Here There be Whales

Axe: Your Blackspoitation Date Rape Spray

2008-09-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

So, uh...am I the only person who's made just a little uncomfortable with the implications of this commercial?

Not to go all PC on you, but seriously...this guy's about one half step from black-face. And who the hell thought of the name Dark Temptation, in the first place? That just sends off all kinds of alarms in my head. Or to put it as Dolemite might:

My white liberal guilt
Just won't leave me alone
Like the bitches when I put on
My Dark Temptations cologne

Taxes

2008-09-05T17:23:00.001-07:00

This is something of a follow-up to the previous post about Sarah Palin. This is what I mean when I say it pisses me off that Republicans play the populist card. Sarah Palin says in her speech that Obama wants to raise taxes--your taxes, which presumably means the taxes of the average American. McCain made a similar claim during the Saddleback meeting, in the same answer that included his famous "I dunno. Five million dollars?" quip. Obama wants to raise taxes, the Republicans want to lower them.

Now read this comparison of each of their tax plans from the Washington Post. As far as I can see, the only taxes Obama is raising is for the upper 1.1% income bracket. The rest of us actually get a tax break. For the bottom sixty percent, where I fall and so does practically every person I've ever known, it averages out to about a 3.8% decrease. Now, McCain is lowering taxes for everybody--that's true--but the upper 1.1% gets an average 3.9% decrease, while the lower sixty will enjoy less than half a percent decrease in our taxes.

To me, this is a no-brainer. I've said this before. You tax the rich more heavily than the poor because they have more to give. When you're doling out tax breaks, you give it to people who are struggling before you give it to people have more than they need. You help people who can't get their kids through college before you help people who have enough money to send their kids to private preschools.

PS

I just read my friend Bonnie's blog, and I think she's pretty spot-on about who Sarah Palin reminds me of:

Yep. Spot on. Beyond just the looks, the comparison's are pretty impressive. I mean, except for the tax plans.

RNC

2008-09-05T08:33:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine in the program had mentioned he thought Sarah Palin's speech was excellent, so I thought I'd give it a listen. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, partially because she stays away from the really crazy shit she believes in (like teaching creationism in schools) or her hypocritical stance on abortion (she says her daughter's pregnancy was a personal choice within her family, so why shouldn't other families get that same choice?) or her disturbingly unempathetic stance on gay marriage (she's against it, surprise surprise, but claims she has gay friends; so, I guess that's just a big fuck you to them, huh?), but it still nauseates me every time candidates get up and play their "Aw shucks, I guess I'm just a small-town girl/boy with nothing on my mind but your best interests...that's why I want to drill for oil." Yeah. Never mind that Palin has ties to oil companies and, like Papa Cheney before her, has only to gain financially from drilling. She's only thinking of your happiness, completely unbiased.

Beyond that, the overall tone of her quips against Obama were just more of the same snide, mean-spirited jabs that the Republicans have fallen back on for the last eight years. It's the same sort of shit that people who like Anne Coulter (ugh...sorry...that phrase just made me throw up in my mouth a little) consider a witty barb. But it isn't wit. It's snide. It's condescending, both to her opponent and her audience. It plays on the worst, most petty tendencies in the American people. In short, it tells me Sarah Palin is the same kind of cynical, self-serving politician I've seen sitting in office for the last eight years.

It's time we were done with that. It's time we replaced these bastards with people who see governing our country as something really serious, people who respect government and, more importantly, who respect us enough to say "You are bigger than this." I want someone in my government who will call on us to be more than petty and self-serving, who believes we are big enough to come together as a society. That, make no mistake, isn't McCain. It isn't Palin.

Anyway, here's the speech, both text and video. Enjoy.

Well, this is Just Unacceptable

2008-09-02T19:50:00.000-07:00

I realize this blog has been silent for a long while, and it'll probably go back to being that way soon. Sorry for the tease. Suffice to say, I'm busy.

What's rousted me out of silence is the news that, three journalists for Democracy Now! were among the protesters arrested on the first day of the RNC. The show's producers, Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, were arrested during a protest while trying to leave the area after police told them to do so (read this transcript of the event and watch the video; she clearly identifies herself as press). The show's host, Amy Goodman, was arrested shortly after while trying to find out from police the status of her two coleagues. Or to put it more simply, the three were arrested while trying to gather news. Seriously. Watch the videos and tell me if there's anything on them that seems arrestable or worthy of charging with felony riot charges (which is what her producers were charged with...for running backward...while crying out, "Press! Press!").

What gets me is not just the arrest itself, which, after the last eight years actually doesn't surprise me (and how sad is that?). What gets me is the police chief's response to the reasons why the incident happened:

The chief said that he'd yet to review the specifics of Monday's incident. But he said that police seek to give ample warning before breaking up what they deem as unlawful assembly, and that if journalists don't clear the scene, he added, it is difficult for officers to look at protesters and reporters and "to make those kinds of fine distinctions."

Fine distinctions? The press are easily identifiable because they wear press passes, which are big dangly name tags with the word "press" written out in big block letters for all to see. Often, they're brightly colored. Not exactly what I'd call a fine distinction to make. And if that wasn't enough, the producer kept announcing that she's press, both during the arrest and after, while she was sitting and awaiting a medic. So, no. That's not an acceptable reason for nabbing someone and throwing them in jail and charging them with felony riot charges. Not at all.

The Swelter

2008-06-10T13:26:00.001-07:00

A couple of days ago, I was down the shore visiting my father. We had this lovely weather for three days. Seventy degrees, a nice ocean breeze blowing inland. It was so beautiful that I took a bike ride to celebrate. A nice long one. Ten miles or so. Late Saturday night, the swelter blew in. I woke up in the middle of the night sticking to my sheets. The air had gone still and the ceiling fan wasn't doing a thing to stir it up. I spent the rest of the night rolling over and over, looking for the comfortable sleeping position. Around eight, I finally gave up on sleep.

