"Oh, like the downtown street acronym."

Here is what I'm working on now.

I haven't committed myself to drawing in any capacity since a few of the Lobster Manor show posters, and this is way bigger than that. This is kind of huge and terrifying.

". . . but those first two novels were just so. . . so. . . icky."

Tonight I had a free ticket to see Jonathan Franzen, whom Time Magazine calls the "Great American Novelist" or whatever, speak at Benaroya Hall.

He was smart and funny and very human, talking about the necessity of personal growth to continued relevance, the difficulty of humanity in literary fiction and things like that. I decided to take it as a good thing that many of the things one of the most successful/respected modern american writers said resonated, rather than dwell on *which* particular parts of the talk were hitting home and why.

(i mean, i noted those in the graham-needs-a-life-coach section, not graham-is-a-writer section, though the two are not separate)

also: knew I would be an Uncle by early next year. Now I know I will have a Nephew.

Fire Ant Fire Dance

Back in my days with the fire ants I was a ravager.
The bodies of crickets, the bodies of mice, bodies of
other, weaker ants. We had rituals for these things,
songs and chants and traffic through our underground mazes
was its own rhythm, its own catharsis.
Things were heavy often, the weight of a load nearly crushing
my thorax but I only ever had one at a time and I knew which
direction to walk with it. Through grains of sand that twitched
my antennae. Clods of dirt as big as my head. We owned the yard.
The blades of grass. Swarmed rocks until no grey stone left,
just the thousands of us, in our glory.
Then the child came, big and fat and stupid with hard treaded
feet, stomped our mounds. The elders fled. Tunnels
collapsed, the temple destroyed and the queens crushed under
relentless stamping.

But you should see what we did to that kid's leg.

PDXZines, Beer and Cookies

Down to Portland over the weekend for the Portland Zine Symposium, where I sat at a table and told people what a ZAPP was, did a handful of trades with people who were willing to trade and ran into Dale Woodruff. Good weekend.

The reading at the Beer and Cookies Cabaret was one of my favorite ones in recent memory. I read between a singer and a short claymated film about robots. The beer was good. The cookies were delicious. I think Vegans make better dessert.
Setlist:


Get Smart!
New York pt. 1.3 (swear on the head of the ibex)
Ambition is Critical
Kids!
Genus, Species and Flavour
Isolation Therapy
You, in Your Heyday

It was the first time I did "new york" or "heyday" and my version of "kids" was half-remembered, half adlibbed. went over well though; sold enough that I was able to return to Seattle with some of the money I left with. This is pretty important these days.

plasma, portland and poetry factories.

In a few minutes I go in for a short-ish shift at The Vera Project where I will do some information culling and website updating in a room full of people all being periodically amused by some non-official thing they saw on a website. Then I hitch a ride with Lindsey Tibbot down to Portland, where I'm reading at the Working Theater Collective's Beer and Cookies Cabaret. Apparently I'm between a band, a comic and a juggler? Something like that. Then the next couple of days is ZAPP-duty with the Portland Zine Symposium, one of the largest er, zine symposiums in the country.

So it's busy for me. Yesterday (after a few and a half other things) I hit up the first ever Capitol Hill Mobile City Fair-- basically a bunch of booths and entertainments set up in the Bank of America Parking Lot. All Cap Hill places. Drag queens jumping rope, people eating pork tortas, a bunch of kids and parents dancing in the back of a U-Haul truck while a dude spun club hits. I sat at the Pilot Books booth as part of the "Poetry Factory" where myself and a handful of other hardworking writers wrote poems-to-order for the donation of canned food or a smile.
one guy says "I just got off work. I need something positive. Write me a poem about, um, not puppydogs and world peace. . . friends."
So I did. and it made him really happy.

On my way off the hill I passed by Twice Sold Tales and sold a couple Tolkein books for like, no cash at all, but the woman was enthusiastic about recommending a spot in Ballard where I can sell plasma and thats how she ate for about two years.
Then two college kids came in and asked if she had any Euclid and that made her very happy.

Life on the Blood Farm was never easy. . .

or Socratease and the unfortunate rise of philosophical burlesque.

5 years and she'll own the place; mother will be very disappointed.

They don't serve SANDWICHES in HELL, JACk!

She slammed the french-dip-daily special so hard on the counter the plate cracked. A few straws shuddered in their glasses. Au jus everywhere. As she clomped her shoes-for-crews regulation heels to the room's end, Jimmy the cook started a slow clap. Alfonse turned from the order he was taking and nodded. More claps as Jack balled his fists and swivel-headed to see where to swing. Half the room was in applause. Defeated, he dove mustacheward into soggy meatbread.

Everyone had pegged her as summer-breeze slight; the sort of pixie-do-ed flower tattoo cranked out yearly in the thousands by creative writing and graphic design programs. No one thought she had it in her, so they were surprised when next she headlocked Mary, and with a . . . we're going to finish this TONIGHT, bitch. . . dragged her outside.