Tao Lin always blows himself.

I'm not even kidding. Look at his blog.  It's like one of those porno sites you accidently go to because you spell boobs wrong,  so it's just a bunch of pop-ups and really loud sounds of girls moaning and sucking on fat red dildos.

He wants you to buy his books, his pubic hair, MySpace page, etc. That's cool, I guess. At least he sells books. I don't even have a book to sell. Sometimes I wish I did, other times, I wish my desire to write would just disappear and I would be content with driving a snow plow in Montana. 

Brah, look how tough that looks. Snow flying everywhere. That could potentially have been like.... 15 snowmen. What you don't see is all the grade schoolers boo-hoo'ing as they watch Jack Frost's nose get turned into carrot splinters.

**

By the way, that last stuff was for Dan Bailey and Nate Logan. Both of those guys rule, and not just because they're on top of my blog roll. Shit, Nate, you haven't updated your blog in like two weeks. What's your problem? You too, Dan B.

**

It's my birthday in two days, and I'm thinking about staying in all day and burning a hole through something. Or writing. Or reading about writing. Or writing about reading. Or wiping this sweat off of my neck and legs. Or bathing.

I have no idea. We'll see.

Swimming with a kid.

I went swimming with a kid that comes waist-high to me. Our shorts kinda' matched: his were red with blue stripes, mine blue with red stripes. I took two steps back and jumped in, spreading my legs out to make the biggest splash I could. Water rushed from around me and spilled over the edge of the pool. It was still warm from twelve hours of daylight, used bathwater minus the soap scum.

The kid jumped in at a good angle. Everything looked straight, his body was like a bullet, red and blue streaks from shorts traveling down his leg, blending with the fence that cornered the yard. He stayed under water for as long as he could, coming up to take a huge gulp of air and he returned under water. I paddled for the shallow end and started bobbing.

About 8, the sun touched down on my roof. We talked in short chops, like the water passing to each end of the pool.

"So kid, are you in summer school? I don't see you out at the bus stop in the mornings?"

He bounced on the balls of his feet to keep his head above water. "Yeah, sometimes. Mom doesn't make me go everyday. I sit in my room and play Nintendo."

"Oh yeah?" I lunged for a pool ring and had it drag me back towards the ladder,"what do you play on Nintendo?"

"War games. I like to use the sniper rifles. They're quiet, but can usually take all the guys down with one bullet. Do you play games?"

I climbed up the later and squished my pockets, water spilling down my legs. The kid stroked a few times and floated on his back.

"Not too often. I usually work. I pack boxes in a factory, then drive them around on a forklift."

"Cool. Yeah, the war games are fun. There's this one where you're a ex-prisoner. You get to start World War III."

The kid floated towards the wall and I pulled him out by his underarms.

"Sounds like my kind of game. How do you start it? Do you push a red button?"

"Nah, somebody dares you."

We dry off then walk down the street towards his house. The sun slipped off my roof. I have to shield my eyes with an open palm to walk. Even then, not very straight. The kid is drumming on his thighs, making machine gun noises. Then his front door open, and he took off with sandals making the plastic clack on scorched asphalt. I turn around, shield my eyes from the sun, and contemplate trying to start World War III myself.

NBA Draft Day blog (that might only briefly talk about the NBA Draft...)

Asking professors for letters of recommendation is tough. Like.... super tough. This is how mine have went so far.

• Draft a crazy hybrid email/old-skool letter (notice the k? Shit's tough)
• Read it three times
• Edit it
• Send it, fold hands and pray. Rosary works, too. It'll help brush up on those Hail Marys

See? That's hard. Wanna know why? It's showing a professor your penis and asking them, "Can you look past that creepy vein, that dent in the tip, and say something good about it?" Your stomach goes all coaster hill drop with your eyes closed, hands clammy. It sucks. The kind of anxiety nobody needs.

I want to tell you who they are, but I'm not entirely sure about those kinds of privacy rules or whatever....but I can tell you I have openly endorsed them on this blog 1,724 times.

Phew. Let's just hope they can come through with some killer letters.

**

Apparently, high school coaches have more to worry about than prom night or underaged drinking. Reason #1873 why most people are deplorable and should've been one of those other 14,891,283 children that died on mom's stomach.

