Friend Boy

In and Out of Love with Marge Monologue

2010-01-14T12:23:00.000-08:00

Riding the Greyhound Monologue

2010-01-14T12:16:00.000-08:00

The Year In Alphabet, 2009

2010-01-08T07:09:00.000-08:00

I've been absent from this blog for about eight months. Sorry, folks. I've decided to make my re-debut (if I can call it that) an account of my year via the alphabet. I got this fantastic prompt by reading Diana's. Thanks for the fantastic prompt.

Arrested
On May 20, I relapsed, got shitty, got in a car, got pulled over, got thrown in jail, got out of jail, got myself back into a program of recovery. A busy day.

Amphibious Car
These were made in the 1950s and 60s. I rode in a German one. A guy staying at the resort I worked at owned it. I asked him all about the car while admiring it on my cigarette break. He asked me if I wanted to go for a ride after my shift. Rhetorical question. It’s a strange experience— riding in red convertible, doing forty, then cruising right down a boat ramp into a lake before motoring out, going under a bridge in a car that is also a boat. When wake came over the hood, the owner turned on the windshield wipers. Before he turned on the lake, he used turn signals. It was a surreal feeling to be riding in an amphibious car across a lake while having a revoked driver’s license.

Bondsman

More like bondswoman. Mine wore a pink flowered shirt and tight pants when she came to get me out of Dickinson County Jail. She was nice as pie. I paid her $100 cash and promised not to violate my bond terms and appear at my court date. She said, “If you disappear, my husband will find you.”

BubbaKeg
What a fantastic nickname.

Cook

I got back into restaurant cooking at a breakfast place in Okoboji, IA. On days when it felt nothing was going right, I chopped onions and green bell peppers and mushrooms and bacon into bits for omelets. The rhythm of chopping and dicing soothes me like a cooing mother soothes a child.

Driving Privileges

When I first started driving, my father said, “No one has the right to drive. It is a privilege.”
Ten some odds years after that warning, my driving privileges were revoked. I got rides from friends in recovery to attend meetings. I rode my bike everywhere until I got a Temporary Restricted Work Permit, which allowed me to drive to and from work only. I’ve never been so grateful to be allowed to drive to and from just one place. The bike ride to work helped shave some pounds and form strong legs. Round trip mileage =12 miles. In the autumn, the bike ride at 5:00 a.m. was brisk, but beautiful and peaceful.

DOT (Department of Transportation)

I am convinced that the DOT uses two words in nearly all their dealings: no, cash

Enough is enough. After months of saying I didn’t need a program of recovery, I became an active member in one.

Fly Fishing

Over the summer, I would fly-cast from the front of our family motor boat or the family dock. The rhythm of fly-casting calms and soothes me the same way chopping does. This summer, I caught a 15 inch northern on my fly rod. It felt like a whale. When the white bass swam the docks at dusk to feed on shad, I was there, casting a small hula popper, dragging it across the top of glass-calm water. The memory of watching those bass hit the top-water lure brings me joy.

ChefboyarGangsta

The guy I cook with nicknamed me this. It stuck. I love it.

Gratitude Lists
I can bitch about my shoes being tied, so just imagine when I hit a rough patch. Each day I write a list of what I am grateful for. It shapes my perspective from woe to luck.

Hats
I started wearing a baseball cap every day, again.

Igloo
I am seriously considering building one of these out on the lake. There’s at least a foot of snow covering West lake Okoboji. This is my winter solution to an ice house for ice fishing. Stay tuned.

Interlock Ignition Device
I had to put one of these mother fuckers in my car as result of being allowed my Temporary Restricted Work Permit. It is a breathalyzer. It does not work well in the cold. You must breathe into it to start your car. You must breathe into it at random times while you drive your car.

Jail
I love to wear orange, but only on a voluntary basis.

Journal
I write in my journal every day. This summer I wrote and wrote and wrote to relieve stress and relax and process how I was restarting recovery, how I was living in a new town where I didn’t know many people, how I was in trouble with the law and didn’t want to be, how things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to, but the culmination of all of these events since May turned out in ways I needed.

Kiln
In wheel pottery, I loaded three gas kilns. It is tedious, labor intensive work—arranging all the pots close together, but not too close that the glazes melts them together. The kiln shelves are very heavy and balanced on small, vertical bricks. Loading a kiln is like playing a very breakable version of Jenga backwards.

Lawyer
I hired one for a very large sum of money. I carried his card in my billfold in case of legal emergency. At times, I wanted to tear my lawyer a new one. At times, I wanted to kiss my lawyer on the forehead.

Letters
I wrote a lot and received a lot of these. I saved each letter as desert mail after reading through letters from my lawyer and financial shit.

Milford, IA

After renting my parent’s basement for the summer, I moved into a cozy apartment off the lake and into this small town. At first, I bitched about Milford, but I love my quiet apartment in a quiet town. I discovered new ways to write poems. I discovered how to reach out for help from strangers because I was living in a place with no friends and no pre-established community like when I was in school.

MFA
I graduated with this degree from Mankato State Univ, Mankato in early May 2009

In undergrad, I lived in Maryville, MO. In grad school, I lived in Mankato, Minnesota. Post grad school, I live in Milford, IA. I am stuck in the Ms and don’t mind.

Negative Temperatures
This winter has been the coldest, snowiest of my life. The “feels like” temperature was -36 when I got up this morning. We have had two serious blizzards. It is only January 8th. We are at the mercy of the wind.

Niel
This is the name of my begonia. He’s an I before E in all circumstances kind of plant. Recently, someone accused him of being “spindly.” He did not appreciate the attack on his Swerve.

OWI (Operating While Intoxicated)

When I met with my lawyer for the first time, he said “In the state of Iowa, it is easier to defend a murder case then and OWI.” Of all the things I wish I wouldn't have done, this tops the list.

Publication
Thanks to RockSaw Press, my chapbook Botched Heroics was published in April 2009. The book design is beautiful. The designer, Jorge Evans, hit the nail on the head with the cover. Thanks, RockSaw!

Quarrel
The first three months of post-relapse sobriety I got into a lot of these with loved ones and friends. I’m slowly but surely making amends.

Roripaugh
In late October, Lee Ann Roripaugh mailed me her newest book, On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year. Fantastic read. In a time when I felt like I’d estranged myself from the world of writers because I was busy trying to stay sober, this book came to me at the perfect time, in a perfect way. Thanks, Lee Ann.

Resort
I worked the front desk at one on East Lake Okoboji this summer. I loved the people I worked with.

Relapse
I have never been so confused as to how an event happens while it is happening. This is how an addiction makes you its bitch if you are not successfully working a program of recovery.

Sponsor
I got one. I am eternally grateful.

Suppression Hearing
A lawyer will request that specific evidence be suppressed from a case due violations of law. My lawyer argued that there was not sufficient probable cause for me to be pulled over. The police report claimed that the initial tip-off that I was driving impaired was by driving 25 mph in a 30 mph zone. There were many other technicalities. All in all, the judge sided with my lawyer, which is rare. We won the case because the stop and everything after the stop became suppressed evidence. My lawyer called me with this news at 8:24 am on New Year’s Eve.

Sober
I tried it on my own from January to May. This time around, I am happy to report I am nearing eight months of sobriety. The longest stint since I was 14.

Thrift Store Finds
In the last days of December 2009, I made two miraculous thrift store purchases:

I purchased an Armani 100% Pure Virgin Wool Sports Coat for $8.00. It fits me perfectly. It has no flaws. The value of this coat begins at over $500 due to its condition.

A couple days after the Armani purchase, I found a set of eight white Fiestaware cups with seven matching saucers. I bought the set for $4.00.

Treatment
I enrolled in voluntary, extended alcohol treatment. I have a fantastic counselor. The other day when we met we were talking about how hard it is to remain recovered and avoid taking the next drink. He told me, “People who stay sober weather a lot of storms that people without addiction problems can’t imagine. Sobriety takes perseverance. Perseverance builds character. Character builds hope. And hope will not disappoint.” This is one of the most profound things anyone has ever said to me.

Underpants
Some days I wore them around my apartment. Some days I did not.

Valu-Time Cookies
I ate an incredible amount of Mint, Fudge, and Peanut Butter flavored ones. I think the company’s stock rose three points.

Wayne
This is my jade plant. He likes to watch it snow.

Wheel Pottery
I took this class in Spring 2009. It changed a lot of what it helped me gain a more profound, hands-on understanding of how creating art is a process of mistake-making.

Walleye Fishing
Due to a mild summer, the walleye fishing was astoundingly good on West Lake Okoboji. I caught three walleye over 20 inches, two of them one day after the other.

Marks the spot.
Many times I don’t quite understand how I come to live in a place. Moving to the Okoboji area came with a host of post-relapse difficulties. A quote that helped me cope with how things hadn’t turned out the way I’d planned or hoped: “If I am unable to change the present state of affairs, am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to conditions as they are?”

Yesterday
I stopped thinking in terms of what had happened the day before. I made strong progress toward remaining present and focused on solutions to problems instead of burying myself in the woe of problems. I wasn’t always successful, but I grew to accept life on life’s terms (most of the time) best I could.

Zits
The guy I shared a cell with popped zits while looking in the stainless steel mirror. I told him how I’d relapsed and ended up in jail eight hours later. I told him how I’d been trying to stay sober. He told me, “The Big Guy must love you in a tough way.” He was on his way to the federal pen for drug charges. I would like to get a cup of coffee with him when he gets out.

A Tad on "Tunnel Vision"

2009-05-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

The past couple of days I've been thinking a lot about the conversation my ceramics teacher and I had about "tunnel vision." During my final critique he asked me to tell him a bit about how each pot was different and branching out in the sense that he could tell I was "taking a risk to see what the clay could do." I know "tunnel vision" drives him absolutely crazy because a student's reluctance to try new forms means that student gets stuck making the same pot over and over. That same student gets pissy about making any other form than the form he or she has appropriated as a comfort zone, which makes his life more difficult since the student becomes reluctant to being taught anything new.

The same happens to writing students. I imagine that "tunnel vision" is a problem of all artists in any genre in any part of the world. I did go through my little diddy of tunnel vision, though I remained teachable because I'm an idea thief. This means I listen, I read, I scratch my head and then take whatever I've observed and try to make it my own. I'm sort of a sponge that way. But, my first year of graduate school I wrote only from the perspective of a submarine. When I felt the submarine poems going stale, however, I ditched them. I didn't really have much of an emotion about ditching the submarine sequence. I just knew it had to happen. At first, the submarine poems were liberating, but as they grew stale I realized I was trapping myself.

My teacher is a firm believer that students rob themselves of spontenaiety and the pleasure of learning what clay can do--the ultimate chameleon as he calls it--because they get wrapped-up in the idea of grades and praise and the word "good." Yeah, I've gotten wrapped into those things before, but not for all that long because it's not worth the energy. I went through my "is it good?" phase until I realized I had no fucking clue what "good" really means. The only thing I know about what "Good" means is that the definition of "good" depends on who you are talking to. Personally, I'd rather explore the bounds of what can happen in generating and revising and tinkering than taking on the burden of effectively commenting on the nature of "good." People have been discussing what "good" means since people have been able to speak and we still don't know what exactly it means because the term is always in flux. And the idea of "good" will always be in flux because human beings are creatures of contradiction and change.

I told my teacher it was more effective not to have an opinion about my pots while making them because I was more interested in learning how to react to accidents while working. I think there are two ways to create art: 1. excercising control over the work; 2.) reacting to accidents. You're doing a favor to yourself if you manage to do both while creating the work. I agree that writing and making art, as Diana Jospeh puts it, is a series of choices and each choice has an effect. From my practice I have found that to be not only an effective route but a responsible one because that line of thought requires integrity from the artist. I'd like to feed off of that expression by saying that making art is also a series of accidents and your response to each accident will have an overall effect on your acceptance or resistance to tunnel vision.

Hunt for the Mysterious Bad Smell

2009-05-07T03:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's a little like Hunt for the Red October; I just cannot locate either the origins or breeding ground of the pungent funk haunting my abode. This smells has wicked-good ninja skills. I have emptied trash, hurled trash, cleaned the trash cans, cleaned the bathroom, looked under the couch, looked in corners, peeped around in closets. All dirty dishes are clean. Nada. Something somewhere is producing an industry of smell.

It's a smart smell. I can't figure out exactly what the cause is like with spoiled meat or rice or laundry. Some smells are sneaky in the way they lay dormant but you can locate them by distrubing the funk. This smell is not dormant. It's omniscient. It's an all seeing, all knowing smell. This can mean only one thing: a drain smell.

I suspect that my kitchen sink drain has accumulated some serious jazz in its throat.

Okay... just a second...

It's not the drain, well, there's probably some problematic jazz in that drain, but I just now located where the empire of funk is. Not all dishes have been done.

Recently I made some yummy soup. I thought I cleaned out the stock pot. Not so much, I guess. I must have slid it into my oven while cleaning a couple of days ago. Bad, bad move.

I just pulled the stock pot out and said, "This can't be it. This is clean."

This was it.

I barely lifted the lid and the empire of funk attacked with its smell akin to biological weaponry. There was just a bit of the soup including chickpeas, black beans, sweet potato, grilled ham, and tomato left inside. It does not help that my oven is always slightly heated AKA incubator for accelerated production of NASTY.

Time to battle against the stock pot. The goal is to have this place of mine pretty spotless by this evening. It shouldn't be that hard especially considering the phrase "pretty spotless." Spotless, but please please please do not open THAT door. THAT door is not where the evil monkey lives. THAT door is not the portal to Narnia. THAT door holds back all quarantined nasty.

In Praise of Fusion: Kanye West and 1950s Visual Art Influence (Warhol & Pollock)

2009-05-05T06:04:00.000-07:00

I love what Kanye West is doing in his music videos for Good Life and Heartless:

Both of these videos are excellent examples of how to borrow from previous artistic movements in a different art form and contributing to those already established forms as a way to create something fresh.

These videos are visual sugar, sonic joy, and flat-out enjoyable, smart narrative and rhyme. The next time I teach poetry, I'm pretty sure I'll do a couple units on Rap. I just love love love how much there is to learn about spontaneous turn and humor and earning intentionaly subtly and intentionaly raw emotion.

I could go on and on intellectualizing why these videos represent so much about what I believe art should do, but that would ruin the visual and musical integrity of these works. I would rather sit back, enjoy, and appreciate that this work is in the world.

Good Life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su_zrW9WBVk

Heartless:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWzlD7Lc6w8

MSU-Mankato Surplus Sale

2009-05-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

It is a miracle I walked out of there empty handed, a matter of self control, a matter of, well, I had a GOT TO PEE BAD and PEE NOW situation on my hands.

The word on the street is that FIVE randal pottery wheels are getting surplused and sold. Some thought they would go for dirty dirt cheap this semester. Some said September. Either which way I got my ass to the sale at 7:15 a.m.

I'd heard that people will line up for the surplus sale starting at 4:00 a.m. I'd heard some camp out all night. For the most part, this is entirely true and entirely wrapped around the idea of buy computers and other electronics for next to nothing--all computers go for $35, the majority of monitors go for $25. You can buy a baby grand piano for $75. You can buy a nice office desk for $20. You can put in a bid on a fishing boat and trailer included. You can buy anything that the university is getting rid of because of upgrades.

At 7:15 a.m. there must have been 150 people in line already. Even if there were a pottery wheel available, which I doubted due to the fact I saw them in the cermaics studio on Friday, my chances were pretty shot.

At the front of the line was an army of twenty to thirty absolute nerdy, gawky, gangly computer types who looked liked maybe they played and extended session of Dungeons and Dragons in the parking lot all night. A small sacrifice for cheap computers.

I stood in line drinking coffee thinking this would be complete chaos as soon as the massive garage door to the sale goods inside the surplus garage opened. Parents were telling their children DON'T WALK OFF, STAY WITH US, STAY IN SIGHT. One guy said, Why don't they just open the goddamn doors already. I sipped my coffee while preparing to elbow and be elbowed. I sharpened my ninja skills, my ballet moves to gracefully slide around people in a panic driven crowd.