Summer is officially here. Not in an astrological sense, of course--solstice is still a couple of weeks off--but damn the stars, the sweltering heat outside confirms it. My insomnia confirms it. With it, all of my productivity has completely evaporated. Hell, I'm easily distracted in the best of weather. In heat like this, I can barely put together two coherent sentences without staring off into the distance and wondering how on earth I'm going to get out of here. Seriously, it's taking multiple cups of coffee, a mind-focusing playlist, and 1000 BTUs of air conditioning just to finish this paragraph.

Still, I've been keeping busy. As the semester came to an end, I slowly started gathering all of the books I wanted to read last year, but couldn't, since I was reading other books for classes. Over the course of a couple of months, what started as one or two books I wanted to read has grown to a stack of books up to my hips, which I can't possibly hope to finish before the year's out, let alone the summer (one of my students this semester told me he reads a book a day during the summer...I'm lucky if I can finish one in a week). I'm whittling my way through it, hoping I'll manage to make at least a dent before I have to start teaching in August. I just finished reading The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, an excellent and eclectic collection edited by my chair, Ben Marcus. Though not everything in it is really my cup of tea, there was not a single story that didn't grab me and keep my attention all the way through. Currently I'm reading Paul LaFarge's Haussmann, which is a fun read and full of all sorts of nerdy references about Paris.

In addition, I took a position as one of the reading staff for Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, which is Columbia's journal of literature. And art. I've basically been reading slush, which is the unsolicited manuscripts the journal receives from various aspiring writers. People like me, essentially, who aren't well-known enough that magazines ask for their work. Some of the stories are really excellent, but for the most part the stuff we read is really awful. Actually, awful isn't the word. Boring is the word. Earlie this year, Stephen King published an essay titled "What Ails the Short Story," which basically sums up my feelings while I read slush. The whole article is here, but the part that I'm thinking of goes like this:

Last year, I read scores of stories that felt ... not quite dead on the page, I won’t go that far, but airless, somehow, and self-referring. These stories felt show-offy rather than entertaining, self-important rather than interesting, guarded and self-conscious rather than gloriously open, and worst of all, written for editors and teachers rather than for readers.

It's the last one that keeps getting me. I think ninety percent of the stories I've rejected, it was because they felt like the author was playing it too safe. They're not bad stories, exactly--in fact, some have been absolutely functional pieces--but they don't do anything to define their own space in the literary canon. Either the author's voice is too weak to drown out the rest of the world and induce (as Ben Marcus would have it) the literary hallucination that makes us feel really immersed in a good story, or the subject is too uninteresting to keep me enthralled, but the end result is the same. A story that's easy to put down and forget about. The problems these stories have are, I should say, problems I see in my own work. Timidness. Over-explanation. An overly soft touch. It comes from wanting to be liked. To seem nice. Pleasant.

More and more as I read, both in my every day reading and my slush reading, I find myself looking for stories that are just slightly flawed. Not so badly that they can't keep it together, but just enough that what I'm looking at doesn't feel too constructed by human hands. I look for the glorious messes, the stories where I can see that the author isn't entirely in control but is reaching a little outside of their own grasp. These are the stories that grab my attention and keep it. The ones I want to publish right away before anyone else gets the privilege.

And that's about it for now. I'm planning to spend the summer writing, and hopefully you'll see this blog updated more regularly. I'm a little sad I missed out on the primary season, but really, did the country need another uninformed political blogger? I didn't think so, either. All the same, go Obama, and that's the last I'll say on the subject.

I Turned 3O and All I Blogged Was this Lousy Cartoon

2008-04-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

Well, at least I'm not this far gone.

(Yeah, I know, this is a lame post, but I'm busy. Much to blog about later.)

New Stories

2008-03-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

I've put up a couple of new stories on the Stories I Tell blog. This semester, I'm taking two seminars that are fairly heavy on writing, one with David Plante and the other with Kelly Link. The Plante seminar is focusing heavily on a structuralist view of writing, the idea of which is that you can analyze writing from a less organic place by examining the simple facts of the events in a story. Which sounds really dull when I write it out, but is actually a wonderful and freeing way of approaching a piece. Last week, we created fabulas--time index grids outlining the basic facts of a piece--and then traded the fabulas with other people to see what would come of it when they fleshed it out. The first story, "Birds and Water," is the result of my fleshing out. I should give credit to Ramon Isao, who wrote the initial fabula this story is based on; he really did the heavy lifting with this piece. All the other stuff is just me having fun.

The second piece, "Cyril Shot: Private Eyes" is for my Kelly Link seminar, which is focusing on genre fiction pieces, specifically about transformation. Earlier in the semester, we read an essay by Samuel Delaney that talks about the various signifiers readers pick up when they read a piece of fiction, and the way that genre affects our interpretation of various sentences. He uses the example that the sentences, "Her world exploded," and, "He turned on his left side," take on entirely different meanings for a reader of science fiction than they do for someone reading more mimetic fiction. In response to these ideas, I decided to create a piece around the idea of eyes and seeing. Hence, Cyril Shot. It's much more genre than I normally work in, but I like it, and it's not bad for a day's work.

Enjoy.

Also, as an aside, my long-time friend, Miranda has put up a blog. Check it out.

Experimental Skillet

2008-03-02T07:15:00.000-08:00

One of my more interesting classes this semester is a course in experimental writing with David Plante. The original title for the class was "The Short Story," but basically every class David Plante teaches that isn't workshop becomes experimental writing. Which is lovely, actually, since it's had me writing a great deal without worrying too much about what I'm saying.