Joking aside, Ed Thomas was a fantastic, selfless individual who was dedicated to serving his community, family and school. Oh yeah, he was one hell of a football coach, too.

Lots of numbers in this blog. Sorry. It's actually been really tough not typing the same numbers more than once. I think that's what I get for not having an actual number pad on this laptop.

**

When you write, it's important to use words that don't suck. You know, like "walking." That's a horrible, horrible word. It's boring. What is it conveying?

Jillian walked into her kitchen.

Oh, I'm sorry. Were you writing a story? Sorry I couldn't tell. I was busy napping through the snorefest. Not kidding. Get that word out of your story. Study the dictionary, the thesaurus, I have no idea. Talk with people and pick up new, fancy words. They all don't need to be $2 words... but 68 cent words maybe? Hey, 68 cents can get you a Polar Pop, and that's just fine with me, as long as I get two squirts of vanilla in my Coke.

**

Started on my page layouts for the chapbook. Creating something like that feels good. I really can't show you the progress. Just imagine, please.

**

Oh my God. NBA Draft tonight. One of the three sports nights each year that I live for. Please, Chicago, let's have another memorable night like last year. DeJuan Blair and Wayne Ellington, maybe? Make a huge splash and trade up for James Harden.... please? Don't be skurred.

This is gonna clock you in the jaw like "BASH POW"

Etc. Yeah, just like the old Batman clips.

You ready for this, here it comes. Well, here it comes, August 2009.




Killer. 4 pieces of fiction. 15 poems. Hurray.

**

Pretend this is class, okay? Fifth grade. Call on me. Send me notes under the desk. Yes, No or Maybe? I dunno. I might doodle something cute, like a face with crooked nose. Oh, that means I love you in 11-year-old. Let's eat bagged lunches together at the bottom of a slide and hide behind water fountains, wasting time with our breath held. It's times like this that I'm glad our social hierarchy isn't based on height, but what we can fit inside our heads and hands. So, let's run with clenched fists to the cafeteria, shove the stale vegetables inside our milk cartons so we can have dessert, and run through the hallway banging knee-high lockers.



**



Pretty good. I'd recommend it.

When the river floods, just hike up your pants, alright?

Everyone has a dad. Your relationship with him is probably on par with September weather: low 80s one day with a thin drag of clouds, and the next day hovers above 30 with wind that never dies, hail that leaves craters in the roof of your car, and then, just after you can see twenty feet in front of your face, the humidity shoots up, water pools in your yard and chokes the plants. Have fun spending an afternoon uprooting roses and bushes and moving them to the front of your yard.

I'm pushing 23, and it makes my relationship with my dad off-kilter. I'm an adult. I work 40 hours a week. I have a car payment, my own insurance, two loans for school. Half the time, I buy my own food, even though there's a refrigerator filled with food 20 feet from my bedroom. Granted, many of those choices I made myself, but like most, I take after my dad, so I'm stubborn.

Dad's are like that big tree in your backyard. Say you're napping in your room. It's 2:30, no clouds. Sun feels like it's tapping a clenched fist against your window. Still, you're lying in your bed, eyes opened like the top of a can,  and its' dark in your room. That's dad. He's your face, crooked toes, slouched shoulders, unmade bed, dirty pile of laundry. And it's going to take you a long time to figure that out. Hell, it probably took me until I decided to move to Kansas City to understand that.

My dad mixes cereals that, you know, have no business being in the same bowl, but that's why I love him. He's reserved and close-lipped until he has something to say, and I wish I had that quality. I generally can't shut the fuck up. Dad's that Chinese proverb, "Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know." He's why I write. Half the time, I don't know. Writing is a mechanism used to understand the world we live in. Every other tool we have, the news, Internet, conversation, whatever else, it's all crooked. It's all jaunted. Sitting at a computer with a white page or at a desk with a pen that probably doesn't write. It's the only purity you have when you try and understand.

Yesterday I was writing a poem, and I was sitting there convincing myself, "This is what I want to do for a living. I'm going to make it work somehow." Then I started thinking about Father's Day. I wonder when I was born what my dad was thinking when I was lying there. I wonder if parents have notebooks they fill with checklists of what they want their kids to do. Like, I wonder if my dad wanted me to run a company, or a grocery store. I wonder if my dad figured I might turn out gay (didn't) or something else. Date a black chick, run marathons, collect basketball cards (I did do that). I'm not a dad yet, so I don't have a clue.