As I was bullshitting with some African guys the doors opened. The African dude had been going down the list of sale items with a pink pen in hand listing the items he wanted to go for first. I said, "Good luck, dude. Hang on to that pen or someone will pick it up. I have the feeling nothing is safe here unless it is in your hand."

That warning was a little like Hunter S. Thompson's in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas "We're in Bat Country. Poor bastard is on his own."

Either which way, the crowd was moving, the game was on. I was ready.

You know how hoards of fish surface and roll around when people pay 25 cents to feed them, how there is a frenzy of rolling and eating and some fish fight with each other? That's pretty much how the surplus sale went.

By the time I got inside the surplus garage, all good laptops and flat screen monitors and classroom projectors had vanished into the hands of the nerdy, the not so nerdy, and the homeless looking. It took me under five minutes to get into the garage, too.

People were scattering like ants, rifling through computers, tools, office supplies and all the whatnot. Electronic guys were on their cell phones already selling the laptops and nice Apple computers and flat screens. Electronic guys were saying, Hey, I'll buy that computer from you right now for fifty cash.

In about forty mintues all the good stuff was claimed, lines were drawn, territory was claimed. I picked up a nice looking backpacking backpack and a man said, PLEASE DON'T TOUCH THAT. IT'S MINE while he was looking at microscopes. I thought, What dipshit puts down his bag at a fucking frenzy sale like this?

My favorite moment was the mother who was standing beside the baby grand piano marked $75. She held her son by the hand. He was having an absolute fit and crying and shouting and she was trying to keep him quiet. The look on her face and body language said, You touch this fuckin' piano and I'll break your face. I thought it was a kind of a beautiful and complex emotional moment. How the son, probably seven, might remember his fit, his crying infront of all of these strangers panicing like ants swarming in an ant mound. How the mom will remember his fit and how she just wanted this piano for herself, for her kids, for her family. That the way we bring art into our homes requires some emotional sacrifice sometimes. That no kid or adult can get a $75 baby grand piano without giving up a little something first. I like to think that that little boy might be the next Chopin or Motzart. I like to think that people will gather in concert halls to see him play and even if he messes up in his performance, even if he tanks, even if he screws the pooch more than anyone thought the pooch could be screwed, it wouldn't be as bad as his first experience with the piano. That from this day on, his relationship with the piano is complex.

If I had gone into the surplus sale with buy buy buy on my mind I probably would have forgetten all about that as soon as I saw the people reacting to this situation. I couldn't keep myself from looking at this man and woman debating on if they should buy an old card catalogue cabinet. The man said, I could keep my paints in here. I thought, That's a lot of fucking paints. The woman said, Where will we put it? The man said, We could put it in the garage or the shed. The woman rolled her eyes.

That's exactly how I am. I buy shit and collect shit and keep shit that I think I'll use someday or invent a purpose for. Once, I kept a bunch of old wooden futon frames in my apartment with the idea that I could use the wood to make a little boat. Once, I riffled through a dumpster just for some five inch think binders. I've been trying to thwart my bullshit collecting, getting a grip on what I need and what is needed right now. It's pretty hard for me. But I'm working on it.

In all of of my debating on what to buy and not buy--I looked at an outboard motor, some computers, thought about putting a bid on a fishing boat, thought about carting off a desk I don't need, shelves I don't need, tools I could live without right now--the PEE BAD GODS said we must leave. We must leave right now. I could hold it no longer. Pissing on a tree in the parking lot was considered. Too many people. I could piss in a cup in the car. No cups.

I drove 45 mph straight to Nelson Hall (the art building). I slammed on the breaks, hopped out, keyed into the building. I made a full out sprint, Maurce Green eat your heart out, to the bathroom next to the wheel cermaics studio. Inside the bathroom I did the PEE PEE DANCE while fiddling with my zipper before the pure pleasure of urine vacating a maxed out bladder.

In the midst of patting my own pack for not pissing myself and not buying anything at the surplus sale I looked inside the ceramics studio. The wheels are still there. September, I told myself. And, yes, I do plan to drive back up here for one of those wheels. I might even stay up in the parking lot all night with the nerds playing D & D. Maybe my character will be a wizard or a mage. Someone who casts spells would be nice.

Peter Voulkos, Cermaic Abstract Expressionist

2009-05-02T04:37:00.000-07:00

PETER VOULKOS 1924-2002

This is the ceramic artist I'm writing on for my lil' diddy due on Monday for Ceramics 250: Beginning Wheel.

Not only do I think Pete Voulkos' heavy, fractured/rough work is visually interesting, but I love his name. Not only do I love his popular name: Pete Voulkos, but I ABSOLUTELY LOVE his birth name given to him by his parents who immigrated to the US from Greece:

Panagiotis Harry Voulkopoulos

At first it looks like a tongue twister. Then there is sort of this strange music to it that in no way could I say the name three times fast. Just looking at this name makes me think this is the way to teach beginning writers about assonance and consonance. His parents must have either consciously or subconsciously been in love with the assonance of the A sounds working with and against the O sounds with the repetition of the consonant P. The name makes absolute sonic sense while making me go, Huh? No wonder the boy with such a name became an Abstract Expressionist.

Here's some nuts and bolts on Pete:

Voulkos' sculptures are famous for their visual weight, their freely-formed construction, and their aggressive and energetic decoration. He would vigorously tear, pound, and gouge the surfaces of his pieces. At some points in his career, he cast his sculptures in bronze; in other periods his ceramic works were glazed or painted, and he finished them with painted brushstrokes. He bought some of his metal from Sidney Levinson. In 1979 he was introduced to the use of wood kilns by Peter Callas; much of his late work is wood-fired. Peter Voulkos loved working with an audience. He died of an apparent heart attack in February 16, 2002 after conducting a college ceramics workshop at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, demonstrating his skill to live audience. He was 78.

Some of my favorite pieces by him:

http://www.chubbcollectors.com/vacnews/images/article_images/222_2.gif

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/41/82153300_cad767622c.jpg?v=0

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images/425915408/460535.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.artnet.com/Galleries/Artwork_Detail.asp%3FG%3D%26gid%3D425915408%26which%3D%26ViewArtistBy%3Donline%26aid%3D17365%26wid%3D425933331%26source%3Dartist%26rta%3Dhttp://www.artnet.com&usg=__7cB8ULerkB_9Ay_JqXQYM3RGajQ=&h=470&w=640&sz=21&hl=en&start=16&um=1&tbnid=Jry5sM_yVjwHwM:&tbnh=101&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3DPeter%2BVoulkos%2Bceramics%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26um%3D1

Dale Chihuly

2009-05-01T05:49:00.000-07:00

I've been a big fan of anything Dale Chihuly for some time now. I think any American artist in any genre, medium or whatever should know who he is.

Chihuly practices in multiple forms but it mostly a glass installation artist. Some glass is blown. Some is pulled with tongs. Some is just flat out Chihuly and there's no other way to put it than that.

Chihuly became famous for his chandeliers like this one currently on display at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ:

Chiostro di Sant'Appolonia Chandelier, 1995:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden013.html

Yes, that is glass. Sometimes HOLY SHIT is the only response we can have when looking at a piece of art this intense yet delicate and soft. The technical term for this piece is HOLY SHIT.

For more HOLY SHIT visual experiences, check out some of the other pieces on display linked below.

Current Chihuly exhibit at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix:

The Sun, 2008:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden003.html

Scorpion Tails and Bamboo, 2008:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden004.html

Ruby Fiddleheads, 2008:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden006.html

Blue Reeds, Marlins and Floats, 2008:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden009.html

Blue and Purple Boat, 2008:
http//www.chihuly.com/installations/DesertBotanicalGarden/DesertBotanicalGarden010.html

How are these pieces not inspiring?

In my poems, I try to bring together fierce intensity and vulnerabilty. Chihuly does that for me every time...with glass. I look at these installations and think they look so, so violent, but they are also so breakable and vulnerable at the same time. Jesus Christ I cannot get over this exhibit and it is almost over. I can't get over how Chihuly responded to the desert setting, how he is reacting to the local floral and fauna and overall landscape. He's owning the landscape and letting the landscape own his work at the same time. His art isn't competing with the landscape. It's contributing to it. Both the art and the natural setting mingle so well.

Like I said, I've been a long time fan, but this show, this exhibit is just out of this world. This is a pure, pure example of a hard, well practiced artist in the prime of his prime. I think any contemporary artist in any form of art should know Chihuly's work.

Long Live Salvatore

2009-04-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's how you spell his name, Salvatore. He is the red paper shredder I bought this evening in the midst of cleaning. He's a cube. He's small. He's always hungry and I have lots of shit to feed him. At this moment, Salvatore is turned off and unplugged from the wall. He's overheated, again. This is the third time he has overheated since I birthed him from his packing material at 8:00. It's currently 10:02.

In three years time I have stowed lots of FUCK in my apartment. Right now, I'm going through all of my old bills and whatever enveloped mail that snuck into my desk drawers or elsewhere. I feel a bit like I am a member of the Watergate crew as I smoke cigarettes and stare out the window shredding my documents.

I know that I could just tear this shit up by hand, but I get paranoid about identity theft and shit like that. I must think pretty highly of myself because I have ZERO money. But some how in my brain I think that it is possible for a piece of paper to fly out of a dumpster and into the hands of some evil person.

I guess this must be some form of mail paranoia. I totally would have burned the mail, but it was too windy to light the grill on the back side of my apartment complex. Believe me, I thought about it. I thought about it even more because there was a big group of mo-fos sitting together under a tree singing songs from Grease at the top of their lungs. For a moment I thought, Awww that's sweet. When that moment passed I considered setting my mail on fire by shooting the grill with an arrow from my bow. That's some Grease Lightning for ya. Maybe I could have said that from my apartment window. Yes. I would like to set my mail on fire by shooting an arrow at it from my apartment window. But, with my luck, I'd miss like five times before I'd have to walk out there, get my arrows, and just torch the shit by hand.

All viking funeral rituals aside, Salvatore and I are going to wrap up the night now.

More on the adventure that is my moving out of this shit rigid apartment later.

Wheel Pottery: Part I

2009-04-22T05:03:00.000-07:00

It's been a long long time since I've been able to put up a post, so I imagine that in the following days I'll be posting often. I have a complicated relationship with blogs. Sometimes I'm all over my blog like a fat man on a jelly doughnut. Other times blogging gets pushed to the back burner and I forget I write one. Enough of that.

As many of you know, I've been working a lot with clay and wheel pottery this semester. I'm aboslutely in love with working on the wheel. I'm not even that great at it, but the small triumphs are incredibly rewarding and both beginner and veteran potters know how to take pleasure in the small miracles and accidents that come with practice practice practice. Here's a list of what I like about clay:

1. It seems to me that no matter what skill level of the potter, you've got to have a sense of humor and be able to let go. This is fragile business. Anything can go wrong. More things go wrong that right, but when something does go right, even mildly right, it's mistake driven beauty.

For example. In my practicing I managed to turn out a thimble size cylinder (some of you have seen this masterpiece) from a six pound hunk of clay. Six pounds is a lot of anything--three pants sizes, a very good size rump roast, two average size cantaloupes.

I wedge and wedge this clay by rocking and kneeding it back and forth to get all of the air bubbles out before the clay ever touches the wheel. If there's an air bubble, even a tiny one, say the size of a Zippo flint, not only will that create havoc while trying to lift the walls of a cylinder, but after all my work of doing that, whatever I make will probably explode in the kiln and take everybody's work with it. Fussy-wussy was a hunky of clay.

After wedging, I shape the clay into a large pear form so that when I throw it onto the wheelhead the hunk stays level and as centered as possible before the wheel rotates. I wet the six pound pear with a squeeze of water from my sponge. This is the beginning of my making a pitcher on the wheel. Call it the very beginning of working on the wheel with this pear that, utlimately, enjoys being pear-sized and was, by nature, designed to remain stationary. My task is to manipulate this clay into a functional pot.

I brace my elbows onto my thighs and kick on the speed pedal with my left foot. As the clay begins to move I press this clay down with all of my weight. Not doing this means that the clay launches off the wheel. I have had a three pound hunk of clay launch off the wheel, which resulted in a son of a bitch and scramble to retrieve said clay.

While the clay is moving at about five miles per hour, I center the clay. Centering is a real sonofabitch. That's right. The type of sonofabitch that requires the running of words together. With the clay moving at top speed I cup my left hand around the hunk lean in with all of my strength and flex to keep my body from moving. Clay can boss you around. A hunk can move your whole upper body if you don't brace because the clay is now an extension of you body, an extension moving five mile per hour.

Once the clay is centerd I cone up the compact mound by placing my hands on either side and squeezing so the clay has nowhere to go but up. I lift the clay up to about nine inches. I do this because I'm stretching the clay in preparation to make a cylinder that's roughly 14 inches tall.
I've got to keep this "coned-up" clay centered all the while. If the clay becomes uncentered, you go back and center and center, otherwise you'll get a wicked wobble and the pot will fall over.

Still at top speed I press the coned-up clay down with the palm of my right hand while keeping the thing centered with my left. I do this gradually so not to knock the thing out of whack and control the speed with my left foot on the speed pedal.

At this point, I center the whole hunk with the wheel going as fast as it can go. Once that's good to go, I brace my elbow on my thighs and us the index and middle fingers from both my left and right hands to make a bowl in the clay. I dig softly while stretching the walls out, pulling softly at 4 o'clock. I check the bottom of the pot then compress by pushing down softly with the tips of my fingers. With the bottom good to go, I compress the lip rim to keep the clay center and switch off the speed pedal.

From here on out, I'll go manual and kick the wheel with my right foot to keep control of the speed. This is truly the beginning of where everything that can go wrong will go wrong because the ultimate goal is to get this clay to get up off its ass and up in the air by raising wall.

I stick my left hand into the bowl and with my right hand on the outside I press in on the outside of the wall with two fingers and lift. This is a delicate process because the clay doesn't want to be bossed around. It will want to wobble, so I keep my whole body brace and flexed while hands lift those wall to about four inches. After that pull, I center the clay again by compressing the lip rim. From here on out I will repeat this process by pulling the walls until I'm up to my elbow in the pot's bidness and kicking the wheel to a speed not too fast and not too slow so I don't run out of speed in the middle of pulling up a wall.

With a cylinder fourteen inches tall, it's time to start bending the clay so I can get the shoulder of a pitcher. The clay does not like this one bit. I put my hand inside the moving pot and slowly raise just like doing a pull, but stretching as I go up.

The clay is wobblinging now and wanting to cling to my arm. It clings to my arm and a ripple in the pitcher. I try to fix the ripple by stretching out the wall again. Nope. Another ripple. This is the pitcher that didn't even turn into a vase. SO, I cut off the top and try all of the above, again. Nope. I cut off a little more. I'm mug size now, trying to create the body of a mug. Nope. The Mug gets smaller and smaller and smaller. The mug is now a thimble.

The Curious Incident of the Invisible Pet in My Highland Hills Apartment

2009-02-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

At 9:10 this morning I finally resolved the battle with my landlady over the mysterious pet of which I had been accused of owning and "harboring" in my apartment.

The Back Story:

During December "Saftey Inspections" a Highland Hills staff memeber discovered evidence of my owning a cat of which in a January conversation the landlady said I was harboring a cat, as if I had a cat underground railroad stop, as if I hang quilts in my window signaling when it is safe for refugee cats to stay at my apartment, as if the John Dillenger of cats purrs on my lap while I'm lounging on my sofa in my underpants.

Though the landlady said she would "investigate" this matter and get back to me, I heard nothing out of the office until a friendly "unauthorized pet fee" of $50 arrived this past Thursday. When I called the office on Friday to discuss this with the landlady she was gone at "a meeting" but since I wasn't going to pay the "unauthorized pet fee" by Friday and the landlady wasn't there to take care of the paper work I would be given a $25 late fee.

