Welcome to Dog Island

I'm working on a short story and a poem. It's the first time I've had more than one thing to work on since the summer started. Hopefully I'll have them done by the end of the week. This has been a busy week at work, but it's actually went by pretty fast already. Starting today, I'm officially at the 3rd and Central store, as opposed to splitting my time at the Highland store and the 3rd and Central store.

Although, one of my managers asked me to work at the Highland store on Sunday for 6 or 7 hours. I can't say no to overtime.

And please... buy this album.

What people in Louisville care about.

To some people in Louisville, horses are a big deal.

There's a man who comes into my work

dressed in slacks

with a crease that goes from thigh to ankle,

and a white shirt with the top two buttons undone.

He unrolls a large piece of paper, and starts pointing

to the names of horses and the word, "sire."

"This is where horses come from," he explains.

This is a horse family tree.

I think it looks like the map

to a blood cell.

When I was younger, my dad had a horse

and the horse never seemed happy. I'd walk back

to the pond where he'd stand in water

half way up his legs and drink.

Sometimes he would start swatting his tail

to get flies away from his rear, and it'd make

the sound that lightning makes right before it

strikes a barren asphalt road.

The horse always seemed happiest 

right before it rained. There was a patch of

nothing in his field, and when invisible hands

rolled the clouds together

like kneaded dough, he'd roll around in the dirt

until the patch of dirt was mud

and mud became the only thing in the field

besides the pond.

Grass lay down flat like a green ribbon

on a head of brown hair and the chestnut horse

kept rolling, not caring he is swallowing mouthfuls of mud.

I'm sitting in the loft of a barn reading German for Beginners,

occasionally looking up to see exactly where horses come from.

Good vs. Evil

I went to the drive-in last night with Brianne and two of our friends to see The Dark Knight and Hancock. Both were pretty good. With my work schedule finally solidifying itself, I've found it a lot harder to find time to write. Most of the time, I'll get free time and spend it on going to flea markets 

I've been thinking a lot lately about things I haven't done.  I've never finished a Rubix Cube. That seems like something that shouldn't be too hard. I've never punched a bee out of the air while it flies around my head. I haven't seen the Cubs win a World Series or know what it feels like for an athlete to get traded to a new team. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine walking into work one day, and having your boss say, "Hey, we've really like your time and effort that you've put into being a chef, but we're going to trade you to the hospital. You're a nurse, now." That'd be bull shit.

Sometimes thinking is bad. Or at the very least, the way you think about things can be bad. 

Total fucking bad asses.

Some boyfriends need to pull their pants up

I say this with the deepest sincerity.

Some girls, and even boys,

have boyfriends who are assholes.

Their pants are around the bottoms of their asses.

It suggests that they might have sex out of wedlock,

which isn't a bad thing.

It also suggest that they might not eat enough,

which is why their pants don't fit.

This is a bad thing.

If I invited every asshole boyfriend

and their less-of-an-asshole girlfriends

to dinner, I could feed them.

Most of the girls would pick at their food

with their forks, and whisper to each other,

"Hey! My club soda is flat. This restaurant is bullshit.

Let's eat at Panara next time."

I would tell the boyfriend who's has the least amount

of asshole in him 

that his girlfriend is ungrateful.

After dinner, I'd loosen my tie,

stretch out my legs until the bottoms of my pants

came up to my calves

and rub my stomach,

admiring the firm waist that cradles

the top of my pants,

Officially graduating

It's 7:22 in the morning, and I'm in Muncie for my "official" college graduation. Well.... I guess Anderson, that's where the hotel is. Hopefully I can spend a decent day in Muncie afterwards (I'm so going to Dave's video) then go back home with my undergraduate studies behind me.

Plus, 'cuz I don't think I've said it yet... I love my job at FedEx Kinkos (Office). Totally bad ass. Plus, I had to deal with a lady named "Mighty Warrior." I'm not even kidding.

She kinda' reminded me of this.

2008 MLB All-Star Game

Dioner Novarro  swings at a curveball

and hits into a crowd of people 

spilling their beer and stepping on peanut shells.

There's a boy pounding his fist into a glove

his father oiled for hours before the game,

then wrapped a rubber band around it

and sit it under a stack of phone books.

This is Dioner Novarro's first All-Star game

and the boy's first baseball game.

Edinson Volquez sent a two-seam fastball towards the plate, 

cutting from Novarro's knees to his waist.

He struck out without removing the bat from his shoulders.