And I honestly have no idea what he thinks about me now. I've made a lot of mistakes and have done things against his grain. I'm sure there are times when I come home and he wishes I had an answer for half of the things I do, like spend time in my room writing pages of nothing. I don't, though. Just like he probably doesn't have answers to the things he does, other than, "Just because," or "It makes me happy."

That's fine with me. It works for us. Ultimately, that's all that matters, because that's love. Happiness. 

I love you Dad.

**

Uh, so this one is for Dad. 

This definitely works for me.

Absolutely fantastic.

**

Well
it's definitely no fun
to treat love like an afterthought.
You know,
like having a lost dog feeling
as I watch your car crawl up our street.
Hand on the glass
then the only thing I have left
is my finger prints as an outline
of a red sedan.

Instead,
I like to hold everything we have
in crossed arms
while they quake right before I fall asleep.
The words that make your eyes
ice with anxiety,
the pit of my stomach harden
because we're going to turn words
into four walls and the things
that fill the space between them.

Each night,
I try and remind myself
seconds before eyelids shutter
that we'll discuss these same things again tomorrow
with the same feeling spreading across my insides
like the crawl of dawn that'll wake us
and that's just fine with me.

Let's shake hands and forget about tomorrow.

This is generally on loop when I get home from work. And by generally, I mean I've listened to it in its entirety twice today. It's a story, pure and simple. Um, a persona. I'm a proponent of persona. We all have one, especially writers. Ahem. This album is so disarmingly honest, genuine and authentic in both its production and consumption. The word play is on fire, you're going to constantly be hitting loop to hear DOOM spout gem after gem. It's noir. A movie, bad guy vs. bad guy. You hang on every beat in drenched-face anticipation, every single word is somebody's thick fingers ringing tighter and tighter around your neck.

The best hip-hop album of the last 10 years. Easily.

**


I don't even need to explain myself here. Umm, a smart-ass, dry witted milkshake who lives with a carton of fries and a meatball that turns into an igloo, hotdog, and bridge.

Supplement.

**

There's this one girl, too. I've talked about her a few times. She has a blog. We've been "together," whatever that even means, for three months today. She's my best friend. She's probably the only person I've ever met that instantly makes me feel better when I see a picture of her, when she texts me, when she leaves me a voicemail.

I've been in other relationships, all of his have. There's an unavoidable desire to rate your partners. We both do it, subconsciously, sometimes incorporating each other to help do it. A majority of the time, it's a refreshing chance to offer your current situations perspective. Other times, painful reminders of mistakes, blown chances, whatever.

We're humans. It's instinctive to squat over maybes and grunt until you either forget about them or decide they're worth keeping in a satchel. It's our fault. Anxiety folks, hello, there it is. Baggage. It's why we need to travel with what we're wearing and what we can fit in our pockets. And I think now, finally, after two-ish years of trying to get myself to board a train and go, I've finally gone.

I'm in love, and that's all that matters. I've found a nominal sense of love and understanding. I'm contempt. I wake up, piss and think about love. Love for music, writing, Master Shake, Katlyn. Um, those things matter. Like, there's a see-saw in my head. Those things are on one end, and a the word love, in that terribly cliche Warhol font is on the other sider. It's even four different colors, how cultured! 

But they're sitting dead even. The wind doesn't sway either side. This would be a boring see-saw for a kid. I'm glad I didn't have the mental capacity to care like this in high school. To care about the random people I had sex with, or even my last relationship. Being able to live in the now is extremely liberating. Honestly, I don't know how many other people can, probably because it rarely works. 

For me? Shit works. Thankfully. We're moving, we're happy, I'm content. And just like that awesome scene in Babe at the very end when he stands with the farmer, and everyone is screaming and cheering because he was able to lead the sheep into the pen, I'm sitting here in my bed saying, "That'll do pig. That'll do.:"

**

I didn't move to the city

The city moved to me,

and now I want out

desperately.

So please, let's shake hands and forget about tomorrow.

Shut your windows on your birthday

For real, I've woken up four times in the last two hours. Can't sleep. It's warm in here, this fan is doing nothing except circulating air that has the same feeling as that greasy lotion feeling ten minutes after the fact.