On Monday the landlady was not in her office. On Tuesday she left me a phone message letting me know of the fees.

This morning I called ready to raise hell in a full-out declaration of war: David Estate vs. Highland Hills.

On the phone, the landlady told me that during the "saftey inspections" a staff memeber saw evidence of my owning a dog. The story she told me in January had to do with a cat. Hmm....

What is the supposed evidence of this pet? I don't own a pet. No cat. No dog. The only animal in my apartment is me, I said.

Well, did you have a water bowl or a litter box out? the landlady asked.

Why would I have that? I don't own a pet.

Have you ever had an animal visit your apartment? The landlady asked.

Yes. Human beings, I said.

Because the landlady didn't even know what this supposed "evidence" seen in my apartment was I asked, Does your staff have pictures of this evidence of my owning a pet.

No, but I trust my staff and the staff has a keen eye for people keeping unauthorized pets.

Extremely keen eyes, since the staff can see invisible animals, I thought.

Listen, I said, What we have here is hearsay. You say I own a pet. I say I do not...

Do you ever have pets spend the night? the landlady asked as if I am having some kind of wild parties with multiple pets, as if I am having pet-based orgies.

No. No pets spend the night and I do not own any pets and like I was saying this is all hearsay, so what I'm going to do is call the Police. We need a non-biased third party. I'll have the Police search my apartment up and down and report if their findings.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Well.... We don't need to go that far, the landlady says.

It's the only way to prove that no animals other than a human being lives or stays here.

Well.... No pets stay there, not even for the night?

I don't own a pet.

Okay....Well.... If that is the case and there are no pets then what I can do is drop the charges.

Good, I said.

As I am writing this, the landlady just called. She checked the staff notes. The staff reported a water dish on the floor. There was a water bowl on the floor, the landlady claims.

A bowl on the floor does not mean I own a pet. I can keep as my bowls on the ground as I want, I said.

I know. I was just letting you know what the staff saw. It's still over.

Okay.

So why did the landlady call me with that information? Hmm.... Why all this stupid-ass bullying as if Highland Hills doesn't fuck people enough out of their money, as if I haven't put up with enough from these people who invent fees and fines while letting crackheads and whatnots live here.

I've decided what to do when it comes time for another "saftey inspection," which should be over Spring Break. Interesting how the saftey inspections are held over time periods when the majority of residents--students--are out of town. Suspect. Well, this is what I'm going to do:

When the little slip of paper announces that "saftey inspections" will take place I am going to Pet-Co and thrift stores and dollar stores to buy pet toys. I'm gonna create an arsenal of squeaky toys, chew toys, plush duckies, and rope toys. I will spread them all over my apartment alongside a bowl of water in each room. When I am accused of owning a pet I will tell my landlady the truth about said evidence: Those are my toys and the bowl of water hydrate the air in my apartment.

To be continued, motherfuckers.

Lima Bean Update

2009-01-27T05:43:00.000-08:00

Last night I faced a terrible temptation. The lima bean size zit festering on my upper, left thigh would not stop talking to me. While braising spare ribs and making garlic-tomato soup, I would feel the lima bean noodle-maker rub up against my right thigh. Yes, the zit has adopted the old Iron Kids Bread song that played constantly at the end of TV commericals in the 90s, "Strong and growwwwwing." Between searing ribs, simmering whole tomatoes in beef broth, mincing garlic, and sauteeing mushrooms, a deep, satanic voice would scream, SQUEEEEEEZE ME.

I watched the tomatoes leaking their clear juices out into the brown broth. I stared at a toe of garlic the same size of the noodle-maker growing on my leg, SQUEEEEEEZE ME, as if that giant flower from the Little Shop of Horrors has set-up shop on my upper thigh.

I resisted for a total of five minutes. The clamorous SQUEEEEEZE ME convinced me to drop my pants right there in my kitched depsite the potential dangers that can become of a bare, defensless penis in the company of a simmering sautee pan and cast iron stock pot.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEZE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

The wee head of the lima bean of some five hours before had now developed into a whitehead the size of a match head. That white head centered in directly in the middle of all that interior puss looked like the eye of a hurricane. No. It was the eye of a hurricane. Staring down at the zit I felt like inside the zit there was a party going on, a party I wasn't invited to until the voice came again and again and intensified the more my pants stayed around my knees.

I squeeze that fucker as if making hommade lemonade. Only a trickle of puss emerged and a sense of guilt and feeling like a dipshit remained inside the now redding lima bean. I knew I'd provoked a beast.

In Praise of Zits

2009-01-26T12:12:00.000-08:00

I want to tell you about an ingrown hair on my upper thigh. There is a large bump now the size of a lima bean with a wee white head festering with an industry with ooze that I absolutely cannot wait to pop. Each night before bed I pray and pray and pray that when it does come time to pop this mother-ship of a zit there will not be an eruption of puss; I pray for a swirling, spiraly, out of control noodle-like release. Those are the best kinds of zits to pop. The ones with the instant, Mt. St. Helen's type explosion are fun, but the noodle-makers (technical term) are by far the best. There's just something extremely satisfying about watching all that puss zip straight out of your own skin like a minature version of squeezing a tube of toothpaste.

This is not my first relationship with ingrown hair zits. Once I had one on my chest that I squeeze so hard that it blew out a pencil eraser size hunk of skin that has never grown back, which means there's a little, jagged dent there; I wear it like a medal. My last year of college I got an ingrown hair right between my eyes, the ever epic third eye. I provoked this goddamn thing so much that to this day you will see me walking around with a little red dot between my eyes. This is because I've been squeezing, prodding, hoping that some puss has grown there, that a thin, thin noodle with shoot straight out of my forhead. Most times zits are positioned in strange places on the body that make you strain your neck or contort your body to see when you pop them. Not this guy Paul. That's the name of my third eye zit, Paul. That's what he told me anyway. We've been pals, roomies, and partners in crime since 2001. Yes, he's eight years old. He is my first born. My only child. He's in second grade. He's the ooze of my life.

And Paul doesn't mind that Paulina, the lima bean sit has moved in. He knows she's only probably here for a little while. Or maybe not. I have to admit that if I had a lima bean noodle-maker zit I could pop every month, I'd be a happy man. And the best would be all the random places I could pop it when I just can't resist the urge, when I know this is the day the zit hath made for popping. Squirt. Squish. Squish.

In Praise of Pork

2009-01-18T19:46:00.001-08:00

My vegetarian and non-pork-feeding friends will not appreciate this post, but I just can't fucking help myself.

I spend most Sunday afternoons and evenings cooking ahead for the week--parboiling pasta to flash fry for lunch and braising whatever kind of meat I have on hand so I can use bits of beef or pork to help season vegi entrees. But today, today was a day for PORK due to an amazing dollar per pound special. I bought eight pounds and fifty-one ounces of pork for, yes, $8.51. This rarely happens. Even better, the cuts in the "value pack" were perfect for what I like to cook: one center cut for roasting, spare ribs, and about eight hansome, bone-in chops. Thanks be to Cub Foods.

Braised anything is amazing. You could probably braise possum and it would be tolerable (depending on sauce and seasoning) especially considering that braising is the answer to making less desireable cuts of meat mouth-watering. Personally, I believe braised meat tastes best when you let whatever has been braised chill overnight in it's own sauce then reheat it. Marination.

Last night I braised the pork roast following instructions from the best braise recipe I have, which I have nearly memorized, in the best cook book I have. Today I reheated the braise and I must say I have never been able to peel, yes, peel pork straight from the roast. It was a heavenly braise.

With the left over braise sauce (you can reduce this to gravy if you want) I made homemade pork stock. Currently some of that stock is in with some homemade rice and beans I making in my slow cooker. The stock came out well and I've even got a little extra.

As for my apartment, it smells like heaven is a place on Earth. As for all the dirty dishes and pots and pans that piled as I whirled around like the Sweedish chef from the Muppets (wearing my PJs the whole time, mind you) the dishes are all clean. I consider this a personal triumph.

Hello, Again

2009-01-18T14:33:00.000-08:00

It's a good feeling, returning to blog-world, though I never imagined myself a person to say that. Maybe I was going through blog denial for years due to zealous belief in paper journals. Wait. No. I was going through blog denial until beginning this little diddy of technological scribs and rants.

I've been absent for about three weeks and, upon this non-memorable return, quotes and images (some of them horribly cliche) enter my mind. For instance, I feel I've been a deep-running submarine on radio silence that's just now broken silence and the surface. Or maybe I am a the lone cowboy riding back into town at day-break after a long cattle drive to Texas or some other slaughter state. As for quotes, I can't help thinking of the Yeats poem, "Speech After Long Silence," (a work of beauty) though Yeats and I have nothing in common except, well, he couldn't spell well and I fumble vowels and those other thingies quite often.

Over the last three weeks I've been preparing for the semester of which I am pleased to report that I survived without the temptation to pack a sawed off shotgun. The first week started so well for me that I expect Oprah to call and ask if I am willing to share my success story with millions of weepy viewers at home. My answer to her is a proverb from the Willie Nelson section of the Bible, "You got the money, honey, I got the time." I'll sell my success story for cheap. Hell, I'll whore it out. Funding is tight at the Daveeeeeed Estate. I'm waiting for a bailout check from the federal government, but I'm neither a bank nor an auto maker, so I'll gladly take financial aid and agree to pay it back. Oh, yes, I'll take the financial aid.

I suspect a long post later. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tonight. Stay tuned and I will too. I'll leave you with a horribly macho insult I just picked up which I think is both nasty, frightening, and awesome.

Insult: Hey, motherfucker. I'm gonna punch two holes in your neck and then me and that guy are gonna bump dicks.

The Great Crusade North

2008-12-29T12:18:00.000-08:00

Due to weather I figured to make for a good drive from KC, MO to Kato, MN, Harry and I blasted out from my folks' place at 11:25 a.m. We stopped for gas on 435 in Raytown at 11:43 a.m. I keep a Captain's Log for trips, so this time is correct according to Harry's clock. Raytown was just the way I visited it last about four years ago: a good place to get shot by a whitetrash tweeker or someone who would like to be in a gang. Due to Harry's mad skills and my ability to spot whitetrash, we made it out alive and unscathed and everything was pedal to the metal to somewhere where few people consider Cheez-Wiz one of the food groups, a place where few people will stick a knife or gun under your nose and advise you to buy some crack cocaine. Raytown always reminds me of the original Lampoon's Vacation when Clark takes a wrong turn into East Side St. Louis. Clark drives the family through the hood and says, "Look at all of this plight, kids. We are fortunate." A gun shot goes off. Clark instructs the family to "roll'em up," as for the station wagon windows. The people of Raytown will not like reading what I have written but one thing is absolutely true about Raytown. It is grief to live there and, in the stages of overcoming grief, the people of Raytown are stuck in the first stage, denial.

Harry and I make it out of KC and rock straight up 35 and an un-lawabiding pace until Bethany, MO. Bethany is considered a "big town" in NE Missouri. That's right, they've got a hospital with witch doctors there. The amish haven't invaded yet because they like central and southern Missouri too much. Plus, Bethany does enough of inbreeding for itself. I have a license to wield such insults. I've been to Bethany. Proof of God is that baby Jesus wasn't born anywhere near this town. It's that awesome.

Harry and I slowed down not to act like proper members of a citzenship but because of FOG. How the hell do you get fog in December? This is what happens. First off, you need warm air descending from the jet stream. Second, you need a surface colder than the air descending. Wham, bam. FOG.

I thought the fog would lift. I drove through heavy fog from Bethany to Kato. That's a lot of fuckin' fog. The state of Iowa was fog. Driving in fog means many different things to many different people, but, to Harry, fog means let's drive fast. Let's get out of this shit. Johnny law can shoot radar all he wants, but it don't matter. Johnny law can't visually see who is committing the "crime." Harry is one smart Ford. I had no other option than to abide his judgment.

We made it from KC,MO to Kato, MN in 6 hours and 4o minutes with three stops ringing in at 10 min per. We didn't have to stop for gas after Raytown until Alden, MN, which is about 20 min from Kato. That's pretty fantastic. When we got to my pad I hugged Harry's steering wheel. We made it. Harry didn't hug back. Harry knows what's up.

Back to Kato

2008-12-26T07:23:00.000-08:00

It is 9:24 a.m. and I'll be hitting the bricks here soon. The Holiday went well and Kansas City is still a strange place with strange, though awesome people. Wish me and Harry (my car) luck.

The Christmas "Present" From My Buddies

2008-12-25T17:44:00.000-08:00

If you want to see the Christmas "present" I got from my buddies please click the link below. Use caution. Keep a barf bag within arms reach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTBGpRUilAc

KC Update: Part Three

2008-12-24T16:46:00.000-08:00

It is 6:47 p.m. and I've got just a little window of time there to zip off a blog before my brother comes home from getting "holiday food" and beer. Our buddies will arrive around 8:00 and we will have Festivus. I'm not too sure what's going to happen with the "Feat of Strength" but something is planned and I'm betting it will be pretty hick and most definitely error on the side of white trash.

We did Christmas for my immediate family at my folks place this afternoon starting at noon. At 8 o'clock this morning I was still asleep and had not yet started my Christmas shopping. No biggie. At 8:30 my brother woke me up by peeking in my room and saying, "Wakey. Wakey. Hands off your snakey." He was in his boxers and wearing a red t-shirt with no sleeves.

At 9:30 I was warming my car and preparing to go do my X-mas shopping. For my Dad I made a bird house because he loves feeding birds and doesn't have a birdhouse. It's actually a pretty cool birdhouse though, most times, nine year olds give their dad's birdhouses. At least I didn't get him a tie.

As for my neices, I had them covered because I originally thought about making jewelry but when my brother said he was online looking at toys and ordering I told him to order for me and I'd pay him pack. No problemo.

At 9:36 I was in my car, named Harry now, and off to buy some books. I had my list in my hand. This is how I roll when it comes to Christmas presents. Everybody get a present from the same place bought on the same day which is also the day they will receive it, unless they live out of town.

At 9:50 I rocked into a Barnes and Noble and walked straight up to a customer service lady with the list in my hand and said, "Can you please help me find these books?" Something in my voice must have expressed urgency because she said, "Do a little last minute Christmas shopping?" I said, "I'm giving these books to people at Noon."

KC Update: Part Two

2008-12-21T23:34:00.000-08:00

It's 1:35 a.m. and I am back to strange sleep patterns because I don't quite have the structure to my days here that I do back home in Mankato. Sort of interesting to me that you can feel a lack of structure in your home town. This is probably due to the fact that I left, went out into the world, and became more of a big boy who developed his own way of doing things at his own pace.

This afternoon I planned on making some soup here at my brother's. Of course he had all sorts of "suggestions" aka "I'm-gonna-whine-like-a-little-bitch." He kept asking, "Where's the recipe? What's your recipe?"

"Chillax," I said.

"There is no recipe is there?"

I chopped potatoes as Drew and Bobby observed me getting more and more irritated with my brother who was looking over my shoulder, watching my every move, and wondering outloud how many stitches I would need while I kept chopping the two potatoes. I have probably chopped more potatoes and onions and garlic and mushroom than one person could eat in a life time. My history of working in restaurants did not matter to my brother though. I knew what he was up to. He was being big brother doing absolutely everything to piss off little brother in the name of trying to excercise some kind of power.

Let me describe my brother's kitchen. First off, remember that there are dead mallard and teal wing thumb tacked to the wall. There's a lot of counter space except that just about every inch is lined by empty beer cans or dirty dishes or some random food container with some random, spoiled food. Most everything is dirty or suspect and when I washed out the pot to make the soup, the pot my brother claimed to be clean, he called me a hypocondriac. When I rinsed the "clean" wooden spoon my brother said, "Jesus."

Jesus wouldn't dare eat at this house. Most cooks would look at this kitchen and vomit. Most human beings would consider cooking in this kitchen a little like cooking when you are camping. And when my brother reads this he will be horrified because I will have offended he good graces to let me cook him something that doesn't come out of a box; he will be offended that I have bad mouthed all that he has provided; he will say that I'm not respecting him.

