ecstatically throughout, even during the quieter parts, but the quieter parts did have a pulse that you can dance to. I mainly jiggled around in place but that was more than most people were doing. You'd think there'd be alot more dancing at AC shows. But everybody was packed in. When the first piano tinklings of 'Loch Raven' sounded people responded to it immediately. Even at an Animal Collective show, especially at an Animal Collective show, the audience responds to the more familiar material, which is something I'd normally associate with Peter Frampton concerts. And 'Loch Raven' isn't a riff-driven song at all, tho this rendering of it gave me a new appreciation. 'We Tigers' was a high-point in the set, as it was the first time I saw them do it. It seems to come at a cathartic point, the electronics and bass pulses stripped away, so all it is is three people hitting a drum, whooping and dancing around. No encore, tho Panda Bear stood in front of his bank of samplers and keys for a protracted amount of time, prompting one of the tech-people to walk up and ask if there was anything he needed or if he was ok. I think he was. I think I could be bros with Panda Bear.

I'm straight.

Last night a guy at Landmark said, 'Get in the van!... Just kidding.'

Trying to remember what I heard in conversation last night on my bike:

College Girl 1: "WOW THAT'S WAY COOL BUZZY BUZZY."

College Girl 2: "May I just posit that..."

______


"..." or "--"

It always seems like I could be working alot harder on my poems. I think, without too much of the stinking-thinking tendency, I can safely say that I'm a pretty lazy person. I don't usually have the energy to send the work out either, whatever that means. But the job takes alot out of me.

Tonight I'm going to the Book Party in my room. Did you think I was going to say 'pants'?

Master Class: Mike Hauser Eats a Bag of Chips

This master class will consist of a captive audience looking on as Mike Hauser eats an entire bag of chips. It will last until Mike is finished with the bag, and feels ready to get up and walk around. He will intermittently speak about topics as diverse as Joseph Ceravolo, couches, how as a boy he was forced to play softball, Cinemax, masturbation habits, and how he believes that dogs' thought processes consist mostly of picturing variously colored balloons ascending. Mike may vomit several times during this master class. The cost to register is 25 dollars.

I guess it bugs me when something is quirky but not quirky enough. When something is sufficiently quirky. You can look at it as a manifestation of capitalism. This will make you feel different. Like the difference between someone pretending to be interested in 'what you're up to', and then leaving at the first oppurtunity. No more than a transaction. But there's no engagement. I guess, and I hesitated to mention him, Billy Collins is an example of sufficiently quirky. Poems that excuse themselves from association with a certain unquirkiness. I mean no one wants to be identified as one of those terrible academic creatures from Kenneth Koch's Fresh Air. So we get poems that are a reenforcement of the difference between normal and weird. But there is no normal. There's no escaping that, and the only pleasure is in the effort. Well yeah, that's obvious actually. It's not about the endpoint. I hope I've somewhat explained myself.

Patron: "Can you find me a book on inspiration? Any one will do."

Librarian: "Any particular author?"

Patron: "No. I just want one book."

____

The saddest thing I can imagine: Someone walking into a record store and saying, "One CD, please!" For some reason this just makes me want to cry!

My friend Dave, who I have known for a long time, and is still one of the funniest people I know, did this to one of those getting-to-know-you email surveys. This is the by far the funniest set of respones I've ever read.