The boy's dad says "I'm getting a beer."

Dad gets up, and the boy feels small

because everyone around him stands up

and cheers when a beer vendor begins to juggle cups.

He wonders why his dad couldn't have just bought a beer

from the juggling vendor.

The boy wanted to wipe away his father's foam mustache

and watch Dioner Novarro hit a ball

into dead centerfield

where nobody is allowed to sit.

Yardwork.

A man stands on a ladder

and cuts through a branch that hangs over his driveway.

It's as thick as his arm

and he considers the branch as his arm

and turns the saw off.

He considers his arm a branch

and provides his face shade

while a mother cardinal preens herself

on two hatching eggs. Leaves fall 

from the tree onto a Volvo sedan

with a dead battery.

Melvins absolutely kick ass

And it's not even close. It's so exciting when artists go out of their way to make an album that's truly fantastic. That being said, Beck's new album is kind of disappointing. It's weird, it's like he's trying to "make some social point" with a lot of the songs on his newest album. I downloaded Beck's latest release VIA the iTunes store, Modern Guilt, as well as Nude With Boots at midnight when both albums were slated to be released.

Sure, they're both completely different albums, but it's pretty easy to gauge the effort put into both. Beck just sounds bored, and as somebody who's been listening to his music since I was 10,that's really hard for me to say. He's always been somebody who's music gets me really excited. All of his albums have great tone. Even though many of them are sonically different, you always know it's a Beck album. This time, though, his lyrics are just laconic. The songs that are about love aren't the songs we're used to Beck singing that are about love. And like I mentioned earlier, he tries tackling issues, which is just stupid. 

What I think is cool about Nude With Boots is that it seems like after 25 years, the group finally seems to be taking themselves seriously. Their previous album kicked a lot of ass. Teaming up with two members of Big Business gave their sound a streamlined feeling. It sounded mature, but when you listened to it, you could still sit there and find little blips of the Melvins' creative peak in the early 90s: the attitude was there, they definitely wanted to revisit that artistic greatness again. 

And their last two albums definitely show that. A lot of people understand how important the Melvins are to alternative rock (mostly thanks to Kurt Cobain fellating their ego during his last few years on Earth, kind of like what he did with the Meat Puppets, too) but nobody ever gives them their credit. It's usually ushered towards Cobain. Rightfully so, but sonically, the Melvins' influence is much more visible. 

The Melvins are starting to remind me of Hawkwind, especially their days on United Artists. Sonic masterminds who really don't give a shit about selling records. They care about putting on a killer performance and making a great record. For me, Space Ritual is one of the five greatest live albums of all-time, and their follow-up to it, In the Hall of the Mountain Grill, kicks the living shit out of the terribly overrated Dark Side of the Moon.

Seriously, buy Nude With Boots. Not just because it's a great album, and you should support the Melvins and their label Ipecac Recordings, but because Buzz Osborne could beat the living shit out of Roger Waters and his stupid ego. If his ego were tangible, I'd punch it in the face.

Lit journal

Thanks to Nate Logan for producing the first issue of Spooky Boyfriend. I have a poem appearing in it. You can read it here.

Cool, right? Definitely.

What grown-ups do

What do grown-ups do? They go to work. And that's what I'm going to do tomorrow. For my first time as a 'professional.' I think my diploma is going to be here in a few days, too. Is it weird that I'm getting my diploma before I actually graduate?

Everything happens all the time.

Somewhere there's a tree burning and nobody is there to see it. 

But I know that it's happening, regardless of somebody seeing it.

Right now, somebody's dog is being hit by a car,  

a father is cradling the whimpering beagle in his arms

thinking about how to tell his daughter that her pet is dead.

He might write about this in his journal

or force himself to forget that it ever happened 

by buying another small dog.

New job.

I start my new job on Monday at 3:30. It'll be nice to finally have a set schedule and be working towards something while having the ability to start saving some money.

Also, two (potentially) great albums are coming out July 8th: Beck's Modern Guilt and the Melvins' Nude With Boots. I'm pretty excited about this. I'm sure both will be awesome.

I usually don't post news, but since I have a weird connection with this story, I should probably post it. I grew up in Chicago, and actually was on the Bozo show when I was really young (I think I was 4). Brianne just sent me a link that said the originally Bozo, Larry Harmon, died today of congestive heart failure. Boooooooo.

Happy Birthday

to me.

Being 22 feels exactly like being 21.