Now, I can trash a house and live like a pig like nobody's business so I am not an innocent little lamb when it comes to filth. In the past and sometimes in the present, my apartment in Mankato is pretty notorious for being substandard and worse. Let's get back to the cooking scene.

Bobby and Drew have take cue to my extreme irritation at this point. Bobby asks if I need any help and Drew stands in the doorway keeping quiet looking a bit like he might have to break up a cat fight at any moment. I ask Bobby to cut up half an onion. My brother does not like the texture of onions. He bitches about there being too much onion.

I cut up half a toe of garlic. That's too much garlic, my brother says. This is gonna be another garlic and onion soup with too much soup. Why can't it just be a stew? I don't like soup, my brother says.

You are wearing me out, I say.

Drew knows what this means the most because when he and I cooked together at Kennedy's this was the token phrase I found myself saying before something grew wings and flew across the kitchen followed by a litany of profanity.

I decide this is the time to pan fry the Kielbasa in the stock pot. I do this to irriate my brother. The potatoes should go in first. Everybody knows this especially since Kielbasa is pre-cooked.

Then the potatoes and onions and garlic go in.

What happened to sauteeing the onions, my brother asks. He thinks the only way to liquifiy onions chopped finely is by sauteeing them.

It'll be fine, I say.

At this point I want to add some broth to the mixture.

That'll make it too soupy, my brother says.

At this point I am five seconds from hitting my brother in the face with the stock pot lid that's hot. I've seen this done to someone in real, commercial kitchen. It the worst thing you can do short of stabbing somebody.

I agree not to add any broth just to get my brother to stop his bitching and I know exactly what's going to happen to the potatoes. They'll turn to mush. They'll be mashable.

So the "stew" my brother wanted turned out to be more like mashed potatoes with sausage and tomato. It looked a bit like cat vomit. And my loving brother decided to eat cold pizza before even tasting what he bitched to high heaven about. I considered this a major insult, though I said nothing. I ate the stuff and it was good but a far cry from a stew though the flavor was just fine. My brother ended up eating the stuff straight from the pot on the stove after he had his fill of cold pizza. He said he liked it though it got a little dry. No shit. Really? Hmmmm. I told him I'm thinking of starting up a new Christmas tradition. We're gonna make that exact same thing every Christmas. We'll follow the exact recipe from today. It's gonna become a favorite. It's gonna become a Christmas classic. It won't be Christmas until we eat that sludge. Yeah, baby.

KC Update: Part I, Dead Mallard and Teal Wings

2008-12-21T03:29:00.000-08:00

It's 5:31 a.m. here in lovely Kansas City and I am reporting live from my brother's house where I will be staying until making the crusade back to the frozen tundra we all know and love as balmy Minnesota. The drive down wasn't all that bad, though I had to blast out earlier than expected due to blizzard warnings. Supposedly the mother of all storms would traipse along southern MN on Saturday and Sunday, so I fired up Harry (my smokin' old man car named after my grandfather) and hit the bricks. Made it in seven hours flat. Pretty good.

Staying at my brother's is always a pleasurable experience that's sort of like an urban adventure. Upon entering my brother's house via the kitchen entrance I noticed that he has decided to chop off the wings of ducks he and my buddies have recently killed and tack them to the wall with thumb tacks. Sort of like a hick version of wall paper. This struck me as an extremely odd thing to do, but I also kind of expected strange things as such. My favorite part about these wings is that I asked my brother why he had a skinning axe (sort of a long handled hatchet that's razor sharp) laying on hood of his broken down F-150 that's in the drive. He said, "Well that's what I used to chop the wings off with." In that moment a fantastic image came to my mind.

I envisioned my brother and my buddies standing around outside drinking cans of Miller Lite after a day of duck hunting. They are smoking cigarettes and farting and saying "Yealm" the hick version of Yes that my brother and George invented while in college. All the while my brother is thwacking the wings off these poor, unfortunate mallard drakes and teal and using the steel hood of his old truck as a cutting board. There's almost a caveman like quality to this. I really enjoy that image mostly because it kind of horrifies me. It makes me think, What the fuck, dude? I have no idea how my brother and the guys came up with this idea, though I would not be suprised if it were Drew's brain-child. Now the only question about these wall-tacked-wings is: how long will they stay tacked to the wall? Is this simply something for the holidays? I'm putting my money on those wings staying on the walls until moves out, which might be never.

Stay tuned for more strangeness because I assure you there will be more. Oh, yes, there will be more.

Today, I'm heading over to my parents house to chill with them for a bit, but also snag my baby book so I can scan some pictures into my computer. I'll probably end up posting some of these pictures on this blog so you can see the snot-nosed version of myself.

New Place for the Long Posts

2008-12-18T14:58:00.000-08:00

I've decided to keep the entries on this site short from here on out. This means I have created a wakka-wakka account to maintain my ramblings in cyber space. This blog will be reserved for day to day jazz and random wanderings into what concerns me the most. If you would like to read on then feel free to find the long posts at mrfriendboylongposts.blogspot.com. There's a link on this page if you don't want the hassel of typing all of those letters. I'm a little astonished by the fact that I have maintained this blog for over one week let alone started-up a companion blog since I used to be so anti-blog. I just didn't get it because I didn't want to get it. My buddy named Bob wrote to me saying, "I don't understand the purpose of blogs, but I like what you have written here" in an email once. A homie named Steve encouraged me to stay nasty after reading the blog about how I value writing the nasty. With all of thise in mind I think it is best to open up a new venue to release what is most important and scary and real and daunting and exhilirating and passionate while keeping this blog as a means to say hello, to check-in, to say this is what is happening at this very moment and this is what I think about that at this very moment. Hope you tune into the Long Posts, but Long Posts will be a free-for-all. You might need to grab a cup of coffee. You might need to light a cigarette. You might need to secure a six pack of beer or bottle of wine or bottle of whiskey. You might need to do all of the aforementioned tasks though I don't recommend you do them in that order.

First Snowshoing of the Season

2008-12-17T22:01:00.000-08:00

I am happy to report that I went out about two hours before sunset for my first snowshoing of what will most likely be a long season of snowshoing. Pretty good snow the other day brought fresh "powder," and I headed out to Seven Mile Creek "to shoe" the horse trail parts of that park. The best part about shoing the horse trails is that you don't have to worry about cross country ski tracks or messing those up, since most CC skiers use previous tracks so they don't have to bust new ones. Plus, the horse trails offer better hills to go up, which means you get to go down them on the way back. Going down steep hills on snowshoes is absolutely exhilirating.

I'd never shoed Seven Mile Creek before though I have done some fly fishing there and have enjoyed boozy picinics with friends who hosted summer birthday get-togethers there. This was my first time there alone. My first time there in the winter. It was kind of spritual in a way to just head up trails following deer tracks, since I doubt anybody smart enough and rich enough to figure out how to keep a horse in dark economic times is willing to chance that horse busting a leg on steep, snowy hills. A friend of mine lent me a digital camera for this excursion with my word that I would not drop it in the snow. I babied that camera and double checked that it was safely zipped in my vest pocket as if was an animal I was house sitting for. All turned out for the camera though it got a little cold. No harm. No foul.

In that picture I am wearing five layers. I was 2 degrees F and dropping rapidly as the sun went down. There wasn't any wind so it wasn't that bad.

Civil War Era Bed Head

2008-12-17T09:23:00.001-08:00

This first Bed Head pic looks a little American Civil War Era after playing around with the color contrast. I kind of dig it because I look a bit like a lunatic. Maybe this is what I looked like in a previous life, in a previous era when I lived in a mental ward. Or maybe I hung out with Einstien. Maybe ol' Alberto E. and I stayed up late each night arguing (not the possiblities and scope of physics) but who was most capable of producing rockin' messy hair. Or maybe I was an unidentified, unacknowledged hit man for Al Capone during Prohibition. Maybe I was the one character of that campaign left out of the movie "Untouchables" (one of the greatest movies ever made, so said Jesus Christ). Just maybe. Just maybe.

Mr. Short Hair

2008-12-17T05:59:00.000-08:00

Here's the new look, folks. Yes, the 'Lil' Beard' stays. I've got my head turned just a bit to prove that the ponytail aka "neck squirrel" is gone. Here are a couple of things I now love about having short hair:

1. Washing takes hardly any time.

2. It's dries super-duper fast opposed to long hair that dries at about half the speed of smell.

3. When it's messy it's kind of cool looking.

4. Strands of hair no longer bullwhip my eye balls when the wind blows.

5. Breeze on the back of your neck

6. Bed Head

I'm a fan of wicked Bed Head. It always makes me laugh and giggle like a school girl. Yesterday was the first day that I returned to the outside world as a Bed Head Man.

When I woke up, the hair on the left side of my head was so smushed and pressed while sleeping that I had a little Mo-Hawk going on. Did I comb it before going out in public? Fuck No. It was pretty fantastic. That little Bed Head Mo-Hawk flapped in the wind like a fragile hand waving at people as I passed.

Signs that affirm the reality that all that hair is really, really gone for good:

1. Washing it: Not matter how conscious you are you end up squirting too much shampoo in your hand due to routine. Then your hand go to wash the ponytail, but, WHAAAA? It's not there. It's almost as if your brain knew all along that the hair is gone, but your hands didn't get that memo.

2. Wet-Head: You don't have to worry about going out into the Minnesota sub-zero weather and having your hair turn to ice. You don't have to wair for hours for the hair to dry.

3. Combing instead of brushing: I have retired my brush to days of yore. The best things about this is I no longer need to brush out tangles or worry about tangles or cuss tangles while trying to un-tangle them. The worst thing about long hair is when you get a serious ball of tangled hair and you stand in front of the mirror for about fifteen minutes trying to un-do the fucker, feeling a bit like you're trying to figure out how to un-do the Gordion Knot.

4. Bed Head

So long, Mr. Long-Hair

2008-12-15T20:42:00.000-08:00

Around 2:15 this afternoon a hair stylist parted the brown sea of my locks into two ponytails, tied rubberbands, and snip, snip. My contribution to locks of love came to a 24 inch donation. That's enough to make two wigs for girl, kid cancer patients. The stylist laid the two ponytails on her counter in a gently. I thought the two strands looked like two dead squirrels.

Now, I was the only straight guy in this salon and this was the first time I'd ever been to a real salon. A friend recommended this stylist who is her trusted stylist. Whether you're a chick or a dude, a major haircut means a major appearance overhaul, so you don't want some dude named Wayne who only knows how to give buzz, military cuts lopping at your locks unless you want a high-and-tight or flat-top or want to look like a neo-nazi. I just didn't want to fifteen or trendy or metrosexual. This was explained to said sytlist who listened, offered advice, and helped me through the options of which the aforementioned Wayne wouldn't give a fuck about because he's got his own idea of what a man's haircut should look like and that haircut is typically not very different than his own.

So there I was looking at the two dead squirrels of my hair splayed on the stylist's counter when I became aware that this cut, this straight man getting a cut, this only straight man in the joint had gained the full attention of the lady folk and gay folk alike. I felt relatively self-conscious. I was the lone water buffalo separated from the herd with lady lions watching from the brush. No. I was the lone snow-leopard at the pound surrounded by black labs. No. I was the guy who was off to get his now chin-length hair washed with a different stylist mouthing these words to nodding client, "That's a shit load of hair."

After the wash, the stylist and I returned to the chair. She razored. She clipped. She asked questions. I talked. Bing. Bang. Boom.

At the end of the cut a different, neighbor stylist said, "That looks really good."

I said, "Thanks."

The stylist, who I am convinced is the most boss chick stylist in the world, asked if everything looked right.

The cut is a classic one. I don't look fifteen. She figured out how I can keep my facial hair and have short hair and not look like a freak who likes to offer candy to little boys. I don't look like a metrosexual and I don't look trendy. I gave the stylist a whoop-ass tip.

When all was said and done the stylist asked me if I would like to send in the hair to locks of love because some people like to get the card that the foundation gives to donors. I said, "Naww. I know I did it. That's good enough for me."

That sounds noble. The truth: I'd forget to send the hair. The foundation would be luck if they got the hair by July if they got it at all.

The Time Has Come: Hair Cut, Baby

2008-12-12T20:07:00.000-08:00

On Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 2:00 I will walk into a Mankato salon and have the majority of my locks snipped from my scalp. I will walk out of said salon hoping that I do not look like I'm five. Hopefully I will not look like a metrosexual either. Most of all, I don't want to look like a five year old metrosexual, though I have nothing against five year olds and nothing against metrosexuals.

Since 2002 I have had long hair off and on, but mostly on. When I went away to college I decided I would grow my hair out because, well, it was the first time I actually could. Eighteen years of catholic school dress code had prevented my hair from growing any longer than my shirt collar. So I grew it and grew it and grew it until now, with the exception of a brief interlude just before coming to grad school when a friend cut it on her back deck. That day, when she snipped off that pony-tail, she helled, "I-yi-yi-yi-yi" as if she were an Indian who just scalped me. That's not very sensitive to Native American tribal readers, but I thought it was pretty hilarious.

I still have the remnants of that pony-tail somewhere at my folks house in Kansas City. Come to think of it, that's sort of gross, yet, I'm sorta gross but only sorta on my off days.

This time when I go get scalped, I will be scalped for love, locks for love. Yes, I am donating my hair not because I am such a nice guy, but because, honestly, what the hell else would I do with it, keep another dead pony-tail? That to strange, even for me. Plus, there's just no sense in this hair getting swept into the trash if some cancer patient who needs it can use it.

My mother tells me women would kill for my hair because it is thin and brown with streaks of auburn. But that's my mom and all moms think their boys are pretty awesome no matter what unless the mom is a fuck-up or derranged or psychologically screwed up some other way.

I'm trying to keep this blog shorter than my others because I know that once I get going on a topic I can keep going and going and going like the Energizer Bunny. I'll end with this last thought.

When I first started growing my hair out for the first time there was the typical "get a haircut" speech from all sorts of people. That year at Christmas a most unlikely supporter joined the "Let it grow, let it grow" movement I was conducting, my grandma on my Dad's side. Before she became a victim of amnesia, Bernice (Grandma) was a pistol of a little woman who talked to people in a way that they understood what she meant. She's still a pistol though she lives in the past and rarely remembers who the people in her family are. Anyway, I have the distinct memory of being at her and my grandpa's house on Christmas day and someone giving me some shit about the long hair. Grandma said in her very St. Joe, Mo accent, "Well, I just don't see what all this fuss is about. Jesus had long hair and Willie Nelson has really long hair. I like it."

If Bernice gives a thumbs up so does everybody else because nobody wants to deal with the fall-out of disagreeing with her. It was like the Godfather had said, "The hair stays." And the hair did until now. It's simply going because it is time. It might return someday, but for now, it's time has come to pass.

When the Neighbors Play Nice

2008-12-10T18:13:00.000-08:00

Here's the up-date on the situation with my crack-head neighbors. Sunday night at 2:00 a.m. (well, Monday morning) I couldn't take trying to sleep with all the bull-fuck going on despite two visits from the cops. I decided to act like Stalin who waited for winter to come and disable German troops. And, yes, winter came and it was hard and cold and devistating.

I called the cops one last time a little after 2 a.m. and said, "I just can't take this anymore. I pay an outrageous amount of money to live in this apartment. I want something done."

I knew the cop dealing with these people wanted this to all be resolved too since he told me, "Believe me this is a pain in the ass for the both of us."

About ten minutes after I put in this call to the cops I heard a knock on my neightbors door. It was the cop who I'd talked to on the phone, the cop who said he was tire of these people, tired of this shit, the same cop who told me I should walk into the Highland office and say, "I'm tired of this bullshit," no matter my standing with them.

When the crack-head dude neighbor opened the door he said, "Heeeeyyyy. Long time no seeeee."