1. What is your occupation?
Getting and responding to email.
2. What color are your socks right now?
My socks don't care about race; they've evolved beyond hatred.
3. What are you listening to right now?
My slacks.
4. What was the last thing you ate?
Brett Kell made me turkey burgers, and I stole some chocolate eggs.
5. Can you drive a stick shift?
How much stick can a stick shift shift?
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?Porridge.
7. Last person you spoke to on the phone?
A lovely Inuit man who calls me intermittently to ask if I got the flowers he sent me. I don't know his name.
8. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Hey, I'm not on trial here.
9. How old are you today? Acht und Zwanzig.
10. Favorite Drink?
The kind that makes people laugh at my dull-witted bar humor.
11. What is your favorite sport to watch?
F1 Grand Prix racing, because I get to wear my cleavagey Ferrari shirt.
12. Have you ever colored your hair?
Yes, but only because I was really into those "Just For Men" commercials.
13. Favorite food?
Mormon doomsday rations.
14. What was the last movie you watched?
The Monsanto Corporation Presents: "Organic Food Causes AIDS"
15. Favorite day of the year?
Hair Pie Avoidance Week, September 9-15.
1 6. What do you do to vent anger?
I live in an old house without anger vents; I have to use a window unit instead.
17. What was your favorite toy as a child?
Norman Schwartzkopf's Discipline Chair from Hasbro
18. What is your favorite season?
Fall. Because that's when Hair Pie Avoidance Week occurs, September 9-15.
19. Hugs or kisses?
This question only matters if I'm meeting someone from Europe, because I won't do either to Americans.
20. Cherries or Blueberries?
Both badly stain my dentures, so I only eat gummy bears.
21. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back?
I'd prefer it if they wrote me a letter explaining their intentions first, and then if I feel comfortable with it we could proceed with the courting process; that is, if they have my father's approval.
22. Who is most likely to respond?
Police, Fire, and County Officials
23. Who is least likely to respond?
Terry Schaivo?
24. Living arrangements?
I eat and drink things, and then I crap them out. It's a great living arrangement.
25. When was the last time you cried?
During that "Call Empire - Today!" commercial. Immediate delivery of flooring does that to me.
26. What is on the floor of your closet?
A nexus between space and time; not quite what one would describe as a cosmic string but something closer to worm-hole with an unstable event horizon.
27. Who's the friend you have had the longest that you are sending this to?
Justin.
28. What did you do last night?
I hung out in a sleazy bar playing pool with Nate, Justin and some Emo guys.
29. Favorite smells?
Opening a brand new box of Monopoly. It's got a great smell. If I were rich, I'd buy them like packs of cigarettes.

30. What inspires you?
Selfless acts.
31. What are you afraid of?
Losing on "Jeopardy!" because Alex Trebek can be really verbally abusive in private.
32. Plain, cheese or spicy hamburgers?
Spicy? Who came up with that fucking option???
33. Favorite dog breed?
I enjoy a good Dachshund. They can shake the shit out of a ferret.
34. Number of keys on your key ring?
3.
35. How many years at your current job?
9.75 years
36. Favorite day of the week?
Whatever the sarcastic answer would be, I don't know - Monday? Help me out here.
37. How many & which states have you lived in?
One (1) -Wisconsin ( Wisconsin).
38. Favorite holiday?
I get chocolate from me Mum right around Veteran's Day.
39. Ever driven a Motorcycle or heavy machinery?
I used to drive an industrial lathe to work.
40. Who's your favorite NFL team?
The teams with the most insensitive and politically incorrect names - The Washington Redskins, The Minnesota Vikings, The New York Rabbis, and the Cincinnati Brown vs. The Board of Education (formerly the Seattle Separate/Equals)
41. Do you have a house phone that is NOT cordless?
Yes? So?
42. 10 ft of snow or 100 degree weather????
I'm counting on German engineering to somehow deliver them simultaneously.
43. What's the craziest thing you have ever done?
I've had sushi a couple of times...
44. What is your greatest accomplishment to date?
I totally did some cool things in high school that don't seem to be that relevant anymore.
45. What is one thing you would do right now if you could?
I would run a store that sold cigars and very expensive pens. Men would come over to drink cognac in the walk-in humidor and it would be fun, until some misfit inner-city kids challenge our conservative, by-the-book notions and teach us how to love again.
46. What is something you are looking forward to?
Apparently purchasing some babies for Reaca.
47. Give me some good news!Turkey has maintained a secular government in spite of pressure from conservative Muslim clerics! Hooray! Plus I'm free of STDs!

Why am I so fond of commas? My friend Brett told me once that I'm 'comma-happy'. Hi Brett! I just think punctuation is neat.

Every once in a while I consider starting to become a follower of baseball. And since the Brewers have the best record in the league, maybe now would be a good time. I do like looking at the sports section. I heard that Ted Berrigan also liked looking at the sports section, but I imagine he read the entire paper or at least large chunks in one gulp. Tho I have nothing substantial to base that on. When I was younger, much younger, pre-teen younger, I was a big sports fan. And I think I could still do pretty well if quizzed on sports pre-95 or so. But I don't know if I'll ever really 'follow' sports again apart from viewing the sports page once in a while. For one thing, sorry but almost all sports on television are so so tedious for me. Stops and starts. Stops and starts. And I know that in very-Catholic baseball they're all supposed to be a part of the ritual of it. Football obviously has ritual in it but the ritual and the method of it seem less foregrounded. Don't most people just watch football to look for long pass catches and crunchy hits? But I have to say NFL Films is pretty great. I don't think you have to even be a football fan to appreciate NFL Films. And Steve Sabol's favorite artist is guess who-- Joseph Fucking Cornell! I thought that was pretty weird.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is one of the weirdest television shows I've ever seen. It was 'developed' by Norman Lear in the 70s, but it plays more like a soap opera written by Samuel Beckett. The dialogue in the first episode revolves around a waxy yellow layer of grease on Mary Hartman's kitchen floor, a mass-murder of four people, two goats and eight chickens, and The Fernwood Flasher, who turns out to be Mary Hartman's Grandpa Larkin. A very sharp satire of soap operas of the 1960s and 70s, tho I've never seriously watched them so I could be wrong. Louise Lasser as Mary Hartman, is pensive and exciteable at once. A couple of my favorite lines are "Unlock the swinging door!" and "You should never be ashamed of witnessing a mass-murder."