Anyway, one of the major experiments we're working on this semester is trying to find a way to use the computer to expand our writing. We're trying to see what the computer does that can't be done on a typewriter. I decided at an early point in the semester to play with using the computer to create an interactive environment, something that is more three dimensional than what you experience on the page alone. So, I expanded my skillet story and came up with this:

Every night, as was his custom, my father would come to the kitchen before my mother made dinner, pull a copper skillet out from behind all of the other pans and wave it over the other kitchenware in an act of ritual blessing. The food processor, the stick blender, the metal and rubber spatulas, the Japanese knives that promised to julienne a tin can should we ever choose to include one in a salad, and so forth. Every cooking implement we had, dad would wave the skillet back and forth above them, his lips moving in slow, silent prayer. He was not religious in any other way, my father. He was, in fact, an atheist, and he would happily expound to anyone who would listen on the ills of needless ritual. This skillet, however, he held up as a sacred object, and by the sheer act of waving it over the other cooking tools, he believed that the other tools in the kitchen would be inspired to the greatness this skillet knew.

Enjoy. If I pulled it off, you should have felt, while you read it, as if you were walking down a hallway, opening doors and peering in as you went.

And Here We Go Again

2008-01-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

The semester officially started this week, and it looks like I'm going to have a good one this time around. Workshop, especially, looks like it's going to be good. Before we got started on the semester, the teacher, Jaime Manrique, had us all submit a few pages of work to each other, just to break the ice. The stories people submitted were wonderful. Engaging and passionate. Excellent work. It's nice to look forward to reading what people turn in. Jaime, himself, has a reputation for being a tough critic, but he's fair and very supportive.

I'm also taking Yiddish this semester, which I almost dropped after the first class. I took it, thinking that since it was similar to German, I might have a good chance at picking it up quickly. Which is true on the speaking end of things. Unfortunately, on the writing end, Yiddish is written in the Hebrew alphabet, something I did not know when I signed up for the class. Being the big Goy that I am, I've never read Hebrew, except when it's transliterated. I decided to stick through it, though. I'm not sure I'll ever get the hang of the alphabet, but that's fine. I'm not looking to write for the Forward, just to be able to order at a deli. So I should be OK. Also a friend of mine in the program is taking a bilingually taught Yiddish literature class, so she and I have agreed to start meeting to help each other. I'll help her with the Yiddish lit, and she'll help me reinforce what I learn.

For those of you wishing to pick up a bit of Yiddish on your own, may I recommend starting with the Bulbes song. Mmmmm...bulbes an Zuntik!

Communist Sympathizing Little Punks

2008-01-10T17:33:00.000-08:00

My eyes are still pink. At night, I can hear them muttering their Marxist propaganda to my ears and my nose and my lips, trying to subvert the rest of my face to their insidious empire's cause. I've been inside for three days in an attempt to contain the situation, lest a plague of antibourgeois body parts rise through the city. Can't have that. It starts with the eyes. Always the eyes.

Tomorrow I break quarantine. I'm done. I've been inside for three days straight watching movies and playing interactive fiction on my computer. I don't think I can do it anymore. I need fresh air and fresh food and fresh vantage points. Literal fresh vantage points. I've been staring at the same four white walls so long I'm starting to think I live in an asylum.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Catherine Lacey...

A little earlier this week, I received a comment from my friend Lacey that she has a blog and has linked mine to hers, and I kind of thought, "I'll give her a little while to get the thing off its feet before I put it up." That was four days ago, and her blog has not only gotten off its feet, but has somehow learned to run before it learned to walk. That's not including the two other blogs she has up. Wow.

Anyway, she's a good writer and a lovely person (and apparently quite the cook/arts-and-crafts maker), so check out her blog. Lord knows it's more active than this one.

Oh, and she's funny, too. Did I mention she's funny?

Pink

2008-01-08T10:41:00.000-08:00

When I woke up this morning, I was somewhat alarmed to find I couldn't open my left eye along with my right. As I suspect is true with most of you, it is my normal routine to open both at once, but today, my right eye opened, while my left remained shut, cemented in place by unpleasant goop that had solidified to my eyelashes in the night. Unpleasant goop is, luckily, water soluble, so I was able to steam my eye open in the shower, a little like prying a stamp off of a letter. When I looked at the eye underneath it, I found it was pink, which, it turns out, is the first sign of pink eye. Yep. I'm a walking conjunctivitis bomb just waiting to induce plague.

In the meantime, I've been working on a couple of short stories for a friendly bet I have going with a friend from the program. Since neither of us had been writing over the break, we agreed on New Year's Eve to write a story in a week and then hand it to the other. Didn't have to be a good story or a long story or anything. It just had to be a story. So I wrote a story about a skillet. Here it is.

Skillet

Every night before my mother made dinner, my father would pull a copper skillet out from behind all of the other pans and wave it over the other kitchenware in an act of ritual blessing. The food processor, the stick blender, the metal and rubber spatulas, the Japanese knives that promised to julienne a tin can should we ever choose to include one in a salad, and so forth. Every cooking implement we had, dad would wave the skillet back and forth above them, his lips moving in slow, silent prayer. My father wasn’t religious in any other way. He loathed church and aspired to atheism (though I think a smidgeon of belief still lingered from his Catholic upbringing), but this one thing he would do with ritual exactness at the same time and in the same way every night.