The cop said, "I told you I didn't want to come back here a third time."

"Maaaaan, weeeee're not doinnnnn no wrong."

The toothless woman started up with some gumish jibber-jabber that only the people on the planet of gumish jibber-jabber understand.

The cop said, "Everyone in this apartment is under arrest."

"Arrest for what?" the guy asked.

Honestly, I wanted to know how the cop was going to do this too.

"You're all under arrest for disturbance of the peace," the cop said.

"Weeee've been quite. Weee've been coooooo," the crack-head retorted.

"This is my third time here tonight. We're done. It's cold out. Put on warm clothes."

The toothless woman went a little crazy and started yelling at the top of her lungs.

The cop said, "You get her to shut up or I'll put her in the car in that night gown."

The toothless woman shut up.

The only sound coming from downstairs was the sound of that cop and his partner's radios yammering in static.

A couple of minutes passed until I heard the cop say, "I want each of you to breathe into this."

They were getting scanned for sobriety.

I knew where they were going.

I've been given the breath test before. I've gone where they were on their way to. Many times I have sworn that I would never wish what I call The New Ulm Resort on anybody under any circumstance. These thoughts changed that night.

This is the first time I have ever told the story of how I got locked up. I figure getting somebody locked-up prompts an involuntary sense of guilt because you've been there too, remember how shitty it was, and wish that shitty circumstance wouldn't make you want to put anybody through what you've been through.

2007 was an all around bad, bad year for me and during that bad year got thrown into the local de-tox in New Ulm, a place I refer to as the New Ulm Resort.

Here's how I ended up in the New Ulm Resort:

It was summer. I was working at the hotel. I worked nights and rarely had a night when I could go out to bars. It happened that I had a night off. I went out drinking and drank really hard to escape how much I didn't like the life and job I was living. Too many close calls with drinking and driving inspired me to take a cab. On the way home I asked the cabbie to stop at Kwik Trip so I could grab some random food. Bad decision. When I came out of KT the cabbie thought I was trying to bail on cab fare. The cabbie confronted me and pushed me to the ground and I said, "What the fuck?" The cabbie said, "What the fuck you skipping out for?" I told him I wasn't. He said I was. He said the cops were coming. Though I was about a block and a half from my house, I decided not to run.

The cops put me in cuffs though I was sitting on the curb waiting for them. I told the cops that I got pushed to the ground and the cabbie roughed me up some. The cops gave me a breathalizer. The cops said I was going downtown then going to de-tox.

Because I was good the cop cuffed me with my hands in front of my torso. I told the cop how close I lived and the cop said I need to go to detox for my own safety. I considered that complete bullshit but didn't say so. Before the cop closed the car door I said, 'Wait a minute."

"What?" the cop asked.

"I didn't get a chance to pay the cabbie."

In that moment I think the cop realized this was all just a big misunderstanding but the shit had been dealt so it had to be dealt with.

That cop reached into my jeans pocket and paid the cabbie what I told the cop to pay him. I didn't give a tip.

I was taken downtown to the cop shop. I was printed. My picture was taken. The cop who brought me in told me I was going to de-tox in New Ulm and a car from the de-tox facility was on its way to get me. I asked him if I could smoke a cigarette.

The cop said, "You've been really cooperative and I do think that this has been a big misunderstanding as you said. I've got to keep you cuffed. I'm sure you understand that though."

He walked me to the back side of the downtown police building where the overhead doors are. He took on cuff off my wrist and cuffed it to one of the tracks that guides the overhead door. He said, "You better smoke as much as you can if that's your thing because they don't even allow caffine in de-tox."

I chain smoked until an unmarked car pulled up and a short white guy got out on the driver's side and a fat white woman got out on the passenger side and the white guy said, "This him?"

Those two took me to New Ulm and I bitched and bitched for about ten minutes until I realized that might not help me too much in a court room.

When I got to the New Ulm Resort a fat guy who looked like a pederass greeted me at the door. I was sure that if I was going to get ass-raped by anybody it would be this guy who would rock his little cock into my asshole.

I was so scared of de-tox and being in de-tox that I couldn't talk and I am a talky, talky guy.

The pederass orderly guy showed me what he called "the naught room."

The "naught room" was a solitary confinment cell that was all green tile. He said, "This is where people who act up and keep acting up go."

I knew from the start that this was a scare tactic and wanted my lawyer, but I didn't want my lawyer to tell my pops this had happened. I didn't want my pops to get involved because I knew he would come up to MN and start bitch-slapping and demanding my release immediately which would ultimately result in some sort of talk between the two of us where I would feel ashamed.

After I was shown "where naughty people go," I was shown the way to the general room where there were a lot of meth-heads coming down and a lot of drunks whose drunk was wear off.

Everyone who talked to me was in de-tox for a felony crime. I distinctly remember a lady in her mid forties saying to me, "You weren't arrested? Well, what the hell are you here for?"

I wanted to know the same thing. All I knew was that I pissed off the wrong cabbie.

In de-tox you don't know how to get out of de-tox unless one of the "nurses" tells you who to call. You don't know who the lawyers are who can hook up a release and if a lawyer can hook up your relese you better bet your ass in gonna say in de-tox for some time.

In de-tox the "nurses" check your vitals every two hours.

The first time I got my vitals checked I asked, "How do I get out of here? What lawyer do I have to talk to?"

The "nurse" said he couldn't say anything about that.

I told him to open the phone book and point to a name.

He did.

I asked, "This is the best one?"

The "nurse" said, "No, but he'll get you out."

I said, "Okay."

I called a dear friend and this dear friend loaned me the money to get out and pay the lawyer which was a shitload of money that I was happy to pay back.

At about ten in the morning I got a call from this lawyer who was going to get me out. He said he was having trouble with getting a judge to get me out.

I told him that if he couldn't ge me out then he couldn't get me out and that was okay, but I would want the money back if he couldn't.

He said that wasn't part of the original deal.

I remember saying "Are you fuckin' kidding me?" so loud that the "nurse" aka crowd control in de-tox got their panties in a pinch.

I said this, "You have $650 in your pocket to get me out. Get me out, please. Please."

Later on that day the lawyer called for me at de-tox on the de-tox phone. I'll never forget what he said:

"It's Matt. Listen, I got a judge to sign you out. You'll have to pass the exit survey. Don't lie about anything, but, at the same time, if you touch yourself in the shower this in not the time to admit that. You understand me?"

Clear as day.

I got out and a buddy of mine who knows who he is picked me up, swearing he wouldn't tell a soul. We still laugh about how he and I are the only ones who know he picked me up. I still assure him that though we both hate snakes I'd rather put up with the snakes we encountered when we went to the wildlife refuge after he picked me up than be in de-tox.

And the long and short of this entry comes down to this: Am I sorry my neighbors went to the New Ulm Resort?

No, not at all. I know the hell that awaited them. I think they got what they deserve for being so inconsiderate. I don't regret my actions against them in the least.

You get what you create. That's all I have to say about that.

When Students Rock Your Face Off

2008-12-10T14:16:00.000-08:00

There's no better feeling for a teacher than when you grade a stack of papers and says, "Yes. They got it. And man they got it good." Not only does this make you feel like you're not a worthless teacher, but, most of all, it gives you a sense that you taught something that mattered to someone, that by teaching you helped a handful of people gain a better understanding not only about writing, but about themselves.

While reading through student reflection and analysis papers of the flash fiction I had them write, I felt like, at times, I was reading the general principles about writing that I believe in. As follows are some key moments that made me smile.

"Using scenes, a writer attempts to make readers forget they are reading and the writer wants the reader to live in the story." (AMEN, SISTER)

"In conclusion to the fiction and poetry units, I feel as though I can freely write and that writing is a way of relieving many thoughts. In a certain sense, I would consider creative writing as an unusual form of therapy, a therapy that helps the soul by getting your thoughts out onto paper instead of barricading them inside, where they do nothing but harm. " (AMEN,BROTHER)

"The best point I can make is that if you are not emotionally into your work, how can you expect your reader to put their own emotion into it? I learned that no matter if it's a short poem or long story, if is factual or fiction, have some feeling to it or else the writing will just be words on paper. As writers, we want to go beyond that." (AMEN, BROTHER).

"If your characters are not solid then your piece will falter." (AMEN, SISTER)

These quotes come from different essays and I think each one is good evidence that by teaching the craft of writing you can teach people about themselves. I really fucking enjoy the fact that these four quotes are so direct about crucial writing elements. And I really, really fucking enjoy the fact that these were written by Intro to Creative writing students.

I'll be the first to admit that a lot of things went wrong in my Intro class, which were entirely my fault. The first day was a complete nightmare because, in all of my wisdom, I decided to teach about every element of poetry in an hour and forty-five minutes. It was a complete crash and burn first day. Recently I had a conference with a student who told me that on the first day almost everybody in the part of the room where he was sitting were looking up classes to take instead of mine while I was up there yucking along. That student also told me he was flat out freaked-out by how I walked in and just started lecturing. That same student said the general reaction after class was "What the fuck just happened?" I'm lucky that people showed up the second day after my grand-fuck up. Dan witnessed this go down and witnessed the recovery attempt on day two. Dan took notes just like everybody else. I swear those people, especially Dan, looked like they had serious hand cramps.

Then I chil-laxed. I came into the class on day one and threw all my babies in the deep end. On day two I came in as the life guard. Looking back, I have no idea why no one dropped the course. The only insight I have is from the same student who told me about how people were looking up new classes. He said he came to class and others kept coming to class because they all wanted to see what was going to happen next. That student said he was pretty convinced I was kind of (he was nice by saying kind of) a wacky guy who paced a lot and tugged his beard a lot when he was thinking. That student said he was pretty sure the reason why everybody stayed in the class was because anything from "I want you to realize that this is important to your life" to "Gimme a damn break" could come out of my mouth at any moment.

In a conference with a different student she said she didn't like the first week of class one bit and the only reason why she didn't drop after the first week was because on the second day I came in and explained that I was sorry for throwing everyone into the deep end, but I did it out of respect to their intelligence. She said she felt challenged every class after that but felt like she was being challenged not by a teacher who always wanted to be right, but a teacher believed the students could handle being pushed to think hard.

And I did make those people think hard and work hard. Too hard at first. Way too hard actually. As I teacher, I make the assumptions that every student can get it, that every student is smart enough to operate at a high level of critical thinking and that it is my job to clearly articulate that they can and also give them the skills how to do so. Ultimately, I respect their intelligences.

One of my teaching pet-peeves is when I hear a teacher saying "Oh, these students just can't handle thinking on an advanced level." There might be some truth to that, but most times when hearing stuff like that I think, "No, that's not the case. Not at all. The issues isn't with how the students can think. This issue is with if you can clearly teach novices complex tasks and complex ways of thinking." I know that is arrogant of me to say that because it assumes I think I can teach novices these things. Well, I'm trying to get there no matter the crashes, the burns, and the stiches. This semester of teaching gave me a lot of wounds and scars, but they were self inflicted. At the end of the day though, I think the class I taught mattered to these people more than just a grade because when I presented them with the challenge of writing something that mattered to themselves in the fiction unit, no body backed down. Everybody took it seriously and everybody wrote their reflections seriously. And that is enough to make to sleep well at night.

Think Like Stalin When Need Be

2008-12-07T21:27:00.000-08:00

There's a reason why Nazi troops came running with their hands in the air as American troops got closer to the Eastern front. The Natzis had committed unspeakable wrongs and the Eastern Front, directed by Stalin, represented a whole new deck of unspeakable wrongs that were the direct opposite of the unfortunate ends of those who died in Nazi workcamps, Siberia. Both Stalin and Hitler were monsters. Unfortunately, the were both relatively genius when it came to war and persuasion.

I respect neither of these men, but, unfortunately, I believe it would be unwise not to learn something from Stalin, especailly when it comes to dealing with loud, bad, untolerable neighbors. Though Stalin was more of a monster than Hitler, in my mind, he was a valid and valuable friend of Britian and the US in WW2 and the way Russia waged war can stand as a general principle of waiting, of teasing, of bringing having the big mouse bring the big cat to a location where there are 100 big mice.

Russia invited the Nazi army to chase and chase them further and further into Russia. The Russian army kept loosing small battles on purpose. Thr Russians were waiting for their strongest military weapon, Winter.

I've been dealing with my asshole, downstairs neighbors the same way lately. I called the cops on them twice tonight and the second time the 911 person said the police would like a call back to talk to me.

Long story short: The cops are tire of coming up here. I am tired of calling the cops. The cops and I are on the same page for the first time in my life.

The cop I talked to said, "If there are anymore problems just call and we'll bring some cars and arrest them."

How the cops will do that legally I am not quite sure, but this state has strange laws.

Nonetheless, I feel a bit like I am playing a Stalin card. The neighbors have been somewhat loud all night. I'm waiting for the right moment. I know there will be a potential fall-out for me when I do finally call the cops. And I know I will because these people are as considerate as people who think the can raise hell on their own planet.

I'm waiting for winter. I'm waiting to use the Stalin card. I honestly hope I don't have to.

Writing Honestly

2008-12-07T16:09:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased that I exceeded my daily writing quota by two thousand words, but I am displeased with a thought I stumbled upon because it scares and challenges something I've believed in strongly, believed in as law until now and this has to do with Stafford's belief about writers block. In terms of writer's block William Stafford used to say, "If you think you have writer's block, then lower your standards." That catch phrase served as a writing compass for me from the time I heard it until today, and I now wonder if that thought is a tad misguided, a tad flippant, and a tad from a guy wrote so much that he didn't fully understand blocks because of his own, earned confidence, a guy who wrote his way out of the goddamns of writing.

I assure you that there is some Stafford-freak out there somwhere who will tell you I have Stafford all wrong, that I don't get him, that the quote is just one of Stafford's many great quotes. To you I say, I know. I assure you that some know it all will come along and say, Well, Stafford does have a point.

I just don't think I am as willing to accept that point the way I once did. Anymore, I think that if you have a block of any kind then you don't "lower your standards." You start writing honestly whether the facts are invented or not. In this I think writers raise the standards because no cheap tricks are tolerated. You are honest to the emotions of the text you write and you write those facts understanding that if you are not honest to them then you have failed. And that failing is not acceptable.

Saturday Recipes: Part One-Tomato Soup

2008-12-06T21:01:00.000-08:00

Each week I like to develop a new recipe. Since it's winter, I've been working mostly on soups and hearty, most times fatty sides.

I have always enjoyed complex recipes and dishes. I also enjoy making comlex dishes and recipes easier and nicer to be around on the kitchen-playground. Here's my newest invention / recreation of an old-style recipe that worked out very well.

Tomato Soup A-la-DJC

Ingredients:

4 (14.5 0z) cans Red Gold Diced Tomatoes with Basil, Garlic, Oregano--DRAINED
1 bundel scallions (chopped)
2 cups veggie broth [can substitue chicken broth--2 cups usually amounts to 1 (14 oz) can]
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon Italian Seasoning
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-pourpose flour

Directions:

1. In a stockpot, over medium heat, combine tomatoes, scallions, veggie broth, and 1 tablespoon butter. Bring broth to a boild and gently boil for about 20 minutes to blend all of the flavors. Remove from heat and process mixture in a large bowl. [NOTE: By process, I mean you need to puree the mixture to taste. You can do this with a mill, processor, blender, or immersion mixter. I use an immersion mixer and it works just fine].

2. In a second sauce pan (I use a stainless steel one and your sauce pan should be large enough to hold your processed tomato mixture) melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter over medium-low heat. Stir in all-purpose flour to make a roux, cooking the roux until it is pale brown. Make sure to constantly whisk.

3. Once roux is ready (about two minutes), gradually whisk in a bit of the tomato mixture so that no lumps form, then stir in rest of tomato mixture. Heat thoroughly, but do not bring to boil. Let stand five minutes then serve.

Adaptions:

Sugar ( 2 teaspoons white sugar): I don't like sweets except on rare occassions when I just eat and eat them and I'm not a big fan of sugar in any sauce that's red.

