. . . like, I don't want to be the "bah, humbug" guy and family is still all warm and fuzzy like baby ducks, but I'm just so tired. sitting in the dining/living room, earmuff-sized headphones on listening to "post-nothing" and wondering if its time I started collecting jazz albums or if I'm safe to wait 'til I'm 30 for that sort of half-pose.
brielle is here. she is tired. lailey is here. natch. kasech and titu and rebka are downstairs and mom and dad went to take ice cream to aunt betty and uncle garon so they can make root beer floats when uncle gordy and aunt beth arrive and i got up at 7 today and will probably get up tommorrow at 8 to go get aunt jaimee and our tree is obviously very fake and the lights are ones we got from the camp.
tonight at the end of the shift I made a "raccoons" reference over the radio, when probably the only two people who'd get it were standing right there. this is probably one of the basic problems with my personality, the fact that I do things like this.
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Monday, 21 December 2009
How it might go at this very site in the near future.
Several thoughts on year-encapsulating sorts of posts. Because I feel enough has happened this year that I should try to talk about it * some * how. Still, short of a Graham's Year In A Short Novella, not sure. So a format is inevitable. Ways it may yet happen:
-->Month by month, in Song Quotes.
Pros: Concise, emotionally evocative, vague enough to protect the guiltocent.
Cons: So very LJ, circa 2001.
-->Month by month, in Numbered Poem form
Pros: Hey, look! A new poem! (and folks will give it a pass, since its obviously a Personal Piece. . .)
Cons: Hey, look! A new poem! (no way, in the annals of Graham's Numbered Poems, this gets anywhere close to Genus, Species and Flavour.)
-->Film an interpretive dance in full-snow-goose outfit, post on youtube, link here.
Pros: Majestic!
Cons: None.
-->A 2-part summary: Wales, U.S.
Pros: Splits pretty much right in half, conveniently enough for archival purposes.
Cons: Bo-ring.
-->Compare/Contrast with 2006,7,8 in terms of goal-reaching, time-management and personal progress.
Pros: Would probably compare largely favorably.
Cons: So very Seven Habits of Highly Motivated Success Stories . . . or Patrick Bateman.
-->Do what I often do sometime mid-January and shrug it off and look ahead
Pros: The whole "looking ahead" thing.
Cons: See beginning of blog post.
Stay tuned. I bet you can't wait.
-->Month by month, in Song Quotes.
Pros: Concise, emotionally evocative, vague enough to protect the guiltocent.
Cons: So very LJ, circa 2001.
-->Month by month, in Numbered Poem form
Pros: Hey, look! A new poem! (and folks will give it a pass, since its obviously a Personal Piece. . .)
Cons: Hey, look! A new poem! (no way, in the annals of Graham's Numbered Poems, this gets anywhere close to Genus, Species and Flavour.)
-->Film an interpretive dance in full-snow-goose outfit, post on youtube, link here.
Pros: Majestic!
Cons: None.
-->A 2-part summary: Wales, U.S.
Pros: Splits pretty much right in half, conveniently enough for archival purposes.
Cons: Bo-ring.
-->Compare/Contrast with 2006,7,8 in terms of goal-reaching, time-management and personal progress.
Pros: Would probably compare largely favorably.
Cons: So very Seven Habits of Highly Motivated Success Stories . . . or Patrick Bateman.
-->Do what I often do sometime mid-January and shrug it off and look ahead
Pros: The whole "looking ahead" thing.
Cons: See beginning of blog post.
Stay tuned. I bet you can't wait.
Monday, 14 December 2009
Explorer
. . . or How the HELL Am I Supposed to make Crepes?
For five years I've been the sole operator of a fishing boat on the moon. Its part of a subsidized grad-school outplacement plan called “Expanding Horizons.” Just me, a one-way radio and a jar of instant coffee. Assigned to catalogue any life in the many crater lakes on the dark side. Found: only eyeless, finless wormfish, no telling how they lived or what they ate.
I’d hoped they'd send more people, but in five years there’s been one unsigned postcard from a café in Paris, a recipe for raspberry crepes on the back in pastel calligraphy. I thought it was a mistake, but there’s my name, right above the address.
I sleep seated with an itchy wool blanket so the fish don’t crawl into my ears. Sometimes radio static keeps me awake and twitching; there aren’t days and nights like I remember. The mission completes in ten years. By then my resume will put me in the top 20% for jobs in my field.
Now they’re firing missiles straight for my area; they warned me I wouldn't go to one of the nice bits with a flag or the mouth or eyes. NASA's always hated the moon, so I'm not surprised they're sending bombs up here. Not surprised at all, especially when I heard the transmission that there was enough explosive to "blast that crater straight to hell."
Hell. Easy concept when you’re alone in a boat with cold coffee, watching death advance daily, surrounded by worms.
____________________________________________________________________________
The above piece appeared in the first of (hopefully) many in a bi-monthly series of zines called Your Hands, Your Mouth, brainchild of one Chris Gusta. On friday I went up to B'ham and read at the launch of said series with Andrew Cole, Robyn Bateman and Melissa Queen, none of whom I'd heard before, all of whom I enjoyed. Felt better as a whole about my own energy and crowd-response at this one than the one in Everett.
Setlist:
Dentistry is a Delicate Art *
Paintings of Famous Satanists
Explorer
Ferries
A Little Fear of Drowning
Poor Sisyphus *
Genus, Species and Flavour
*these are both new pieces I'd either written down in other spots or not written down at all, and were therefore off-book and at least partially ad-libbed. went better than the whole "space coyote" fiasco.
it was a good night all in all, though every time I go to Bellingham it feels farther away geographically (which is simply strange) and a bit regressive personally (which is to be expected I suppose.) I saw Ryler today and we discussed this phenomenon at a bar on Capitol Hill in Seattle and maybe that seems to be more of what I want; old friends in new contexts. Who knows.
For five years I've been the sole operator of a fishing boat on the moon. Its part of a subsidized grad-school outplacement plan called “Expanding Horizons.” Just me, a one-way radio and a jar of instant coffee. Assigned to catalogue any life in the many crater lakes on the dark side. Found: only eyeless, finless wormfish, no telling how they lived or what they ate.
I’d hoped they'd send more people, but in five years there’s been one unsigned postcard from a café in Paris, a recipe for raspberry crepes on the back in pastel calligraphy. I thought it was a mistake, but there’s my name, right above the address.
I sleep seated with an itchy wool blanket so the fish don’t crawl into my ears. Sometimes radio static keeps me awake and twitching; there aren’t days and nights like I remember. The mission completes in ten years. By then my resume will put me in the top 20% for jobs in my field.
Now they’re firing missiles straight for my area; they warned me I wouldn't go to one of the nice bits with a flag or the mouth or eyes. NASA's always hated the moon, so I'm not surprised they're sending bombs up here. Not surprised at all, especially when I heard the transmission that there was enough explosive to "blast that crater straight to hell."
Hell. Easy concept when you’re alone in a boat with cold coffee, watching death advance daily, surrounded by worms.
____________________________________________________________________________
The above piece appeared in the first of (hopefully) many in a bi-monthly series of zines called Your Hands, Your Mouth, brainchild of one Chris Gusta. On friday I went up to B'ham and read at the launch of said series with Andrew Cole, Robyn Bateman and Melissa Queen, none of whom I'd heard before, all of whom I enjoyed. Felt better as a whole about my own energy and crowd-response at this one than the one in Everett.
Setlist:
Dentistry is a Delicate Art *
Paintings of Famous Satanists
Explorer
Ferries
A Little Fear of Drowning
Poor Sisyphus *
Genus, Species and Flavour
*these are both new pieces I'd either written down in other spots or not written down at all, and were therefore off-book and at least partially ad-libbed. went better than the whole "space coyote" fiasco.
it was a good night all in all, though every time I go to Bellingham it feels farther away geographically (which is simply strange) and a bit regressive personally (which is to be expected I suppose.) I saw Ryler today and we discussed this phenomenon at a bar on Capitol Hill in Seattle and maybe that seems to be more of what I want; old friends in new contexts. Who knows.
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Catcher
God wants you to read Catcher in the Rye out loud.
He's thinking of a rehabilitation program; maybe Satan is just a Holden Caulfield-type who never got the attention he deserved during his career as the Morningstar.
You ask if He's read it before and He has in that Omniscent-omnipresent way, but frankly, at any given time he's moving on people to avoid genocides in Siberia, South Asia and Your Backyard.
God wants you to read Catcher in the Rye, out loud, in heaven, to an audience of saints and angels; let the sinless vaccuum breathe a little bit, maybe you're going to convince him of a couple things.
If it goes well he’ll start a book club and policy board; next up is The Satanic Verses.
This thought mats your hair down with sweat, beads up your eyes and gulps your throat and you suddenly wish you were Catholic and had some sort of tradition to deal with all of this. You're not sure why God asked or why he needs you to read it aloud, when he knows you have a fear of public speaking.
Jesus shoos away some orphans he's playing with-- he's always fucking playing with orphans-- and takes you aside. “Could you do this for him? I mean, I'm not sure exactly what he's thinking with this one; if not for him, for me.”
Your eyebrows and jawdrop do the talking. What would your pastor think? Like he could hear you, Jesus shakes his head, fingers his wrists with what almost looks like a sneer.
“You know how well I get on with Pastors. No, no, you're right, I mean, sure, after all, what did I ever do for you?”
good to know he still has the sharp tongue that got him strung up there in the first place.
He's thinking of a rehabilitation program; maybe Satan is just a Holden Caulfield-type who never got the attention he deserved during his career as the Morningstar.
You ask if He's read it before and He has in that Omniscent-omnipresent way, but frankly, at any given time he's moving on people to avoid genocides in Siberia, South Asia and Your Backyard.
God wants you to read Catcher in the Rye, out loud, in heaven, to an audience of saints and angels; let the sinless vaccuum breathe a little bit, maybe you're going to convince him of a couple things.
If it goes well he’ll start a book club and policy board; next up is The Satanic Verses.
This thought mats your hair down with sweat, beads up your eyes and gulps your throat and you suddenly wish you were Catholic and had some sort of tradition to deal with all of this. You're not sure why God asked or why he needs you to read it aloud, when he knows you have a fear of public speaking.
Jesus shoos away some orphans he's playing with-- he's always fucking playing with orphans-- and takes you aside. “Could you do this for him? I mean, I'm not sure exactly what he's thinking with this one; if not for him, for me.”
Your eyebrows and jawdrop do the talking. What would your pastor think? Like he could hear you, Jesus shakes his head, fingers his wrists with what almost looks like a sneer.
“You know how well I get on with Pastors. No, no, you're right, I mean, sure, after all, what did I ever do for you?”
good to know he still has the sharp tongue that got him strung up there in the first place.
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