The skillet was an ancient thing, thin looking and dented all over from years of use. If you glanced at it in a junk shop, this skillet, you’d take it for junk destined for the melting pits. But its weight in your hands had presence, the way a stone left by a glacier has presence on a landscape. The skillet was handed down from man to man on my father’s side for ten generations, and possibly more. It had been hammered out of a single chunk of copper that one of our relatives had dug from the ground and purified in his own smelting pot. The date hammered onto the underside of the pot read 12 February, 1706, and next to it, faded almost to the point of illegibility was his name, Lazar. You could just make it out by tracing your finger along the bottom. Since then, the skillet had passed from hand to hand in our family.

There were a thousand stories surrounding this skillet. The family favorite—not mine, but the family’s—was that the skillet had cooked Marie Antoinette’s last meal, a plate of savory crepes, when she was held away from the mob at the Tuileries. I always thought that story smacked of a tall tale. How would this skillet have escaped the mob in Lazar’s possession or his son’s or grandson’s after the revolution? And anyway, who the hell was Marie Antoinette that she should eat crepes while the people around her made due off root vegetables? The best story about the skillet was its inclusion in the accidental death of my great-grandfather’s cousin Albert. One October evening, while pregnant with their third son, his wife Alana woke in the middle of the night in need of something to get her back to sleep. She was bringing a pot of milk and sherry to a slow boil in the skillet when someone grabbed her from behind. She wheeled around, grabbing as she did so the only thing she could think to defend herself with, that being the skillet, and smacked the person behind her in the skull with it. Cousin Albert died of a concussion in St. Anne’s hospital later that evening. The impression of his head is still visible along the bottom edge of the skillet to this day.

Since that night, it was considered taboo in my family to use the skillet as a cooking implement. My great-grandfather refused to use it out of deference to his cousin (it was all he could do, in fact, to convince Alana not to sell the skillet for the scrap money), and the tradition continued after that. Stripped of common use, the skillet took on a kind of religious power. When family would come to visit, they would ask to see Lazar’s skillet and they would hold it up in the light and run their fingers along the name on the bottom and the dent and the spot of oxidation that people in my family insist is remnants of the sauce from the Widow Capet’s last meal.

There was only one meal I ever saw cooked in the skillet. Beef liver, thinly sliced and sautéed rare with red kale and garlic—allegedly Cousin Albert’s favorite meal, which I always thought spoke poorly of Cousin Albert—followed by crepes suzette. Dad cooked this meal once a year, on Valentine’s Day, and in the event that there was a birth in the family. Afterward, he washed it and dried it and held it out to us to inspect before he set it back into the place where it lived year-round, at the back of the cabinet.

Arlington

2008-01-06T20:39:00.000-08:00

I'm back in New York. Actually, I was back several days ago, but somewhere between here and there, I picked up one mother of a cold, which has had me waylaid for the better part of a week. Finally I'm feeling well enough to compose a thought or two.

The trip to Arlington was a good one. It's been a long time since my mother and I took a road trip--at least since college--and I'd forgotten what an enjoyable travel companion she is. We spent most of the ride just chatting away about everything. Haven't done that in a while, so it was good to catch up. Arlington, itself, is a strange place for me. Since I was twelve, I've been to the national cemetery for more funerals than any other; in fact, I'm pretty sure the first funeral I ever went to was there. I have three family members buried there. My grandfather and grandmother and my Aunt Marie, who died in the first Gulf War. As my mom and I drove through the town, I realized I could pick out landmarks from the various funerals, like the diner we ate in after my grandfather's funeral and the military housing we stayed in on Fort Meyer while we waited for my aunt's body to arrive.

It's strange to me to have a relationship with a cemetery, especially this one, but I suppose there was a time when all people had personal relationships with their cemeteries. When they dug their own graves and said their own last rites. I do like the funerals at Arlington. There's so much ceremony in them, so much respect for the dead. The other funerals I've been to were swift assembly-line affairs. A quick in and out. I don't care for those. I want a funeral with some thought to it.

After that, we went out for dinner with the family--many of whom I hadn't seen in years--and then drove home.

Und dann...

When I got home, I was happy to see one of the books I recently bought from Amazon has arrived. That would be Low Life, a portrait of 19th century New York desolates and delinquents. I'm looking forward to starting on it. I may have to vary between that and the other books I'm reading. One is Pandora's Hope, which is essays on the reality of science studies. I picked it up while looking for a book on neuroscience and wasn't able to put it down in the bookstore. The other is Transactions in a Foreign Currency, short stories by Deborah Eisenberg, which came on a recommendation from a friend and hasn't been great, but hasn't been bad, either.

Meanwhile, in the last day or two, I downloaded and played a short interactive fiction game that made me remember an earlier plan I'd had to write a choose-your-own adventure book. I thought of this years ago, while walking home. I would write a real book--a really in-depth and literary book--that would also include a path you could choose yourself. As with choose-your-owns, it would be in second person, but unlike them, there would be no way to simply die. If you made a misstep, or made a decision that led you to a dead-end, it would take you back to the beginning of the book and you could start over again, or just go back to the page you left off from. Alternatively, if I wanted to get really complicated, I could write it so there were no dead-ends, just alternate possible endings. Either way, the thought had me really excited.

And with that, it's a quarter after one and the day has finally caught up with me sufficiently that I'm a little sleepy. So I'm off to bed, in the hopes tonight won't be as crazy and full of fever dreams as last night was.

PS

I've edited my FAQ to fill out a couple of the questions at the end, which I think petered off a bit in the first version of it. Can't have petering around here...no sir. Peter-free, this place is.

New Year, Slightly Used

2008-01-02T05:10:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year. There. I said it. I'm done.

The holidays really seemed to just zip by me this year. It's like they just sort of drove up next to me on the highway, asked for directions, and then left without saying goodbye or thanks or any of that. Christmas was like any other day with the family. New Years was like any other party where I didn't know anyone (which, these days, is most parties I go to). They've all been just days, like any other day. Which, I suspect, has always been what they are. But still.

In the meantime, I think I've figured out the source of my writing block. Essentially, I'm not writing because I keep thinking I ought to be writing. It's a little like lying in bed, trying to get to sleep when you're an insomniac. The more you lie there thinking, "I'm not sleeping," the less likely you are to sleep. So. I'm not writing. That's fine. I'm not the only one. Apparently, a lot of us haven't been so productive over break. And there's three weeks of break left in which to work.

And that's about it for today. I'm back in Pennsylvania getting ready to head off to Arlington to attend my grandmother's burial with my mother. After this trip, I swear I'm not leaving New York for another month, at least.

No Money Fun

2007-12-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

I promised myself I would write something today, because I haven't been writing and that's, well, a problem for me. I've been reading plenty, and making the most of my break, but no writing. Which is shit, really, because this is the best possible time I could have to sit back and work. No class work. No job responsibilities. Really nothing to do with my time but write. Or revise. Or blog. Which is about the lowest form of writing I could stoop to, and so here I am.

Aside from not writing, I've been enjoying my time off from classes. I've shuttled back and forth between here and Philly a couple of times, spent days hanging around with old friends, drunk enough coffee to bathe an infant. And there's at least three weeks left for adventuring and so much to see.

I realized the other day, after I spent a few hours wandering around the Met with a friend and didn't manage to scratch the surface of their exhibits, that there's really no excuse to ever get bored in this city. There's always something to see or do, much of which doesn't cost a dime. Parks, museums, art exhibits in public buildings. My friend Amanda found a store that has six floors of nothing but expensive textiles that will be lovely if I'm ever inclined to fondle the other half's linens for an hour or two (which happens more often than you'd think from a guy who doesn't know his own thread count).

One of the things that always frustrated me about Chicago is that it never seemed like I could get away with any no-money fun, unless I resorted to harassing people on the street (and I did from time to time). For all that NYC deserves its reputation as an expensive place to live--and it is--there's a nice balance it strikes in offering fun things to do for nothing. It's an aspect of this city I really love and need to take advantage of more often. Note to self.

Right. As blog entries go, I think I'll file that as one of the lesser ones, but for now, I need to go to sleep. Until next time...um...insert witty sign-off here.

FAQ

2007-12-19T11:01:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine in the Columbia writing program has an FAQ section on his Web site (that's Frequently Asked Questions, for those of you born in and around the nineteenth century), and I have to say, it makes me a little bit jealous of him. Mostly because it comprises, in nearly its entirety, the same questions I have on my Questions I Never Get Asked list. For example:

What do you read?
I’m by no means a fast reader though I do manage an average of 50 books a year, most being literary fiction, classics and contemporary alike. See Reading List for suggested titles.

Practically nobody asks me that when they find out I'm a writer. Nobody! It's a sin, frankly, because I have some pretty good taste in literature (The few questions on his list that I do get asked a lot are also on my Questions that Annoy Me list. Like, "Where do you get your ideas?" From my brain, typically.) Anyway, after much deliberation, and a few late-night conversations--possibly/probably including alcohol--I have decided that this blog needs an FAQ. So here they are, the questions everyone asks me all the time. In no particular order.

1. How do you spell that?
It's spelled R-O-S, as in Samuel-S, as in Samuel-I. As in, "Martini and Rossi," which is a vermouth company. Alternatively, you could think of it as being like Carlo Rossi, the maker of fine jug wines. Carlo is, in fact, my uncle from a somewhat estranged side of the family. We don't see him much, but I like to support the family business.

2. Paper or plastic?
Plastic, typically. I know it's not the most environmentally correct way to go on this particular question, but I find I have more use for plastic bags than I do for paper. I can store halved onions in plastic, for example, or any fruits and vegetables that would otherwise do poorly in my fridge. I've also made good use of plastic bags in place of bubble wrap for sending out delicate packages, whereas all I've ever done with paper bags is add them to the trash pile. Or, on occasion, made them into puppets for live-action versions of Fandango commercials.

3. How was your trip?
My trip was probably fine. I don't think I've ever taken a trip that didn't qualify as strictly fine. Which is to say, I've never had a trip take any disastrous turns, but I've also never had a trip so free of basic annoyances that it qualified as transcendent or even great. Most of the time, the trip does get me there and back, though, so I can't really complain. There was this one trip with my friend Holly, though, that went, not exactly disastrously, but kind of berserk.

We were driving from North Carolina to Philly together for the holidays, with a stopover somewhere in Delaware. Newark, I think. Somewhere in Virginia, about two hours south of Richmond, her car stalled and wouldn't get started again. Holly called AAA, and in short order, we were met by two mechanics--one large, who we named the Big Guy, the other small, who we called the Little Guy. The mechanics took a look at the car and said something very necessary had died. I think it was the alternator, but I wouldn't know. So the alternator died and the nearest alternator was two weeks away. We asked for a ride back to their shop to make a phone call, and they told us if we did that, one of us would have to ride in the car. Which was on back of the tow truck. Since neither Holly or I thought we'd be able to live with ourselves if the other person died while on back of the truck, we both decided to ride in the car. It was a little like tailgating at high speed. The two mechanics, seemingly oblivious to the danger Holly and I were in, sped down the highway and off onto a few winding back roads, until we were at their mechanic shop. Once there, Holly and I determined somehow that our best bet was to get one of the guys to take us to Richmond to catch a train. The Little Guy, whose name was Shorty, as luck would have it, volunteered for the task, and off we went. This time inside the cab of the car. Upon arriving in Richmond, we couldn't find the train station, but were able to find the airport. There, we tipped Shorty and thanked him, then bought a plane ticket at the last minute for Philly. This was back in the day when you could still buy a last-minute plane ticket. And with that, the adventure ended.

But yeah, other than that, my trip was fine.

4. Why do you ask?
No particular reason. I was just interested. Really. More often than not, unless the thing I'm asking about is really dire, like "Do I have skin cancer?" or really official, like "Where do I sign?" I'm just asking because I was interested. If you have to ask me why I'm asking, odds are good, this is the answer.

5. What's up?
Not much. What's up with you? Unless there's something madly exciting happening to me, I'd rather hear what's going on with you. Hence the infrequency with which I update this blog. And the number of women I've dated who claim I never tell them anything about myself. Honestly, I'm not that interesting.

6. Are you hungry?
I'm not particularly hungry at the moment, but I could probably eat. I think I've actually come to this answer out of a need to be vague in response to a vague and kind of leading question. The way it goes in my family is that they ask me if I'm hungry, and I say yes, they immediately feed me when I get home. If I say no, they've been known to delay dinner. Which is really the exact opposite of what I want at any given time. Unless I'm really starving, in which case I'll just fix myself a snack, I don't need to be fed the immediate instant I get hungry. So I always find it best to cop to having, not a sense of hunger exactly, but a general disposition towards eating. That hedges my bets nicely.

7. How long are you going to keep this joke going?
I guess that's really it, but in truth, I could keep going for as long as it takes for the joke to stop being funny. And then some. It takes a long time before I cut off a thought that's made me laugh. I mean, take this one. It continues to amuse me so much that I've actually gone back, now, weeks later and added to it. Because there was unfinished tomfoolery to be had, and I cannot have that. That's how dedicated I am to a joke that's only modestly funny to me. Imagine what I do when the joke really gets me off. Go on...imagine. I'll wait.

And there you go. The questions I get asked with the most frequency.

In Philly

2007-12-18T17:44:00.000-08:00

My semester ended a couple of days ago, leaving me with six weeks to read and write and get ready for the next semester. At least, I think it's six weeks. I mean to spend this time actively preparing for next semester, finishing up a few stories and getting started on the novel I've had brewing in my head for a while. One can only hope it'll go over well. In the meantime, I have time to enjoy NYC a bit before I have to start working again.

The semester ended well, by the way. I think I'm finally getting the hang of this grad school thing. Which is easier said than done, really. It took me most of the semester to realize I was having a hard time adjusting to the change of scenery and the new pacing of my life. After six years, I'm not used to school anymore. I'm definitely not used to being surrounded by writers. Honestly, and this was pretty dumb of me in retrospect, I thought I'd just plop right down into a new city, new life, new everything and just merge without a blink. As it turns out, I needed a bit of time, but I think I have the hang of it, at last. I'm looking forward to next semester.

Family news...
My grandmother died over the weekend. Apparently, she hadn't been eating much of anything for a while (something I noticed over Thanksgiving), and it finally took its toll on her. Truthfully, I suspect she decided it was time to let go, and so she did. She died happy, and peacefully, and she died with most of her faculties intact. Apparently, one of her last requests was for a glass of scotch. Grandma liked scotch, and I suspect she just wanted to get a last taste in before she went.

Personally, I'm relatively OK. Most of the time, deaths in my family don't bother me so much. I don't know exactly why, but I like to think I just see death as a part of life. Something I couldn't control and wouldnt'. Plus which, we've been expecting this to come for a long time. A few years ago, grandma's cardiologist gave her a prognosis of just a couple of months, which she shoved in his face and turned into three good years. I think my grandmother just decided she'd had a good run of it and let go. Hopefully, I'll have that much control over it when my time comes.

Anyway, I'm in Philly tonight. The actual funeral isn't until January, but we're holding a viewing tomorrow, and I thought I should be here for it. Half the reason I came out to the East Coast was so that I could be with my family when they need me. I figure I should make the best of it.

It's strange. My grandfather--her husband--died around this time, almost to the day. I remember it started me writing a novel I had been putting off for a while (and then subsequently never finished). Maybe now I should finish it.

So that's that. Next time, I'll have an FAQ section for you guys. That's right...I get some frequently asked questions.

It's Finally Here

2007-11-28T07:22:00.000-08:00

I'm not even going to bother with words for this one. The video below speaks for itself.

I take that back. I'll bother with a few words to say that the large version is up here.

My Disembodied Head

2007-11-27T08:09:00.000-08:00

I finally got off my ass and shot some footage of myself for the Fetus Joe movie and sent it off to Sam, who then chroma-keyed my body out of the shot and left my head just floating there in the doorway. Like so:

It doesn't look like much now, but when it's in motion, my head is a powerhouse like you wouldn't believe. Oh, but you'd better believe it, because if you don't, my head will unleash pain upon you like you never believed was possible.

Anyway, I have to write some narration for the piece, and then the completed video will be, um, complete.

In the meantime, classes have resumed here. A few opportunities have risen and passed, and a few stories have started gestating in my head. I've started making mead to ferment over the winter, which has begun to settle in beautifully, in those wonderful chilly days that make a city foggy and grey and beautifully industrial feeling. I can't wait for snow.

Aaaand, We're Back.

2007-11-22T18:12:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, I had a blog called Here There Be Whales, and it was a pretty good blog. Made some people laugh. Made other people cry. Sometimes it did both. Usually by accident. Then I started on this whole crazy graduate school what to make myself a writer, and I stopped writing regularly. Which is odd, isn't it?