Balsamic Vinegar (1 tablespoon added at same time as broth): I haven't tried this, but I bet it would be amazing.

Cloves (4 whole): I'm not the biggest fan of this, but some well reviewed recipes call for this.

If you like creamy soups, consider making this into a bisque. Not all bisques are seafood such as the traditional lobster or shrimp bisque. Anymore, unless you're a pureist, tomate bisque is pretty much tomato soup with a milk mixture added. If you translate this into bisque then add two cups of milk to your roux. Actually it might not be that simple. You'll need to look up bisque recpies.

That's pretty much all I have on that recipe. It's good and pretty good for you. Three tablespoons of butter is a pretty significant amount, I guess, but in the world of fast food eaters, this is a sneeze of fat at the Big Mac or any fried food.

Suck My John Wayne

2008-12-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

I'm totally taking credit for that phrase because I'm positive I'm the first person evre to utter those words by means of insult. Before I get into the birth-reason for said utterance (pun-intended), I would like to say that my John Wayne ain't no lil' pilgrim especailly when mirrors are involved. That said, I will proceed to the ocassion for the utterance...

Every school teacher has a shit-head, fuck-ball student he or she refers to as DOUCHE-BAG. This semester I have a five start shit-head, fuck-ball douche bag. And, quite frankly, I hope this student stumbles upon this blog so said student can be affirmed how much of a shit-ball, fuck-ball douche bag said student really is.

If you teach, you know this student. This is the student who is not only disrespectful by means of obviously surfing the internet while you teach, but thinks s/he knows more than you. Though this person might, the person has no fucking tact and an ego larger than the moon. This is the same person who says your descriptive comments are "stupid." This is the same person you have given so much wiggle room to improve that you can expect that this person will volunteer a kidney if you need one. And what does this student do? This is the student who after you have offered kindness to grant another chance on a big paper, emails you the same paper that got turned in the first time. The paper that still doesn't fill the page requirement despite your warnings, your kindness, your imploring. So what do I want to do? And what will I do? Pissing contests with students are stupid. Nonetheless, you can't let some fucker in your class boss you around. I have decided I will email this fuck-ball in a nice way and see what the bull-fuck story the student comes up with next. What I really want to write to said student is as follows:

Hey there, monkey-shit. You have proved yourself as a person who can read well because you figured out how to fuck up every single criteria for this paper. I'll be sure to keep you on my Christmas card mailing list because you made grading your paper so easy, F as in fucker. Also, thanks for saying, "Oh, Darn" when I told you half of your homework was never turned in. I'd like to "Oh, Darn" your face with a Swingline stapler. But I never will. I'd never do anything like that. I'd never get violent because that's not in my nature. I'm gonna be really nice now. I'm gonna be so fucking nice. That way when you contest the grade, I'll be D-Day on your white-trash existence and I can say you have a white-trash existence because I'm from Missouri and I'm white and almost all of my close friends are white-trash, you Minnesota-accent-mother-fucker.

Be Smart Or Get Tough

2008-12-05T06:06:00.000-08:00

Writing that last entry made me think of stupid shit I've done, which always makes me think of a conversation I had with my buddy Dennis. In August, I called Dennis to see how he was doing because he was, without a doubt, having the worst time in his life. Dennis is almost sixty and in the Spring his son died. On top of that, Dennis got into a terrible accident which amounted to about 40% of his body burned by gasoline. And on top of that, while in the burn unit, the doctors diagnosed him with diabetes. Go into the hospital for burns and come out still burned with an added dose of diabetes and a son who is still dead. When I think I have a hard day or hard times, I think of Dennis and tell myself to quit my bitchin'.

While I was talking with Dennis that day I was checking up on him, we got to talking about his old man. Dennis's dad was an iconic-Missouri hick dad with lots of catch phrases that stick in your head. The one we talked about was how Dennis's dad would say, "Son, you gonna have to start being smart or get real tough, real fast." This saying was always in reference to prevent doing stupid shit like messing with explosives or drinking too much or driving motorcycles over the legal limit on gravel roads. Most of all the phrase is a mortal one and Dennis and I were having the most mortal conversation I've ever had with anybody. I'd told Dennis about how I'd sort of slowed down on doing too much stupid shit like messing with explosives on camping trips. Dennis told me about how he was just trying to keep breathing without thinking about how his life and body were in ruin.

Grey Light

2008-12-05T05:20:00.000-08:00

On mornings like these I wake up at 6:30 for no reason at all. Then there is a debate in my head: do I make coffee or try to go back to sleep? Usually, I roll my nuts for a second and smoke a cigarette before going back to bed, but, no, today I am staying up, getting on with the day, making things happen.

Right now the sky is greying with light. For some reason the grey light of night turning to morning always reminds me of harder times. Every day and week and month is hard in its own way, but there are always the years that were hardest and there will always be years ahead that are harder than what we once presumed to be the hardest. That's a pretty cliche thought, but, eh, I've only had one cup of coffee. Let me be concrete.

When I worked nights at the hotel, I lived a life of grey light. During the winter, I went to work in the dark, and walked home a dawn. Then I'd try my best to get my ass to sleep so I could go do that again. Nothing all that subtantial ever really happened those mornings, but when ocassionally I would think of interesting things that happened in grey light. The time I worked that night job was a pretty dark point when I hated "the man" and spend a lot of time boo-hooing to myself about how I wasn't on the inside circle of other grad students who had teaching assistanships. So I lived in my mind for the most part. I recreated memories of bends in rivers that I love to fish. I recreated parts of France and Italy I like. And maybe it was because I saw so much grey-dawn that my brain resorted to thinking fondly of memories of grey light. The one that comforted me the most was also one that represented a hard down turn, more wandering into the bad.

Between 2004-2005 I was risking a pretty bad gambling habit. I was working as a bartender/ cook at two really successful bars in Kansas City so this meant I made a lot of disposable income that I could blow. Dropping three hundred bucks at a casino really wasn't a big deal because, on an average night, I'd make more than that. At this time, The Point in Kansas City was a premiere bar and everybody who was anybody in Kansas City would show up. It was pretty common to walk out of the bar after close with five hundred bones in your pocket. Five hundred bones to toss at a black-jack dealer. Wow, I am rambling and rambling. Let me get to the point.

My favorite memory of grey dawn was when my brother and I were leaving Harrah's north of the river in KC. John won three grand and I won two grand. It was summer. We were absolutely drunk and rich and in a cab. In our minds, we'd finally beat the casinos. In reality we'd scaped back probably a fourth of what we'd blown, at best. But in that moment, in the cab, anything was possible, and because John and I both blew money as if our hands were fans, we wanted to spend it. We wanted to do something wild because we could. We had the money, so why the fuck not?

We decided we'd have the cab take us to KCI airport so we could hop a flight to Chicago. We decided that since we had the money, we'd go to Chicago to eat hotdogs and get haircuts. The cabbie was pretty unimpressed with our idea, which made us think maybe it wasn't a good idea after all. Logic started coming back. We ditched the idea of going to Chicago. We had the cabbie take us back to my brother's pad.

I always like thinking of being in that cab deciding on if we should go to Chicago for hotdogs and haircuts. I represents the true silly and like all silliness represents an aspect of life that is truly stupid, stupid. I've done shitloads of stupid shit. I like to think that's what makes me a pretty empathetic person. But that just might be me thinking too highly of myself. I think there's a poem fumbling around in these fumbling words of this fumbling entry.

Ear Farts

2008-12-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

It is a day like this one when I really appreciate being a T.A. It's not because all of my students are little angels. It's not because I've just given a WOW-Lecture. It's because I can sit here in my "office" and think about the possiblity of farting out of my ear. Naturally, this new method of farting came about during a Smoker's Conversation outside Armstrong Hall.

We were talking about how headache pressure builds and builds and it would rock if there were a way to release that pressure. Drilling was suggested. Then I thought, wouldn't it be fantastic if you could pinch your ear closed, let go, and all of the pressure in your head would come out like air escaping from a balloon? Would it smell? I hope so. Would the sound be like that of a balloon squeaking? Or would it sound more like a real fart. I would hope it would smell and sound like a real fart. And since you are pinching your ear, in essence creating the pitch of the fart, you could come up with different little songs. On really bad migraine days you could pinch your ear and hold long enough to play Taps for yourself (buuuurrr....burrrrrr....burrrrrr. and so on). During Christmas migraines you could play Oh Holy Night. During Halloween you could pinch really tight when releasing the ear fart to get the high pitch of a witch laughing. The possiblities would be endless.

You'd be able to release the pressure of your migraine while entertaining yourself. The smells might be a turn off, but if it's a fart then the gas needs to have a stench to it. Got to stay true to the world of the story. And, you know what? You could ear fart right into someone's nose depending on your height. You could walk right up to them, rip a silent ear fart and be right on your way with that person gagging on your migraine gas.

I just know tried to make my ear fart by pinching it closed. I did hear the sound of the ocean, but there was no gas release. I really wish there had been. I'm curious what ear-wax smell would smell like. Would it smell like nasty carrots? It is orangish yellow. I just don't know.

Well, time to scoot (not literally though I would like to scoot like a dog on some very rough carpet some days). Time to go do student conferences. I like this job. I truly feel like an academic this very moment as I have my feet up and just typing away.

Grading Blitz

2008-11-29T20:37:00.000-08:00

It is 10:38 central time and I have just finished a whole-hog D-day sort of grading sweep. There's just a bit more to do for tomorrow, but, then again, D-day didn't win WW2 though it sure as hell moved the most significant pawn forward. As of now, some student revisions and one more batch of craft analysis papers are my Berlin. They are Hitler hiding out in his bunker realizing the empire's fall. I am both Eisenhower and Patton peering through binoculars as the Brits and fellow Americans conduct air raids. I am also Stalin retreating further into Russia so winter can become my most valued military weapon. I am also the American Pacific fleet nearing Japanese harbors with thousands of troops on board, hundreds of aircraft carriers in tow, and two very large bombs that will change the course of human history forever.

I don't know if I'll ever understand why I feel as if I have done something heroic upon grading a shit-ton of papers in one evening. I mean, I am the one whole let the back-log get even more back-logged, which always happens. Most of semesters I like to pretend that the papers I haven't graded don't really exist. Then the stack grows and sometimes turns a little yellow with cigarette smoke and a little dusty from a smokey apartment and there's always at least one paper that ears a coffee mug halo or some random food splatter of which pasta sauce is responsible for. In terms of military reference I guess I could equate that fact that I choose to forget about these papers, choose to ignore this papers, choose say, "No, sir. Not today," is the same as the American general public considering WW2 "Europe's problem" until the attack on Pearl Harbor. I myself created my own "grading Pearl Harbor" by ignoring the fact that these papers existed, by ignoring the fact that they needed grading. Then I saw that stack sitting there. They all begged to be graded at once, so I sat my jolly ass down at got to work on them despite the fact that my crack-head neighbors downstairs were yelling at each other and the toothless woman was rambling on and on in gum-talk.

Yes, at this very moment I am sitting on a thrown of victory smoking a cigarette and sipping a Miller Lite reward and still listening to gum-talk drift up through the vents. Saturday is usually a calm night in lower-crackhead-land. Tonight is a little different. Sunday is usually the worst, the night when I ended up calling the cops or somebody else calls the cops because glass is breaking or there's gum-screaming or pots and pans are crashing against cinder block walls or doors are slamming. Tonight, there is gum-wakka and more gum-wakka and despite the fact that the woman is toothless she is very capable of yelling the phrase, "I don fuuuckin care 'bout dat," which is exactly what I think about the existence of those people as my neighbors.

After spending years as a bartender and time as a night-shift one man army at a motel where nothing good ever happened after three in the morning, I know some moves about dealing with fuck-wads. I have developed this skills. The primary skill is always remaining calm. An enraged person always fears a calm person because being calm means you have a good idea how this is going to end in your favor, and, ultimately, it shows confidence that you know something the other side doesn't know. I learned that by bartending. When bartending, I saw plenty of fights break out and there were times when the fight seemed like it would filter its way behind the bar. This is when you shake your head and look people in the eye. This makes them sure you have a gun or a baseball bat or that you are just a flat-out crazy person who might have a gun and a baseball bat and an army of regulars who have guns in their cars or baseball bats in their care if not that, every car has a tire iron.

The first time I met my downstairs neighbors I was wearing a plaid robe and my hair was down. I'd been trying to sleep, but the gum-yelling was rediculously loud. I grabbed my walking stick and walked down to their apartment door and knocked with the walking stick. I consider this my caveman approach.

"What's up, brother," the head of house crackhead said.
"What's goin' on down here?" I asked while holding the walking stick like a baseball bat.
"Whoa, man. No need for any of that."
"You better straighten your shit out in there or I'll come back down and straighten it out myself. I work tomorrow. I need my sleep. Shut that woman of yours up."

I walked away as the guy apologized. I didn't really give a fuck about him or anything other than sleep. I laid down and the gum-yelling got worse, so I called the cops.

The next night, a Sunday, the gum-yelling was worse than usual, something I considered as a pissing contest between toothless woman and me. I called the cops again.

Despite the cops coming two nights in a row, the rediculous noise and shouting persisted on Monday. More cops.

Then silence.

And more silence.

I was sure the fines from the apartment complex for everytime the police visit a unit were setting in.

Sunday came and there was a new voice in the downstairs apartment. It was gruff and male and loud. The cracked-out head of house said, "Keep it down, man. The dude upstair is gonna freak."
"Fuck that guy," the new voice said.
Gum-woman said slurred something with the word fuck in it too.
I laid in bed thinking "Whatever."

I tried to put myself to sleep until the new voice started yelling and gum-woman was yelling too. The crack-head of house said, "He's gonna call'em. I ain't paying this time."
"Screw that fucker," new voice said.
"Naaawww. He's just tryin' to sleep."
"Fuck that guy," new voice said.

The downstairs apartment door slammed as feet pounded up the stairs. I laid in bed shaking my head. I like to sleep naked because that is comfortable. I laid there naked shaking my head until there was a pound on my door. This is stupid, I thought. Good thing the cops have taken care of this, I thought. I figured, "Just stay put. Stay in bed."

The pounding persisted and new voice said, "This loud enough."

I got out of bed naked and lit a cigarette in my bed room. New-voice kept pounding as I took some drags.

My hair was down because I try not to sleep with my hair in a bun. In that moment I figured I could call the cops and put up with more of the same or clearly communicate that I, without help from the police could handle a mother fucker like New-Voice.

I answered the door completely naked with a .38 revolver in my hand and said to New-Voice, "The fuck you want?" in a really hick tone. He looked horrified and scared that here was a small guy with a cold, shriveld cock holding a big-ass gun. He didn't say anything for a couple of seconds, so I said, "Well?"

He turned his eyes to the ground and walked straight out of the building and I haven't heard that voice since.

Sometimes I think I should walk down to my neighbor's place naked holding a .38 just to keep their traps shut.

2008-11-28T19:14:00.000-08:00

Since I like to write at least 1,ooo words a day (regardless of typos of which I am sure readers of this blog are either sick of or have become accusotomed to) I'll write just a little more for today. Did you know that if you type "today" too fast you come up with the word "toady" as in "I'm feeling toady today." The definition of feeling "toady" is up to a debate I encourage you all to begin.

Now that that's out of my system I'll get on to the next entry topic, Menstration.

Recently, a chica friend of mine aplogized for being bitchy; she said she was coming up on her period; she said she PMS was starting to set in.

I said, "I know."

She said, "Really? Is it that obvious?"

The early stages of PMS are as obvious as the Grand Canyon. Let me deviate into an imagined scene for effect.

Two aspiring, male settlers travel across the plains and pause at the Grand Canyon.
"Dang," Jim-Bob says.
"We best go 'round," Jo-Bob says.