I would like to have sex with a deer, or at least make out with one.

Just kidding!

I would vote Republican if they paid me enough.

Just kidding!

I want to be the first poet on The View.

Just kidding!

If I went to AWP, I would try to sleep with as many women as possible.

Just kidding!

So I've got that part from that song by Band of Horses stuck in my head-- the one that sounds like that one song by Modest Mouse from their first album, but also kind of like Built to Spill, and also that Pixies song that was in that Brad Pitt movie. So it looks I'm gonna have to 'like' yet another Indie Rock band. And I'm even starting to think about listening to Bright Eyes, who for some reason I want to give another chance. I know you'll never change, Conor Oberst, and neither will I, and we are beautiful. Like Peaches and Herb. Like Cagney and Lacey. Like Myers and Mister. Like Lennon and McCartney. Like SM and Spiral Stairs. Like Wendy and Lisa. And so on.

Not that the quirky narrative semi-rant is meant to be an indictment of domesticity or quirkiness. Quirkiness doesn't really need to be defended, not by me anyway, especially since I've secretly enjoyed The Nanny on multiple occasions. What would a poem that addresses a poet's domestic life, or home life, or everyday life sound like? There are scores of examples. It's just that to me, my domestic life is enormously depressing. Here is an example of something I wrote that would seem a shade of my approximation of what a domestic poem might begin to sound like, in the interim. (everything)

Mike-Time

a chair by an open window
need to clear accounts
weather permit is a hassle
keeps coming
day bidet
keeping the right parts clean

the violet, the fake postcard, the anchor

I think that's how it goes. When I go back and read it I'm left with the conclusion that I basicly wrote a poem about ass-maintenence. Yeah that's right. You get the fuckin TMIness in heaps and bushels with me! Not that I wipe my ass with a fake postcard. Is there any such as a fake postcard. "Hello from Amsterdam... Just kidding!"

But I do believe some aspect of domesticity is important, in that it's a major source for the materials one makes poems out of. That's a no-brainer. Maybe my problem is that when I read quirky narratives, I get jealous, because so many quirky narratives portray an upper-middle class existence. Why would I be jealous of such mundanity? I don't know. It's not like I try to be jealous. I don't try to have hairs either. Not that one or that one or that one.

"The post-NY School poem is perhaps the closest thing we have in the 21st century to a normative poetry in the United States."

Is this true? I think there's a certain kind of post-NY School poem that's been birthed by the various MFA mills. Say, a poem where you mention a famous pirate, then your favorite brand of organic tator chips, then mention how 'Stewart' hasn't walked the dog yet. But y' know, if the guy from Coldplay says he's really into 'White Light/White Heat', does that have much currency? Alot of these poems, and there are so many of them that there's no need to blame a particular poet, are quirky narrative. Alot of the stuff in Fence, McSweeney's, Jubilat are quirky narrative. Alot of indie films, say those in the post-Wes Anderson mode, qualify as quirky narrative. I should quit my qualms however, because the key word here is narrative.

The normative thing about quirky narrative poetry is that while it is quirky, it's quirky in a completely acceptable way. It removes things from their context just enough to appear avant, but spare the reader any kind of difficulty. Because difficulty is bad.

The making of a poem contains an implicit difficulty. For starters, what to write? Maybe that seems obvious to point of naivete. But if you believe a poem can contain more and articulate more than just quirkiness, then what? What if you think poetry is maybe the best artform for navigating the world?

Naturally the quirky narrative integrates certain apsects of The New York School Poem into it's ecosystem, but outsources so many others. When Some Trees came out, The Instruction Manual was radical. An imitation of that poem in 2007 that's shorter and blander is not.