I think so, too, so I've decided to start updating this page more regularly again. There's a couple of reasons for this. One is that I'm living in a new city, which means a lot of new experiences I really should be sorting through. The other is that I'm honestly a little blocked in my writing. Haven't had a new idea in a while, and I'm kind of hoping writing here will help me start writing out there again. And finally, there's the fact that my dad has started a blog called Pan Zen Zero as a way of bridling his rage at the current state of American politics. It's pretty funny.

Anyway, send me your weirdnesses and your ephemera. I need things to write about.

More Fetusi

2007-10-15T12:43:00.000-07:00

Just a brief entry.

The semifinal cut of the Fetus Joe movie is up online at Sam's Web site. The clip he's waiting on is of me, so I need to get off my ass and do it. If anyone knows someone with a video camera in NYC and a tripod, send them my way!

Fetus Joe vs. the World!

Rumor has is John Williams is signed on to do the soundtrack.

Fetus Joe in 3 D

2007-10-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

I know I've been conspicuously absent from this blog for the last month or so, which sucks for the two people out there still reading this thing. Sorry, but as it turns out, there's actually a lot of work that goes into school. Something along the lines of three or four hundred pages of reading a week, not counting the stories I read for my workshop.

That's not to say I'd rather be back doing nothing at a desk all day...not a bit. I'm just a little bit tapped, is all. If I'm being honest, I'm starting to question whether I belong here, really, as a writer or as a person. Which is silly, but is something that weighs on me.

Enough of that. While I've been staring at my screens and wondering if anything I write is actually any good, Sam has been working on the Fetus Joe movie, which is undeniably good. He's got some hack on to write voice over narration for a good deal of it. Some kind of stream of consciousness bullshit...who knows what these Hollywood desk-jockeys write about these days? Anyway, the rough cut is up at Sam's blog, and rumor has it, there's footage out there of an exploding cat. Here's the rough cut. The aspect ratio's wrong, but I'm pretty impressed by the fact that he got the rubber fetus puppet to defy gravity like that. Also that he made a rubber fetus puppet...that's a skill you can take to the bank. Or David Cronenberg. One or the other.

Good deeds

2007-09-11T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is the second part to my special two-part September 11 post. I normally don't commemorate this day at all, but Sue sent this to me, and I like it. So read on.

NEW YORK - On Sept. 11, Jacob Sundberg of San Antonio has pledged to make eye contact and smile at everyone he meets. Kaitlin Ulrich will bring goody baskets to the police and fire departments in and around Philadelphia. And 100 volunteers from New York – 9/11 firefighters and family members among them – are going to Groesbeck, Texas, to rebuild a house destroyed by a tornado last December.

This is a minute sampling of the hundreds of thousands of people who have pledged to memorialize those killed on 9/11 by doing something good for others.

The heroic acts of all those killed trying to save others that September morning has spawned a growing grass-roots movement. The goal is to ensure that future generations remember not just the horror of the attacks, but also the extraordinary outpouring of humanity during the days, weeks, and months that followed.

"It was the worst possible day imaginable, and in some ways, a remarkable day, too, in the way in which people responded," says David Paine, cofounder of myGoodDeed.org. "We need to rekindle the way we came together in the spirit of 9/11: It would be almost as much a tragedy to lose that lesson."

Sept. 11 has inspired dozens of philanthropic efforts – from groups dedicated to building memorials to foundations designed to improve education in the Middle East. But myGoodDeed has a more universal goal: to turn 9/11 into a day dedicated to doing good – from small, simple things like Lisa Scheive's pledge to help stranded turtles cross the road in Pompano Beach, Fla., to lifesaving efforts, such as John Feal's decision in New York to donate one of his kidneys to help a seriously ill 9/11 worker.

The idea has been endorsed by members of Congress, and at myGoodDeed's urging, President Bush for the first time this year included a call for volunteering in his annual 9/11 proclamation.

After major disasters, Americans have historically tapped a deep reserve of compassion and reached out to others. But in the months and years that follow, those compassionate and civic urges tend to recede. Studies at Harvard's Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America found that in as few as five months after 9/11, most Americans had gone back to their daily lives and were not more engaged as they said they'd hoped to be. Part of the goal of turning 9/11 into a national day of service is to remind Americans of the inherent joy of giving and to hopefully spur volunteering and charitable acts throughout the year.

"I don't know of any research that's been done on one day of service, but studies have shown that people who do volunteering in high school are more likely to volunteer throughout their lives," says Thomas Sander, executive director of the Saguaro Seminar.

The idea of turning 9/11 into a day of service, charity, and good deeds came from the family and friends of one man: Glenn Winuk, a volunteer fireman and lawyer who worked a block and a half from the World Trade Center. After he helped evacuate his Broadway law offices, he grabbed a medic's bag and ran toward the smoke pouring from the South Tower. That's where his remains were found after the towers fell. Mr. Paine and Glenn's brother Jay had been friends for years. They decided that turning 9/11 into a day of service was best way to memorialize Glenn.

"It completely reflects the way my brother lived his life, and it also specifically reflects how he died," says Mr. Winuk, myGoodDeed.org cofounder. "He laid his life on the line for other people that day."

In 2002, Paine and Winuk sent e-mails to friends and family and suggested they do a good deed, such as donate a day's pay on 9/11. Then the idea evolved, and they founded myGoodDeed.org. In 2004, 100,000 visited their website and pledged to do a good deed on 9/11. This year, those pledging number more than 250,000.

"A lot of people don't know what to do on 9/11," says Paine. "This hits people in their heart and their soul. It connects with something that's fundamental."

I like the idea of taking this day to remember the good things that people did for each other on it. Particularly in light of what's followed, of our government's cynical attempt to use that tragedy as an excuse to push forward its agenda in Iraq. It's good to remember that, for a brief moment, we dropped all of our bullshit and showed our best. I'm not sure what good deed I'm going to do, but I'll do something.

Jakal is a Wily Dog, and a Cold Lover

2007-09-06T07:13:00.000-07:00

So I've survived my first week of classes. It started last Thursday with a class on mosaic literature and ended yesterday evening with a lecture on Elizabeth Bishop. Suffice to say, I love my classes, and I'm a big fan of my fellow classmates. In my first workshop, I volunteered to present first, which meant I had a story due in two days. Beyond that, there's not a whole lot to tell. I could go into further depth, but really, do you want a blow by blow of my first week? No, I didn't think so.

What you will find interesting is the videos that Sam has been making. Well, you'll possibly not find them so interesting as amusing. It seems there is a Jackal loose in the Virginia Stage Company, and boy, is he ever causing problems. Here's the first bit of video evidence. And as though that wasn't bad enough, he's started breaking hearts. (Here are Sam's two blogs on the subject. Blog 1. Blog 2.) Rumor has it, there might be some professional ramifications for Jackal's actions...Virginia Stage apparently frowns on interspecies relationships among its employees.

And That's How I Got Here

2007-08-28T17:53:00.000-07:00

Where to begin?

So much has happened over the last three weeks. To start with, I've found a place. The leaf in the wind approach that I decided to take worked out. In the eleventh hour, the university came through with an apartment a block or so from campus. I'm sitting in it now, and it really is just a fantastic place. Large and well-lit with plenty to see and do all around me and a friendly room mate from Texas who is probably more daunted here than I am. It's an apartment I could live in for a while. Really. I love it.

So, I found a place. And I sold my stuff in Chicago--as much of it as I could bear to part with, which turned out to be a lot of it--and packed up the rest into a little corner of my studio, where I stared at it and contemplated how odd it is that six years of my life, messy and crude and convoluted as it has been, tucked so neatly into a square space.

When that was done, I said some goodbyes. The night it stormed so badly the city blacked out, we went to Joey's Brickhouse and Greg, the owner, invited us in to sit and drink for free by candlelight. So we did. And we ate donuts and had a great time until it was so late I couldn't keep my eyes open. And the next night, Ian hosted us at his place, and I did the same. And on the third night, I did not rest, but went to karaoke with friends who were noble and good enough to brave frat boys singing "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" in horrible, screeching tones.

When I had said my goodbyes, I got into a van with a guy who was also going my way. And we drove. On the day we left, an accident delayed us three hours. Then traffic in Chicago delayed us another two, and for all intents and purposes, it seemed like the city was doing everything in its power to keep me from leaving. Which a part of me kept wishing it had. Wishing I'd get one more day to enjoy it, to spend with friends, to bike around the lake. When my things were packed and we started to drive, the guy I was going with asked if I was sad to be going, and I couldn't really answer because if I had, I wouldn't have been able to keep myself from crying.

We drove two days cross country, and when we got to Philly, I dropped my stuff off at my grandparents' house. My apartment here, while nice, is still occuppied by a guy. He's moving out on Friday, but the university doesn't know that yet, so they think he'll be here for another three weeks. Until he tells them otherwise, I don't get to move my stuff in. So I dropped most of it off in Philly and will get it back later. Until then, all I have are my clothes, my computer, my air mattress, and my bedding. I've moved to places with less.

So I keep reminding myself that tomorrow is orientation and that a week from today classes start and that riding this current has taken me far and that it will take me farther (hmmm...by a curious typo, that phrase nearly became "it will take me father." Perhaps I should warn him...and get my accent checked).

Well-Educated Hobo

2007-08-20T13:32:00.000-07:00

As the time for me to move to NYC gets closer, I should be getting more and more frightened, but somehow I'm not. I still don't have a place to live and I still don't know exactly what I'm going to do for money and I still don't know...

That's right, I don't have a place to live yet, though I'm moving in a week. I thought I had a place lined up. When I left NYC, I had visited a broker and set up a place to live, but by the time the landlords had processed my application, it all fell through. They had given the place to someone else. There was another apartment, my broker explained, and they would give me that one if I wanted it, but it was smaller and the layout was lousy. And from there it stretched on for weeks, with me on the phone with my broker three times a day, receiving pictures of apartments and promises of leases, maybe. My heart slowly sank and this deal slowly, but surely started to feel worse and worse.

Really, all the time gave me was a chance to think and to resort my priorities. What did I really want in an apartment? What was I going to have when I got to NYC. How are my finances going to be over the next year? Then an opportunity came up. Some friends of my friends here needed a room mate, so I e-mailed them to see about moving in. I was two days too late, but it set me to thinking. I like living alone, but living with room mates means my rent wouldn't be as high. My place would be furnished. I would have people to explore with, if I want. It would be a good way to start my time in NYC. So I called my broker and told him that I'm going it alone. He instantly offered to refund my deposit and said he understood.

So that's where I am. Scouring the listings on Craigslist looking for people to live with near me. I don't have a place yet. I might have only a sofa to sleep on when I get to NYC. And yet I'm not frightened. OK...I'm a little frightened, but with the sense that this will all work out. It will all work out. At this point, I've been through so much crap that has finally worked out in the end that I have nothing but faith that I will find a place. Even if it isn't the perfect place, it will be better than paying a broker to find me the place I didn't really want.

In the meantime, I'm left to marvel at the postings on Craigslist. Postings that say things like this one:

"Seeking Attractive Female for Mutual Benefits (Rent)
I am a successful professional that works in one of NYC's most prominent firms. I am willing to assist with rent in exchange for benefits. The more we click, the more generous I get. 420 friendly a plus.

I look forward to hearing from you soon. If interested, please email a pic."

And I'm left to reel at the disturbing probability that he'll find exactly what he's looking for. I shudder to think.