So, I'm in bed. I'm naked. I think I'll turn on music.

Group Home. Okay. Great album.

This blog needs to be noticed. It needs to be a big deal. Huge, epic. Leaning Tower of Pisa finally straightening out big. Do you read this blog? Well, link it on your blog. That's cool with me. Think of this blog as an extra puzzle piece, the one that got shoved between couch cushions at that Halloween party. You can finally snap that piece of the clock face into place.

Phew. Rest easy. Oh yeah, link this shit. Seriously. Please. Link it. Don't make me pout. Too late.

**

I hate Bob Dylan. I don't like his music. I could name 20 song writers who eclipse his shit.

Ready? Go.

Something beautiful happened in the church house,
but it didn't have to do with God.
And something beautiful happened in the court house,
but it didn't have to do with the law.
Something beautiful happened in the theater,
but it didn't have to do with the play.
And all this beautiful is smuggled like a secret
and it doesn't have to be that way.

-Q and Not U

Sorry B, you couldn't do that if you tried. I mean, read that two or three times. Yeah, I know. Hair in the pasta. Dropping the dog food in the hallway. No more toilet paper and you just crushed half a Crave Case with Tom.

Bam. The song has relevance. It's not like a Dylan song where it only matters in the context of the 60s. Wah wah, like a rolling stone. Sure. Who cares?! Beauty's been supressed for thousands of years, Bobby. We're all oppressed. Black, white, purple, genderless, tables, lampshades, etc. Fuck this Vietnam trip, it's about things. I'm pretty sure our man William Carlos Williams said it best:


"No ideas but in things."

And there's a shot to deep left field........it might be.....it could be.....GONEEEEEEEE.

Let's demolish Bob Dylan together.

**

My birthday's comin' up. What'd you get me? It's okay, I'll take gift cards. You can stoop that low. Just don't except an action figure from me for Christmas, prick.

Wonderful people, I'm thankful that you've found me.

Uhhh, yes please.

**

Hanging out with Mom before work. Maybe some lunch. Question of the day: hot or cold sandwich? Mound of veggies or slaughter house pile with aus' ju/ROY G BIV lakes of sauce, and maybe someeeee lettuce.

Yeah, sorry this post isn't orbiting around writing or something a little more exciting. But, um, you know... sandwiches, they're crucial. Tried the Sweet Onion Chicken at Subway last week. Not really a fan of their stuff (seriously, microwaving room temperature lunch meat? No thanks), but it really wasn't too bad. All in the sauce, though. This is why I harp on those condiments, folks. They're goin' to make or break your lunch.

So next time, skip over that Hunts or Red Gold bull shit and go straight for Heinz or Tabasco. Drizzle it in a smiley face, the shape of Illinois, whatever. Take it to heart. Act like it's the most important decision you'll ever make. Fuck the kids' names, the type of hardwood floor in the guest room, sliding rear window on the Silverado or leather. Ask yourself this: honey Dijon or Dusseldorf mustard?

The answer is both.

Um, a tidbit. Um, um, a smidgen.

Well, I have a manuscript. 45 pages of poetry. 21 of fiction. Say, you wouldn't happen to know anyone who wants to, ya' know... publish it? Like, maybe an eBook or something? Maybe some kind of super Midwest literature anthology? Let's work on that, together. So just like Shake-N-Bake, you can say that you helped.

So, did you get that? Know any agents? Are you an agent? Like what you see? 10 dollars for 10 minutes? Yeah, I'll hike up my skirt for you, talk dirty, put on the transparent jelly plastic high-heels. I'll do that.

**

Lazy Sunday. Super Nintendo. Tortoise. New albums, etc. A sepia/B&W picture with a "develop this old film" camera day. My eyes feel like big windows and the two men dressed in white jump suits who wash them are tugging the ropes to go down, so my eyes keep closing slowly.

**

Transcripts came in from Ball State. They'll be sent off tomorrow. Then hopefully by the end of next week, everything (except for the GRE scores) will follow in suit. It's scaring me. 80 degree roller coaster drop. Mom's footsteps in the hallway and there's no way you can shovel all the weed back in the baggie before she opens he door and goes Planet of the Apes on you and your three friends.

Please tell me that everything I've been doing will be entirely worth it.

Cul-de-sac: Part 1

Roland Davis died sometime last night.

I awoke with a strobe of blue and red resting on my eyelids. Rain pattered and dragged like heavy boots down a cracked window, water collecting in a long oval along the sill. My dog shuffled his hind legs at the foot of my bed. A nervous ring of morning circled the brown of his eyes.

There was a nervous synergy in Roland's driveway. His wife stood in a purple bathrobe, hair bunched and pulled to one side. There were officers peeking over her shoulder, handing her clipboards. She'd occasionally nod or shake her head. Neighbors pushed their children in strollers on the opposing sidewalk. Some stopped at the nose of the ambulance, gawking. I noticed a child clap her hands then rub the base of her feet.

The mechanical groan of a garage door opening coupled itself with steady rain. I adjusted myself and walked towards the window. Two EMTs sandwiched a blanketed gurney. They moved like sentinels: rigid, empty, with a long gate. More neighbors clustered near the ambulance.

Winds churned. My TV timer clicked on. I moved to the bathroom and returned to the window with a strand of floss. A strong gust blew the cover off of Roland's body. His widow gave chase. Two children followed in suit, running across the grass with wet noodle arms, hoping the sheet would come to rest near the bird feeder.

I had only seen two dead bodies in my life. Both were pushing 80. Their caskets were long, smooth. Shaped like fancy appliances. Inside, the bodies looked glazed, almost wet. The dignity had deflated behind their chests. Roland was different, though. He looked like he was floating on a thin layer of sleep. 10 minute nap, maybe. He couldn't have been dead for more than three or four hours. His skin still had a pink sheen to it.

I looked out at the crowd. Nobody was talking. The two children returned to the open doors with the sheet and the driver quickly placed it over Roland, tucking one end under his feet and the other under the back of his head. The driver lifted both arms slowly from his side over his head and mouthed "Up." The EMTs propped up the wheeled legs and rolled the gurney into the ambulance.

The widow pressed her palm against her forehead and climbed in back. Doors clicked shut. The crowd thinned out into the streets. One child hung his arms across a mailbox and watched the ambulance hum slowly up the street with its sirens and lights off. The hollow look and silence made me think about the three, four times I awoke startled the night before.

Julia on Julia and Me

I don't like the way I apply lipstick,

alright? My lips, they're just too narrow,

bottom lip curled 

like bottom of the pile plantain.

Top lip the trail of black left behind

by a struck match.

Still, they're like us.

Companions, people in love.

Two things close together

or touching, even if they

grow tired of each other.

And I don't know how I feel 

about this, our relationship

you know. There are too many times,

like right now, where I look into 

my compact mirror and practice smiling

because I can't help but wonder

how you feel about 

how I apply my makeup.

I've got a hive of bees. I sneeze and pull stunts like MacGuyver.

I've started the graduate school crunch. The vice grips are on the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I'm not going to let up, ever. Sorry. I'm going to this school. Sent out the warning calls to a few former professors. Looking for letters of recommendation.


So yeah, did you get the hint? I'm moving to Kansas City. I want out. I want Louisville to turn into an escape, not some guilty vice. I drive to work everyday, look at the skyline and say, "That's it? Where's the spires that super heroes could fly around? Where's the sewer drains belching steam so the roads won't crack? The buildings don't seem desparate. The Ohio River is too dirty 'round here, and that just doesn't sit well with me."

It's time for a change. A real one. Already sent in my application to UMKC. Preparing my writing portfolio over the next few weeks, hopefully getting some of those letters of recommendation, taking the GRE, etc. I want to live somewhere quaint.

**

Alright, I'm gonna dig up all the David Carradine facts I can. You know, since he's dead now, it's gonna be all Hoover Dam and flow super slow with power until something major gets loged in the wall, pushes slow like mother's labor then BOOM.

You know... like this one. It's a start.

**

Okay, I was going to post up an article about nudist gardeners, but there weren't any visual suppliments. Fuck that, right? Right.

Coming October 2009.

Hello, Kansas City. From a future resident.

Come over here, I'll show you how to fake it.

I had a great idea for a blog. Now: it's escaped me. I think it was about the books I've been reading.