Regardless of the scientific advances from the discovery of the Grand Canyon to this very moment of human history, men have the same reaction to PMS "Dang. We best go 'round." That's because we like the fact that our heads are attached to the rest of our bodies and recognize the fact that a woman, while suffering PMS, automatically gains the Kung-Fu-Whoop-Ass-Get-Out-Of-My-Way-Or-Die skills of Bruce Lee. Woman becomes Bruce Lee on crack. Woman becomes the flesh version of Num-Chucks. Woman becomes the lone tank that won the war against millions. Woman becomes the affirmation that we men got singled out by physiology by one chromosone, the one chromosone that said, "Eh, you ain't strong enough to take this so by nature we'll give you a cock."

It fascinates me that the difference between cock and vagina is one chromosone. It's as if men were the last ones to be picked by the female kick-ball squad, but when the women were finished picking their team they decided, why don't those ones just start their own team. So we did, and that's why there are cocks in the world. It's probably a very good thing that I haven't had to give a birds and bees talk.

Let's get back to vaginal bleeding.

I have two very distinct memories when it comes to periods. Each comes from a different stage in my life.

I'll start with my earliest memory. This is not a childhood favorite, yet an unfortunate necessity required to become a person compassionately understands that men have it really easy by simple being men.

I remember my sister getting her period when I was a young boy. I didn't know that blood came from anywhere except a wound, so when I saw my sister in the bathroom after walking in unannounced, I freaked. In my mind, blood was everywhere. I thought she'd been stabbed. Naturally, I started freaking out. This caused her to freak out because the last thing any woman of any age wants is the public announcement that she is bleeding. My sister grabbed me by the ear. She twisted it. She was bleeding. I was crying because my ear hurt like hell. She was bleeding. She told me to shut up. I shut up. She was bleeding. She told me to stay shut up. She shoved me out of the bathroom and I stayed shut up about all that for about eighteen years. And this is my first public say-so of that event. I say it now out of respect to how horrifying it must have been for her to be a young woman figuring out how to manage this new gushing only to have this snot-nosed-little-fuck-nose (me) come waltzing in thinking he'd stumbled upon a crime scene. My sister and I have talked about that moment as adults. We laugh about it now, though I touch my ear to make sure it's not in my sister's hand from time to time.

The second memory is one I have a hard time admitting the fact of because admitting it means that I have to discount a man I once considered a hero. This requires some back-story.

I've been in Boy Scouts ever since I reached the age I could join. Some people give me shit for being involved in the organization at my age. There are a lot of old jokes about pedofiles and such. That doesn't bother me because I know the only reason why I'm still involved is because some guys helped me understand that being a man didn't require being manly but did require being true to ones conviction and that conviction must always be fair to the self and everyone else. For the first part of my scouting experience I saw how men taught boys to be compassionate men. For the latter part of my scouting experience and the experience I still experience to thisn day, I saw and see men who actly dispasionately toward women.

When I was SPL (senior patrol leader) of T-30, T-30 operated like clockwork. To this day I am considered the best SPL of T-30 in the troop's existence of almost one hundred years. When I was SPL a change in Scouts happened. Women were becoming more and more prominent. T-30 to this day is probably the last of the old dogs holding out letting any woman hold a "real" seat of power.

I'll never forget the day a man who I consider to be a hero became a person whose motives and humanity I could not understand. We were in camp. I was SPL. I was a good SPL. I was told so by my buddies. I was told so by men I admired. This made me understand that I could have the strength to admire myself.

I had a meeting to go to that day.

It was a council meeting.

I now know that the meeting was designed by the men of the council to keep women out of scouts. To this day I do think having women in scouts in unnecessary, but it is also a catch 22 because some troop need somebody is a woman, which has never bothered me.

Before I headed out to the meeting, I made my way to a circle of green, canvas tents. These guys wanted to talk to me before I spoke for T-30. The man I fully respected then said, "We know you'll do the right thing."

He meant, Speak out against women in scouts. I did agree with him. He didn't need to say anymore. However, scared people always talk too much.

The man I then respected folded his arms and said, "I've never trusted anyone who can bleed for seven days and live."

This made no sense to me then. It makes no sense now.

I remember say, "Okay," because I couldn't think of anything else to say.

He said, "You'll represent T-30 just fine, I know."

I was the only SPL who didn't go to that meeting. Letters after camp kept telling me that. I threw each letter into the trash just like I kept throwing rocks into Truman Lake the day Iwalked to shore instead of going to that meeting. I was the well decorated scout sitting beside the lake who had somewhere to be. I was the well decorated scout who felt he should not be so decorated. I ripped a service medal few receive from my chest and flung it into the water. I bet it is still there, covered in moss.

Every Worthwhile Projects Starts Off With Simultanesous Streaks of Arrogance and Selfishness

2008-11-28T10:47:00.000-08:00

I believe in the title of this entry as if it is a mantra. I should note that the "streak of arrogance" part comes directly from what Richard Hugo has to say about the act of writing in Triggering Town. I'm paraphrasing here, but Hugo says that it takes a streak of arrogance to write a poem because you are anticipating a reader who will read and value what you have written. Hugo goes on in the following sentence to say that this streak of arrogance should be limited to your writing because being arrogant in your personal life and in your dealings with others will cause unnecessary, emotional frustration. Further, Hugo implores that if you are nice to people, then you afford yourself not only less personal frustration, but, ultimately, more time to write because you aren't investing any energy into damaged relationships. He's spot on.

I've added this idea of "project-selfishness" because I'm pretty sure it is necessary. At the outset of any project whether it be as large as finishing a novel or collection of poems or story collection or even something as small as a single, declarative sentence of what you hope is memorable speech, a sense of selfishness is required, a sense that you are writing something or conducting a project necessary to ultimately understanding more about yourself is required, understanding yourself as the first audience is necessary. I like to think that if the person writing a piece doesn't think of him or herself as the first audience then two mistakes have been made before the first sentence reaches its first punctuation: 1.) there's no personal investment in the piece, which means there's hardly a chance for any reader to find an emotion to invest in that affirms his or her own emotion reality; 2.) if the writer of a piece isn't an audience of his or her work, then that writer will never be able to understand that audience is an element of writing never neglected by a piece that extends past being merely a competent arrangment of words.

The most effective example of an historical figure who exuded streaks of arrogance and selfishness in the name of his own project is Albert Einstein. Before Einstein's face became the cliche posterchild of genius and before Einstein became an unforgettable icon of physics, mathematics, and imagination, he became a man so invested in the belief that he could prove his theory of special relativity that, unfortunately, he became somewhat tragic. Still a young man in Berlin, Einstein worked tirelessly on mathematical proofs to such a degree that his personal life and his relationship with his wife was failing miserably. Every day that his proofs got closer was the same day he and his wife became more distant. When his wife finally gave up on any chace that love between them was salvagable, the two agreed on divorce, which meant Einstein's wife would go back to Zurich, Swizterland with their two sons. Before she and their sons got on the train to finally separate forever, Albert to his wife he would pay her the child support and allamony (sp?) with the money he would recieve upon being awarded the Nobel Prize.

At this point in time, Einstein was a far cry from a Nobel, but a notable scientist regarded as a rising star despite political tension between Germany, Great Britian, and, soon to come, the United States. Einstein's claim that he would repay his wife with the Nobel money is what I consider a fine example of simultaneous arrogance and selfishness. His personal life was in shambles. His life as a scientist was on the up-swing. Most of all, he so deeply believed in himself as the first audience of his project and his project's importance to himself that the success of this project, special relativity, could offer an emotional scab between himself and his wife while creating a powerfuld thrust in scientific discovery, which would disprove the day's main-stay understanding of physics established by Sir Isaac Newton, understandings that Einstein felt were misguided and unacknowleging of the cosmic functions of outter space.

Word of Einstein's mathematical proofs and theory of Specail Relativity spread throughout the world of scientists easily despite the onslaught of the first World War. Despite machine guns, tear gas, and a war slugged out in trenches, every scientist of the world wanted to know more about what this young pacifist who disagreed with Germany pronouncing an iron-fisted military might had to say about the bending of light, about Special Relativity.

Einstein was invited to give a lecture to debute his proofs at a school in, I believe, Prague. The great mathematical minds of the day would sit the lecture hall's desks as if students capable of checking the work of their teacher. Days before the lecture, Einstein discovered an obvious, mathematical flaw in his proof, a flaw he knew someone would pick-up on, a flaw that someone could figure out then steal his proof and claim the proof, which would negate the possiblity of winning the Nobel. Einstein labored and labored over the proofs he created up to the moment before delivering the lecture with no avail, with no new solution to the flaw, with the fear that his finest idea would be stolen and claimed by a greater mathematician sitting silently in the audience thinking "I know how to fix the proof."

Which is exactly what happened.

Einstein gave his lecture with passion and confidence. Almost everyone was convinced that all Einstein needed was scientific proof of what his mathematical proofs claimed except for one scientist who saw the flaw and knew how to fix the math because he was a better mathematician. I cannot remember his name and will look it up later, but he was the only one to ask about the error, which, to Einstein, mean that if he could find the error, then he could think up the solution.

A mathematical race started in that very moment between the two, and Einstein couldn't let himself lose though he deeply feared it a very certain possibility.

Weeks passed as both hammered out potential solutions on blackboards. Night and day, Einstein toiled and toiled operating with the conviction that he could not lose this theory because he felt he had to prove the math; he needed to be the one to find the flaw; he needed to be the one to correct this one failure of his life that he could fix; he'd already lost enough.

Historical data shows that both figured out the solution around the same time, maybe within the same week, but Einstein published first, gaining the kudos first.

Scientists around the world agreed with the math for the most part, but disagreed whole-heartily with the math's plausibility due to lack of empirical data. What Einstein needed was a clear photograph of an eclipse to show how light bent around the moon to show that his mathematical proofs of Special Relativity were simply mathematical proofs.

Due to cloud-cover and limited means of photography, scientists were not able to retrieve proper eclipse data to back-up the mathematical proofs for about seven years. Scientist around the world were mostly on board with nominating Einstein the Nobel upon the data. Einstein waited as paitently as he could; he waited confidently, knowing in his gut that he couldn't be wrong, that there was no way the proofs were eroneous anymore.

Fifteen years after Einstein promised his ex-wife the Nobel money, a batch of eclipse photos came in to be verified against the mathematical proofs of Specail Relativity. Einstein's math became proven by empirical data and Newton's laws about physics were disproven. Einstein immediately became a viable contestant for the Nobel Prize. He won.

Einstein didn't win the Nobel for Specail Relativity though. He won for previous work which opened the doors and created a field of science that dominates today, Quantum Mechanics. He did hand over that money to his ex-wife. She bought two apartment building which ultimately failed in the same lifetime that Albert became a famous genuis who refused to comb his hair.

I was born twenty-eight years after Einstein died. Tennesse Williams died the year I was born. Both of these men considered themselves the first (not primary) audiences of their work. Risks were made and personal lives fell into ruin. It is important not to over-value our own stakes when it comes to the completion of any project or affirmation that we too, like any organism, require oxygen. That's always the first cinder block of the house that holds human emotion, oxygen, the fact of breath.

Four years ago I started my own project, a project that, at the out-set and to this day, is both arrogant and selfish. I started asking authors and poets questions that Steve Almond termed "kind of big and scary." I started with Ursula K. LeGuin. My recent interview was conducted with Michael Martone.

Thought I totally suck at math and science, I'll think of myself arrogant enough to say, for just a moment, that maybe I have something in common with Einstein, an undying passion to discover a proof. The proof I seek is not mathematical. The proof I seek is based off of wanting to know the inner concerns of writers and poets who have someway changed my life by clearly expressing the concerns of their own lives. I never disclose the method by which I contact these important people and I never share the questions I ask. The project is too important to me. The friendships I have built with these icons of American literature whether these people be rising stars or cosmological residents in the universe of literary importance are irreplacable. Some of them read this blog and to that I say, Thank You. To those who do and don't read this blog (the minds of those who have let ask questions of them) I say Thank You for positively responding to an act of my own temporary arrogance that asked to interview you; Thank You for my selfish want to understand the act of writing by asking about the motives of your own concerns as a breathing human. This act of my asking will become more than my asking because all of your answers are important. May we all sit down at the same five-card-stud table in the afterlife.

Here's the video I finally figured out how to post

2008-11-28T07:45:00.000-08:00

Music Videos Before Bed

2008-11-26T21:40:00.000-08:00

Though I should be getting my ass to bed in lue of the big Turkey Day tomorrow, I'm doing what I normally do when I'm just not in the mood to go to sleep quite yet, watching music videos and listening to songs on YouTube. Honestly, I'm a little too pumped up for feasting and a little too excited (probably to an unhealthy, egotistical, degree) about this pumpkin cheesecake I made because, if I can say so (which means I definitely will) the cheesecake doesn't have a single crack in it. Having said that, I will probably wake up to find that the cheesecake has sunk-in and some mysterious cracks have formed a swastika in the center, so I will need to immediately cover it in whipped cream so there is no mistake that this Thanksgiving is a Hilter-based celebration.
Pumpkin cheesecake aside, let's get back to YouTube tunes and videos.

I've got a lot of guilty pleasure music videos. You know, the ones you watch over and over and sometimes you watch them because you truly love their artistic qualites, sometimes you watch them because of their complete lack there of. Most times you watch these movies because there's something luring you in, something tapping on the shoulder of your quirks, something that compells you to get up, shake ass, and sing out loud in the middle of the night. Of my guilty pleasures: Nelly's "Dillemma" and Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." What can I say? I have no real explanation though given enough time to bull-fart out a bullshit answer I might be able to come up with some kind of explanation other than asking "Why wouldn't these be guilty pleasures?"

"Save A Horse [Ride A Cowboy]" is my new guilty pleasure song, but, even more so, guilty pleasure video. I'm pretty sure this video is evidence of the fact a god exists. At this very moment, this video has been viewed 365,340 times. I have watched this video 365, 337 times. The other three viewers were Jesus Christ, Allah, and Bhudda.

Once I figure out how to post a damn video on this blog, I will post this video so you can validate the following argument that this video has everything a guy would like. Now, I don't think this video would get played at a feminist slumber party, but, what can say, it trips my trigger.

Before I continue, let me view this video once more just so I can relish a bit more.

Okay...I watched the video three times. I confess. And I'm not sorry. This video is so obnoxiously beautiful it is profound. First off, there's a midget. Instant cool points. Second, naughty secretary chicas sporting garters and tights. Sweet. There's a fucking marching band of banjos. Need I say more? Plus there's the blonde haired guy wearing the top hat wielding a strange umbrella who reminds me of the mad hatter. If I could be in the video, I'd want that job.

I'm listening to the song at this very moment with the video on a different browser. I'm sorry, but I'll have to continue this post later. I'm getting sucked in, again. I'll post this for you all once I figure out how to do that. Here are some lyrics to marinate in your brains until then:

"Her evaluation of my cowboy reputation
had me beggin' for salvation all night long.
So I took her out giggin' frogs,
introduced her to my old bird dog,
And sang her every Willie Nelson song
I could think of,
and we made love."

DANG!

Cars Would Be The Best Things Ever If They Never Broke Down And The Tooth Fairy Paid For Gas

2008-11-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: In the following entry I will seriously risk crying myself a river and playing the world's smallest violin.

As of yesterday evening I am once again a proud owner of a Ford product that refuses to start. After some thought and I believe the problem is not with the altinator, but the starter itself. The tow truck man told agreed with this anyway. And now that I think of it, I have had quite the on-going relationship with All American Towing here in Mankato and it almost seems as if the people at AAA know me by name.

The two guy who helped me last night is a guy who has helped me before. I consider him the role-model tow truck guy. They should put a picture of him in Tow Guy Manuals at the Tow Guy School. He's tall, sort of goofy looking and most likely an incarnation of a Ernest Hemmingway character--he doesn't talk much but he says everything with his body language. I could be wrong about this. This Tow Guy could also be like Eior (sp?) because when he picked me up to go over and get my car from the KT parking lot he gave me this look that said, "Oooookay, whhhhere weeee got toooo goooooo thissss tiiiiiimme?" In reality all he said was, "Where is it?" My god, in praise of directness.