**

A few goals for tonight

• Mad shower. Not mad, like Sweedish Chef chasing the hen. But mad as in, "No dirt will survive." My body feels like sewage plant.
• Bark at the moon, Ozzy-style.
• Play Super Nintendo.
• No Chinese food.
• More water (at least three more glasses, my insides are sandy)
• Sleeping in a semi-circle

**

Alright, so I'm broke. Not shocked. My salary is river breeze: through your hair and off in ten different directions by the end of the day. No good. I mean, part of it is my fault, which is fine. Live and learn. Part of it is the economy. Part of it is the economy not letting me get a better job or take risks. Shittttt.

I want to go back and watch me spend money that was never there. I want to be standing behind myself whenever I blew 2 grand on carburetors, a throttle linkeage and a transmission. I mean, who does that? Seriously, a husband cringes when he does that for his wife's Camry, minus the carburetors. You add the carburetors, and that's bad math, sir. Maybe if I was able to be six inches from myself, it'd make a lot more sense now. Because, as I stand here at my work computer and type this, I'm making this really wry face. Probably photo-worthy, but no.

**

Wait a minute....

Alright, I don't judge people on their sexual activity, but umm, isn't auto-erotic asphyxiation supposed to simulate being choked? So like, my man David Carradine was pretending to die, then he actually did? Shoot, I'd say mission accomplished.

**

I'm really, really sick of seeing Jack-In-The-Box commercials when there isn't one within like 500 miles. Quit it. Your food doesn't even look good, suckers.

For Mark Wallace.

There's definitely a closeness between us,
yeah, a closeness,
the kind expressed with the rings
an empty glass of beer leaves on a counter.
The kind of closeness
that can only be explained with me
thinking about us being friends before we were friends.

So, if we would've been friends during junior high,
I'd invite you over to show you
the long list of metal I downloaded on Napster,
and we'd listen to ...And Justice for All on loop
with my bedroom door locked,
dominate dungeons on Diablo
while spending two hours trying to burn a mix CD.

Even if I would've known you before last summer,
I would've called you at two in the morning,
to tell you the same story that,
"Yeah, the part of my head right behind my eyes
really hurts. Burns, even. I don't know why it always hurts."
I'd thank you for listening,
come over and tell your mom she's a babe.
Come over the next day and clean your pool
and empty your fridge.

We'd go in your room and talk
about girls we love and had loved.
Like, you could've talked about
that time you and an ex
were coming home from the movies,
ready to lay on a ripped futon,
rest your head in her lap
and have her hum something Top 40
until your eyelids went clunk.

But no.
Instead of the humming,
the ripped futon nap,
she decided to try and go down on you
the same time a deer limped bow-legged
from a ditch, dropping its shoulder
right before the hood of your Celica
bent inward like a folded accordian
going for soft crecendo.

And in that instant,
what scared you the most
wasn't the penis dangling
in your ex's mouth like live bait
or the B-movie hatchet face
the deer made against your windshield,
but the fact that you realized
your windshield wipers didn't work
as you flipped the lever up and down
trying to scrape the clumps of hair from your line of site
so you could putter home
and nap.

I want to have this kind of power, or at least succumb to it.

Could you imagine being in front of that stage, trying to comprehend that kind of power? Deer in the headlights, maybe? Sideswiped by a drunk at the bar with a half-opened palm/fist concoction that makes your face all kneaded dough. Yeah, I really can't either. Hell, this picture is making it hard for me to breathe. I'd imagine each chord would melt the fibers wound together to make the strings on their instruments, then float through the air like some Noble gas, downing people like the plague until it got to my skin and made tiny cuts, Crucifixion whip-style, until only air was being pumped through my veins.

**

Lots of new music lately. I'm going to wager that....50% of it was produced by DJ Premier, 10% is from England, 15% was produced between 1980-1986, and the rest can't be categorized with really generic stats like that.

Okay, I use ellipses a lot. Sue me. Please, take me to court for it. It annoys me that I do it. But, it's like, I do it as a way to carry a train of thought.

**

So, I'm going on vacation with the lady. July 3rd through the 7th. Kansas City, then Chicago. Umm, barbecue? Yeah. Pizza, and hot dogs? Ikea? Maybe a baseball game? Yes. Lake Michigan with shopping? Duh.

Somebody please, I need a new job. It's a sinking ship.