So we go over to the parking lot and try our best to get the taurus running (he's doing the real work of fiddling with the mechanics while I simply turn the key when he waves his mitten). After about five minutes he just shrugs his shoulders.
"It's not going to start is it?"
The tow guy shakes his head.
"Alright, let's just take it back to my place."
"Slip it in neutral and I'll push it out," the Tow Guy says. He proceeded to push the car out with me in it and ocassionally pushing with only one arm to direct me how to turn the wheel. In this moment, I feel about as manly as a boquette of daffodils at a tea party.

When I get into the tow cab I say to the guy, "I have the worst luck with cars."
He purses his lips and nods probably thinking this is the hundreth time he's heard this today; he's probably thinking that old saying, "You don't have bad luck. You're just a dumbass."
Which is kind of true because when it comes to mechanics I know just the basic of the basics. I know that a "starter" exists, but wouldn't know where to find it. I know an "alternator" exists and that it is most likey nowhere near the trunk since it charges the battery, yes, the alternator must be near the battery.

Back at my place, Tow Guy backs the taurus into a spot in one swoop. I would probably require the size of a football field to back a car in a tow truck and I like to think of myself as a pretty good driver. "Well, that's it," Tow Guy says and hands me a AAA slip to sign. I sign, say thanks, and Tow Guy nods, "No problem." Then tow guy is off into the cold night to rescue some other person.

On Writing The Nasty

2008-11-24T11:10:00.000-08:00

I groove on writing and talking about nasty things as long as the premise of "said nasty" doesn't over shadow the development of emotion in a piece. When writing about bodily functions I find that most times I wander into the following arenas: humor, shame, guilt, or admiration--I end writing this emotion most because I have this sort of twisted approach where I like to believe that something normally considered gross can always be made beautiful if the subject matter is dealt with responsibly (by this I mean honestly). Naturally, there are other emotions that can arise when writing "the nasty," but I find these four popping up (pun intended) the most.

When writing "the nasty" I always like to keep myself from taking what I consider the easy road, simply writing about shit or puke or zits or rashes or worms or hemmoroids, etc. A good guide I've found to keep from writing on the surface level of the nasty is to think of people whose every other word is fuck. Fuck is a fantastic word, and during an interview with Bob Hicok once, he and I decided the reason why we like it so much is that the word has this animalistic, mono-syllabic howl to it. At the same time, you don't ever want a piece of writing to simply be a yard with a dog barking in the middle of the night. Nobody likes that in real life and nobody likes that in literature because a power word has now been over used to the point it creates white noise. I think the same goes for writing about say, shitting in public or making love to a former girlfriend while she's on her period or being diagnosed with scabies or having pinworms, of which I've written about each of these topics and have hopefully written about them honestly. And that's all that they are, topics to use as springboards into bigger emotions. A lot of the early drafts of these pieces subtextually said, "Hey, this happened to me. Isn't that strange? Isn't that sick? Don't you sort of feel bad for me?" which means that the pieces were ultimately navel gazing, unimportant to anyone, and begging the question that all bad writing begs, "So what?"

When pushing a nasty topic to a wider emotional range I also like to think of what Billy Collins said about how a poet uses an image to gain access to a larger truth. Probably the best example of Collins executing this is in his poem "The Lanyard." Now, on the surface level, Collins begins with the fact that he, as a boy, made his mother a lanyard at summer camp. That's the beginning topic or as Dick Hugo would term "triggering subject." Collins does not leave the "triggering subject" as Hugo so adimently suggests doing in his collection of essays, "The Triggering Town." Rather, Collins captializes on the image throughout the poem to build an organic development of the truth that we can never re-pay our mothers for what they have done for us, though, as children, we think the little nick-nacks we make for our mothers are a fair trade for their sacrifices.

So what the hell does this have to do with writing "the nasty"? I like to think it has everything to do with effectively pushing a nasty premise toward what is hopefully a profound realization. Now, I don't sit around reading over my work saying things like "Okay, that was profound. Good job, self," but I do constantly ask myself what are my stakes and what am I risking about myself, which I think is the only way anybody might ever be able to traipse into writing a single profound thought.

Writing nasty always has shock value to it and that's something the writer should always be mindful of. I've read a lot of nasty that I don't value because it never got past what I have termed for myself as "the whoopty-doo factor." For example, you were busted for swimming naked by the cops, whoopty-doo. The whoopty-doo is always an indicator that a writer is not taking his or her topic seriously and, most of all, the topic is not important to the writer. I like to think that the only way to write anything worth anyone's time is to consider the topic to be as important as a vital organ. Until the the topic is considered that important, that vital, that necessary, the writing will always yeild an unimportance.

When I started writing my poem "Shark Week," a poem about making love to a former girlfriend in the early, "heavy" stage of her period, I made a lot of rookie mistakes which were subconscious clues to the fact I was scared to write the poem, scared to admit something hard to admit about myself, mistakes I could only overcome upon considering the facts of myself, facts of my fears, facts of my own hipocrasy and contradictions--I love, love, love making love to you except when you bleed. I wrote many drafts that were too dependent on the bleeding. I was making the mistake of not valuing the obvious fact involved in this making love, the fact that bodies are bodies and if you are in love, you are in love and that love, if it is real love, trumps the surface level reality that people are every day animals with highly evolved brains. And the fact that we are animal is a fact of hope because this means we can reproduce.

As I drafted toward an emotional truth, I discovered that the poem had very little concern for the fact my then girlfriend was on her period. When our making love while she was bleeding became whoopty-doo, I knew I was on the right track to writing something important for myself, but, most of all, our act, something important for us. I was now writing the facts of my own fears and regrets, the fact that I regretted something as simple as red liquid creating sexual distance every month. And that sexual distance was my fault. I began to understand that I'd failed her in a very tragic way; I'd failed at staying true to our love by letting her peroid trump our most honest act, and I'd let us be trumped for too long. The best way to feel shame is to know you've been bossed around by fear. The best way to overcome shame is to start bossing around your fears by pointing a finger at your fear and saying, "You scare me, but I'm not going to give you that power anymore."

"Shark Week" is ultimately about overcoming failure by admitting and correcting a history of failing. The poem is short and lyric. If the poem were a long narrative, I'd be entertaining mistake because I'd be letting the history of fault trump overcoming the mistake; I'd be spending too much time writing about what is least important; I wouldn't be able to reach the point of how a fear of blood is not allowed to boss around love between man and woman anymore.

When I reflect on "Shark Week," I very rarely think of a bleeding vagina or sex. I very rarely think of the poem's initiating topic because the poem's point is so much more important to me, and the point has very little to do with blood or sex or being physically naked. The point is more emotionally naked, emotionally honest, emotionally sorry and apologetic of a faulted history of withholding.

Soundtrack for the Day

2008-11-23T16:35:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time I worked as the man behind the bar who made your cocktails and when I wasn't doing that I was the man behind the cutting table or grill preparing food for your mouth to say, "that's pretty good." My friends served your meals to you, though no cook of any kind thinks of a server as a friend. Either which way, the point of this post is that, at the time, my friends were making song playlists of their days. I thought this was dumb, the most uncool of uncool, and, most of all, too much information.

Six years later, I now realize that I was very afraid of what people thought of me and I still fear that. We all want to be liked despite our quirks. That's something we all have to deal with telling the world. And I guess I'll start with my personal soundtrack as I can put it together now.

Please consider this an apology to the people in my life of whom I considered myself too cool for a sound track to my days.

8:00 ---Johnny Cash "Understand Your Man"
9:00----The Killers "When You Were Young"
10:00---The Spinners "Rubberband Man"
11:00---Aretha Franklin "I Say a Little Prayer for You"\
12:00---Crash Test Dummies " Mmmm..Mmmm.Mmmm..."
1:00---Craig Morgan "International Harvester"
2:00---Gwen Stephani "Sweet Escape"
3:00--Outkast "The Whole Wide World"
4:00---The Strokes 'Reptillia"
5:00---"The Cranberries "Linger"
6:00--Mariah Carey "Shake it Off"
7:00---Ottis Redding "These Arms of Mine"
8;00---Rolling Stones "Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday"
9:00--Bob Dylan "Like a Rolling Stone"
10:00---Jeff Buckley "Last Goodbye"
11:00---Iron and Wine "Naked as We Came"

Another Attempt At Blog-World

2008-11-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

This is the beginning of another attempt to keep a blog. I've tried this many, many times, but I always seem to lose it, fall off, forget, or become disinterested. This probably has a lot to do with my love of ink-paper journals. Maybe I'm just nostalgic. Maybe I'm a little more guarded than I come off. If anything, I enjoy few things more than sitting down and scribbling myself off into the far corners of my mind. I developed this tendency as a kid. My mother and father always praised the idea of me keeping a journal as something I could look back on one day. My mother and father probably praised this with the added twist that if I was spilling my ideas and thoughts and doing my talking in my journal, then they got more quiet time. This wasn't the only time that my talky-talky self was recomended to write in order to tame my inherent tendency to go on long, long monologues. My sixth grade teacher got tired of keeping me quiet because I always had these fantasy stories I'd come up with and tell my friends during class. The major problem wasn't that my stories were good, the problem was that my stories just so happened to be more interesting that long division or remembering the capitol of South Dakota or the definition of transubstantiation or how to be a good, chaste catholic attending a good catholic grade school. She made me a deal. If I typed out my stories and handed them to her, she would read them. This was in exchange of me not telling these stories during class. Now, my sixth grade teacher was the hottest girl in our class (tall, blonde, and the only girl with serious boobs). I had no other option than to write for her.

I kept my part of the deal. I didn't talk during class, too much. I did here and there, but no stories, no getting my fellow students too distracted, just random, muffled wise-cracks about some of the world's most important subjects: farting, body odor, Sports Illustrated swim suit issues my buddy Pat kept in his back-pack, girls who had tits and those who didn't, girls with nice butts, girls with nice legs, girls with pretty faces and those who didn't, discussions of definitions in the dictonary of words like penis and vagina and cock and cunt.

For a little over a week I didn't hand my teacher anything. This plan was working well for her. She asked if I was doing my writing and typing it out. I told her I was, but the typing was slow since I typed using only my index fingers. I told her how my mind was always so much faster than my fingers, but I'd get her something soon.

That Friday as I was heading out the door I handed her a fifteen page, single space story entitled The Adventures of Rubin and Red. It was the first chapter of the book I knew I'd publish. I told her how I wrote a letter to Disney with my story idea and how I was pretty sure they'd take it and when they did, I'd make millions and give her a couple thousand.

My teacher took the story and said, "Thank you," while flipping past the cover page I'd labored over, "The Adventures of Rubin and Red by David John Clisbee. Chapter One." I told her I had some more ideas for the second chapter and I'd better get working on it over the weekend since I could hear from Disney any day and they'd probably want more of the story.

The following Monday I asked my teacher what she thought of my story. I'd kept pretty true to my part of the deal and I wanted her to stay true to her part. She said she like it so far but wasn't all the way through it, said she was reading it before bed, said she'd read some of it to her husband and he liked that they two boys Rubin and Red were stranded on an island with dragons and evil elves but able to fight them off.

I said, "Cool," then handed over the next chapter ringing in at ten pages, single spaced. Disney would be calling me any day. I had work to do.

I remember telling my brother the plan of how I would become a famous writer. First, Disney will call wanting to pay me millions of dollars to make my story, which was now becoming a book, into a movie. There would be a cartoon version of the book and a film version where Clint Eastwood would play the evil lord of the island Rubin and Red were stranded on. Clint Eastwood and I would ride in the same limo to the Oscars where I would win and oscar and so would he. My brother said, "You have to have a date to take to the Oscars."

This became a temporary dilemma, until I decided I would take my teacher and if her husband didn't like that then he would have to become a more famous writer than me, which would be virtually impossible. Then I told my brother that after the movie of Rubin and Red I would write a new book in one month and it would win the Pulitzer prize and I would be the only person to win the Pulitzer prize at twelve. I'd be rich. I'd be famous. I'd buy my own lake with a big house and our only job would be fishing for walleye of which the lake would be stocked with the worlds largest walleye, an easy job.

Weeks passed until an 8 x 11, manila envelope addressed to Master David Joh Clisbee from Disney showed up in the mail box. This was it. They wanted to make a movie. In my hand written letter to them I'd told them how my story, now book would make a smash movie or a great cartoon series at least. They were taking the bait. They wanted it. This response was pretty dang fast. They respectfully decline.

I read the letter more than ten times. How was this possible? How could the Director of Marketing say no to such a great idea. I'd told everybody I'd be famous. I'd promised my teacher a couple thousand bucks. I slid the letter back into the envelope carefully then put it in a safe place in my room so I could mail it back to the Disney people with a big, hairy penis drawn on it once somebody took my movie idea like Steven Speilberg. Yeah, Speilberg would dig it.

To my mother's extreme disapproval, I walked outside our neighborhood and down to the public library to ask a librarian for Steven Speilberg's address. I knew librarian could find anything, even Speilberg's home address.

I waited in line and waited in line until an old lady librarian asked me, "What can I help you with?"
"I need to know Steven Speilberg's home address," I said.
"Are you a friend of his?"
"Not yet."
"Okay...come with me."

The oldy librarian walked to a counter with what looked like huge phone books and started flipping through.
"Since your in the Ss, can you please look up Slyvester Stalone too, mam?"
"Sure thing, sweetie," the oldie said.
I tapped my finger on the desk waiting on her, "Got anything yet?"
"Still looking. Is your Mom or Dad ready to go?"
"Nope," I said thinking that a safe answer since it didn't mean I was there alone.
I waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and about two or three minutes later the oldie said, "You might have to go to the Post Office to request those addresses."
"There's nothing about Speilberg or Stalone in those big books?"
"Not that I can see, young man."
"Okay, well, thanks anyway, mam."

The next week at school I told my teacher about all of this and how I was surprised how stupid Disney Company was and how the oldie librarian could figure out where Speilberg or Stalone lived and how I was sure she saw the addresses but just didn't want to tell me. She told me how good my story was and how she couldn't believe it either. She said her husband started reading my stories before she did and he didn't like to read. She said I shouldn't take Disney saying no as a bad thing, but a good thing because maybe there was a better deal out there for me. I didn't understand that. It didn't make sense. I had everything planned. Even my brother thought it was a good plan and he didn't like anything I ever came up with.

The night I got in big trouble for walking outside of our neighborhood to the post-office I sat at my desk in the attic room my brother and I shared. I was mad at the world. My mom and dad were mad at me for being bad. I was mad for Disney not getting it. I was mad at the oldie for not telling me the mailing addresses of Speilberg or Stalone. Then I did what I still do from time to time to this day, I let sadness take over, I let failing at an impossible task let me feel like I'd failed at completing a simple task.

My brother and I were a long way from being friends to each other then. For a long time I used to think we became friends when he graduated from high school then moved off to college while I was stuck at home in the high school he went to in Kansas City. As kids, John and I fought and punched and wrestled as if beating and hurting each other was our job as human beings born to the Clisbee name. That night, when everybody was saying "No," and I was being scorned by my parents for trying to create a "Yes," John came up to our room and saw me sitting at my desk; he saw me holding that manila envelope from Disney; he saw me put the envelope down and fold my arms; he heard me sigh.

I'm pretty sure my brother and I became friends in that very moment. No matter how much we beat each other or punched or wrestled or swore, we could only handle doing that to each other; no one else was allow to do that.

John didn't say anything; he carried his chair from his side of the room and set it down next to mine. He sat there with me and kept quiet. John folded his arms and rest his head on my desk. He wasn't making fun of me this time. I could tell. He could tell I needed someone so I could just be still, someone to make me feel safe. Some one like him, the boy who I climbed into bed with when thunderstorms kept me up and scared; someone who found me annoying yet necessary; someone who said, "That teacher likes it, right?"
"Yeah."
"That's pretty good."
"Yeah."

1. DULL KNIVES: