Let Your Flag Fly

It's time to talk about social justice in America. Not politics or religion, but justice.

Earlier this week, I changed my Facebook icon to a red-and-pink equals sign. Why? Because I support marriage between consenting adults in America. And then I saw a number -- a handful -- too many! -- supposedly thoughtful individuals poo-poo on that choice of mine to act. These weren't even individuals who disagreed with my politics, if you want to call marriage a type of politics, which (for the record) I've believed for the past decade that government should get out of marriage and leave it to religion, handing out only civil unions to deal with the intricacies of health care, custodial, and survivorship rights.

These were people who decided to poo-poo on my choice to fly a flag because that flag appeared on Facebook and Facebook flags can only be "empty gestures." In some cases going so far as to say they are "liberal empty gestures." Implying that conservatives somehow don't use Facebook in a similarly empty manner.

If anyone wants to poo-poo on my flag-flying actions, then you have my pity, but not my admiration.

Is it an "empty" social media gesture? No. It's not. I vote -- and have voted regularly since I was 18. I take action to educate on the issues before I go to the polling station. I donate money to political/social causes even though I'm in such a position courtesy of grad school and teaching at a large university without a Full Faculty position as to qualify me for public health care assistance -- which I don't accept. I've stood up for my gay and lesbian friends since I was a teenager in high school when I told my social group that it was not right to "out" one of our friends no matter what they "thought" him to be; that we should respect what he vocalized, not repeat our own assumptions, because he had his reasons for choosing to say what he did no matter what we "suspected." (Something which he later, personally, thanked me for. Something which I wish I could have done for so many other young men and women in this country had I had the chance.)

Or are my flag-flying actions, as others say, a "worthless" gesture because so many people "don't know what it means"? I hope that action + ignorance, generates discussion and awareness among those who don't know. Who want to know. Who need to know. Who need to see their walls turn pink and red and ask, what the heck is that? NPR news reports statistics that claim, based on population age, in ten years the majority of eligible American voters will favor gay marriage. (And youth have registered and voted in OVERWHELMING numbers for the past five years. I don't expect that to change.) It's time to talk about the inevitable.

And for all of those who continue to think that my actions -- my delight in seeing the majority of my FB wall turn pink and red -- is "empty." I say three things: (1) You're cynical and pessimistic: how can I possibly hold you in my heart the way I hold hope for the future in my heart? (2) When George Takei asks you to do something that is within your means and abilities, you do it; you wear your nerd-badge with pride. And (3) you're wrong. You're wrong because you assume. You aren't willing to look case-by-case, you're only willing to make assumptions based on the lowest common denominator of human behavior. This individual act, my actions, are a truth. If you can't see that based on your assumptions or cynicism, or pessimism, then you are, simply, wrong about me.

If you want to send me a Facebook friend request, I'm https://www.facebook.com/eileen.wiedbrauk.

Jesus in goal for the Wings

Inspired by theLiz's post "Pet My Peeves," I'm sharing my top ten list of personal pet peeves.  Perhaps it's appropriate that this is today's topic, because for the past 24 hours I've had "We Build This City" by Jefferson Starship (or were they just Starship by then?) stuck in my head.  We built this city ... we built this city on ... rock ... and ... roll. Built this city.  Sigh. Marcone plays the mamba, listen to the ra-di-o. Don't you remember, we built this city ... we built this city on ... rock ... and ... roll. Now, pet peeves:

(10) Weak hand shakers. Particularly people who don't actually grasp your hand, but sort of press your hand between their thumb and first few fingers. That's not a handshake, people, that's how you pick up a sandwich.

(9) Women who wear leggings as pants. They are not pants any more than panyhose are pants. Cover your crotch with an additional garment. See yesterday's post about the jegging for more more clarification.

(8) Men with excessive chest hair who go jogging shirtless. For you, I have one word: manscaping.

(7) People who ask what you're going to do with your degree. I'm willing to cut some slack to those who ask "What are you planning to do after graduation?"  It's the ones who phrase it, "And what do you think you'll do with an English degree?" that I want to smack.

(6) Walking down the isle to Pacobel's Cannon. As "classy" as classical music is, and as "original" as you think you are to not walk down the isle to the Wedding March, you are still bordering on pretentious. Then again, not everyone can be as cool as these people:

(5) Close talkers and strangers who hug. If you grew up in Europe, maybe I'll cut you some slack, but otherwise, if I have to lean away from you to feel like we can have a conversation without necking, then I don't want to have a conversation with you, period. Also, I don't like hugging strangers. Awkward. If I hug, it's because I care about you. If I just met you, get the fuck out of my personal space.

(4) Overgrown toenails. And/or nasty toenails which are put on display via open toed shoes or sandals. If you're a dude, trim the nails down. There is no reason your toenail should be way, way out there overhanging your toe. Same goes for women. Except for women I'd like to add an extra step: if the world can see your toes, the toenails should be painted. Even if it's just a light shade, even if it's slightly chipped. It's amazing how much less gross you'll look for this small effort.

(3) People who, when speaking aloud, pronounce the letters OMG.  "Oh-em-gee, guys!"  Gag me.  Come on peeps, it stands for Oh My God! Know that before you exclaim! Unless you're doing it for comic effect --which can be pretty hillarious, I admit-- just say the damn words. It won't take you any longer than pronouncing the letters.

(2) When the officiant at a wedding announces the new couple as something like Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Drundle.  Take your husband's last name or don't -- I really don't care if you want to go through the hassle / paperwork nightmare of legally changing your name -- but for crying out loud, Mrs. Jacob?  Five minutes ago that woman had a first name -- her own first name -- there was absolutely no need to make her borrow her husband's.  You two may now be a couple in every respect that matters to the social, religious and governmental powers that be, but you are still two people.  Your husband does not absorb you into his being when you say 'I do.'  So, no.  No, she's not chattel.  She is not of Mr. Jacob Drundle; she is his partner.  So do us all a favor, and announce the couple as Mr. and Mrs. Drundle.

(1) Graffiti (or bumperstickers) that say "Jesus Saves." There's proabably 30 miles of US-23 in Michigan where someone has spray painted "Jesus Saves" on a concrete pylon of each overpass.  I also once got stuck behind a semi where someone had written the phrase in the dirt on the back of the truck.  I have no problem with the expression of religious sentiment in this regard, what I take issue with is that "saves," in this usage, is a transitive verb and it needs to take a frickin object! Give Jesus something to save -- don't leave him hanging! Unless Jesus is in goal for the Red Wings, he can't just "save." The verb does not work like that, people! Jesus can misuse grammar however he likes, but you have no such excuse.

Care to leave a comment and share your pet peeves? Or, if you write your own post, leave a link in the comments section and let me know.

Meanwhile.  I've still got that song stuck in my head.

• We Built This City by Starship

More Starship music on iLike

Marcone plays the mamba, listening to the ra-di-o. ...Don't you remember ... we built this city ... built this city on ... rock ... and ... roll.

Tales of Woe, Part 9

I thought that with the procurement of the half curtain that I wouldn't see any more of my neighbor's stupidity. I was wrong.

With my protective curtain up I couldn't see my neighbors but I could smell cigarette smoke. This was annoying because I have several fans pulling air into my apartment so that I can run the AC only when it gets over 85F. Annoying, yes, but not worth dropping water balloons on their heads or anything as the smoke smell usually lasts only a couple of minutes.

Then I started to smell charcoal grill smell. Which was really odd because the complex doesn't let us grill at all since the rash of apartment fires in town that happened a couple years ago. At first it was no gas grills within X feet of the building, then no grills at all.

Next, a large vehicle is idling in my street. This causes me to get up and look over my half curtain. I've been towed once from in front of my own damn apartment so I'm kinda nervous about getting towed again.

Is it the tow truck? Nope. Firetruck.

What the @^%&!

So I do the nosy neighbor thing, going from one window to the next to try and get a better view of what's going on and/or see if my building is burning. Seriously, right. That's when I see that the hose has been turned on the construction dumpster that's taking up four parking spaces.

Inside the construction dumpster is a guy in full fireman gear digging around while the other guy hoses down all the material that is and/or could be burning.

Great. Thanks neighbors! I really appreciate it when you start fires in really large dumpsters!

Somehow this is more unnerving than finding the charred skeleton of what could only have been a sleeper sofa at the end of my street. At least with the sofa skeleton, I got the impression that it was lit on fire so that someone could watch it burn; the dumpster, however, just happened.

Even More Awesomely Bad

If you couldn't get enough of it in yesterday's post (and who could ever have enough of this stuff?) there's a blog that runs year round just showcasing really bad cover art. Check out Good Show Sir -- well worth 15 minutes of un-productivity.

Also, Fantasy Cafe did their own one shot post with some interesting observations.

Psychos

You have to read this short bit of reporting by the Gawker.  It is the email exchange from a potential (psycho) intern applicant.

My New York friend sent the link to me and, once I picked my jaw up off the desk, I advised her that (as she is likely in a similar industry to that of the job posting) she should wait 26 hours to reply to any potential intern applicant questions to weed this psycho out.  She replied that they get so swamped by would-be intern emails that she rarely finds a reason/chance to reply.  Good.  In this case, that's fabulous.

AWP Panels and General Thoughts

I've been trying to get my feet back under me since I returned from the conference.  It's been a slow process. 

I spent a lot of my time at bookfair talking to people who approached the Third Coast table, but I also went to seven or eight panels and a couple of readings.  Panel talks were on the teaching the literary fantastic, the future of the literary magazine, something on flash fiction, how to get real world experience while still a grad student, folklore & modern writing, and "genre" in the MFA and beyond.  One other panel that bombed (name & content withheld out of courtesy).  Oh, and I attempted to go to the panel on novelists teaching novel writing -- I'll explain that "attempt" today or tomorrow.

If anyone made it to the one that was supposedly about vampires and zombie literature (aka Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley) -- "Byronic Vampires and Melancholy Green Men: Harnessing Genre for Literary Use" -- let me know how it was.  I thought about going but considering the first line of the panel description was "Perhaps no word can be more anathema to literature than genre" made me NOT want to go -- because, fuck you, there is genre literature out there.  "Realism" does not literature make.  So when lunch with a friend ran long, I wasn't particularly heart broken to miss the panel.

One thing I noticed this year was an epidemic of panel-leaving.  People in the audience walked out of panels after fifteen, twenty, forty-five minutes.  Seriously, how rude is that?

Now, I sat down by one poor girl who left during the panel's introduction speech because, when they started speaking, she realized she stepped into the wrong room -- I understand that. And I'm not talking about people who cut out during the post-panel Q&A, which I have more sympathy for (not all of us have strong bladders and the line for the women's room is crazy long in the 15 minutes between scheduled panels).

But people who leave after ten or fifteen minutes after a panel has begun?  At that point you know you're not in the "wrong" room.  You know all panel run 60 minutes + 15 min for Q&A.  You know that if you sit in the front of the room everyone will see you walk out.  So what the fuck gives?

I don't know if this year's panel-leaving was worse than last year's or if I just noticed it more, but I found it incredibly rude. 

Presumably, if you know that you have to cut out of a panel early then you'll sit in the back by the door and grab a seat on the aisle so that people won't have to move to let you out, not halfway up and in the middle.  So I'm guessing that (a) they got bored and decided to leave, (b) it turned out that the panel wasn't discussing what they thought it would and instead of seeing if they could garner some sort of knowledge from the topic they decided to leave, (c) they walked out in protest [I'm doubtful of this considering the "controversial" topics had fewer people leave], or (d) there was an epidemic of diarrhea at the conference which I was lucky enough to avoid but gave quite a few people the runs at inopportune moments.

My take: no one's making you go to panels -- no one's making you attend the conference, period.  So when you choose to attend a panel that bombs, you suffer through the pain and offer it up to the gods of literary knowledge.  Apparently more writers need Catholic grandmothers who make them sit through insanely long Mass on a tiny, hard, wooden pew.  Comparatively a boring panel is paradise: the seats are padded and no one tells you you're going to hell.

From the email in-box

Recently I received an email from someone wanting to advertise on my blog.

Hi Eileen,

Hope you don't mind me getting in touch. I wanted to let you know about a campaign we’re running for [company name deleted], promoting their new ‘[product name deleted]’ drink in a hilarious video featuring monkeys’ anal glands and lizards’ balls… need I say more?

No, you don't need to say more. In fact, please don't say anymore.

The email continued on with about another eight or ten inches of text which I didn't read before deleting. But I was left with many unanswered questions which I will now pose to the universe.

(1) What about my blog made you think that I'd promote a non-coffee drink? (and btw I blog about things I like, not things people have asked me to promote)

(2) What about my blog made you think that animal genitalia really cracks me up?

(3) Why would anyone want to associate the beverage they're about to consume with testicles?

Adventures at the Coffee Shop

Weird.

So Saturday afternoon/evening I spend a little over three hours at a coffee shop in downtown Kalamazoo. One of the nice features of this coffee shop is that it's also a bar so it stays open later than most coffee places (and if you're eager to do more work but feel the need to switch over to the hard stuff you don't need to move).

They have padded arm chairs, and cozy cafe tables, but they also have big study kitchen table-esque things which I am more than happy to spread out on and work.

As I slog down my coffee and slog away at my work (non-fiction project) the sun sets and the well lit coffee shop becomes a little more gloomy; the lighting inside is "atmospheric" at best. At this time I discover--joyfully--that I am sitting beside an electrical outlet, and plug in my laptop. Once hooked up to juice, the glow from the laptop is more than enough to beat the gloom.

The creepy guy in the armchair (who might be staring at me) leaves, and a group of three or four guys are playing chess at the table next to me; they don't talk much except to say checkmate.

Then -- woosh! -- a flurry of activity. At first I think it is the same four undergrads that were studying chemistry when I first arrived but these people are different despite looking like students from K-college. There's a guy setting up amps and mic stands on stage so I start to worry that a music show is about to start and my scribbling/typing away will be out of place. I look around the coffee shop/bar. Definitely not out of place. There are more people here than there were two hours ago but some of them are even more bookish than me. Two middle aged women and a grandmother play Scrabble. A guy behind me flips through some sort of business reports. The students -- they have my attention again -- are pulling two, now three, of the large kitchen tables together. Some of the students are dressed weekend-comfy and some weekend-flashy. It's the two flashily dressed students that made me wonder if the scene was suddenly changing. The settle in to their table and I go back to work.

When I look back up the students all have laptops out. They are gesturing and yelling across the coffee shop to each other as they procure lattes and cookies. The flashiest of the flashy ones has a ruffly scarf on and stacked heels; she gestures a lot. There is a sign propped up on their table. It is vaguely familiar and, as I struggle to place it, I wonder if it isn't a house crest from Harry Potter.

I frown. If a moment ago I thought I was the nerd for doing work in public on a Saturday evening then what will I think of these twenty year-olds announcing to the world their Saturday night Hogwarts fetish?

People are staring at them. The amp-guy pulls up fast before he can trip over them as they continue to rearrange furniture. The Scrabble-women give the flashy ones dirty looks as the flashy woman swishes back and forth and several of the college students hold a conversation over the Scrabble-women's table. The men playing chess remain absorbed in the chess.

Then, I place the shield logo. It's a NaNoWriMo shield! These people assembling in front of me are here for the ardent and admirable task of writing novels quickly and en mass!

For a brief moment I feel like I should join them, I should reach out and exchange the secret handshake with these young, bright, brave ... oddly dressed ... rather annoying ... obviously self-absorbed people.

Nope. Not gonna happen.

I continue working, alone; I do not have time for socialization tonight, particularly not with people whom I don't like.

When I look back up there are even more college students, (probably eight or ten by this point) and two middle aged women, one of whom has a very plain daughter who looks to be in early high school. The middle aged women are looking around like they are wondering if they really want to be sitting at the end of this very long table with all these strange, loud, gesticulating strangers.

The leader -- flashy woman has emerged as such -- calls them to order. She asks who the newbies are. She uses the term "newbies" without first explaining it. If one is new, one presumably does not know the lingo. Despite this, she does not explain the term which sounds harsh and disparaging when said aloud. This is part of the problem when certain content or language develops online and then moves into the realm of the spoke: few people stop to consider how their lingo comes across (gets re/misinterpreted) when it jumps realms.

The flashy woman hands out schedules brought by her not-so-flashy second in command. She tells people not to worry as the schedule is not set in stone and is only for personal use. In the same breath she tells the table that the schedule is their writing bible and they should staple it to their foreheads to encourage them to make their daily word counts.

"So who knows what a word war is?"

There is no response from the table.

"Do my newbies know what a word war is?"

There are mumbles that I cannot hear.

She addresses the end of the table where the middle aged women are sitting. "This is one of the myriad, great advantages of having a supportive NaNo-ing community group," she explains. I am certain, given her propensity toward adjectives, that she has absolutely no trouble making her daily word count without thinking of much content.

I am uncertain if she ever does explain precisely what a "word war" is.
I so happen to know that a "word war" is when a group of people race against, themselves, each other and the clock. They agree to a certain amount of time, say 15 or 30 minutes, and then a time keeper says "go!" and everyone manically clicks away at their keys trying to produce as much verbiage (and it quite frequently is more verbiage than narrative) as they are physically capable of in those minutes. Word wars that take place in person are marked by the sudden and complete silence of the group that is warring. If I had to hazard a guess I would say that there was no word warring that night.

The plain teenager is reading the online discussion boards.

"Who knows what they're going to be noveling about?" the leader asks.

At this point I realize that it is October.

I have known all along what the month was despite my deep longing for it to be September again as I did not properly appreciate that month as it passed by, but the fact of the matter remains that NaNoWriMo, the month of the national novel writing experience, is November. These people are one month early and do not appear to care.

Two or three of the college students raise their hands and the flashy leader squeaks and bounces in her chair. "Oo! Tell me!"

I return to work on my own writing projects, projects due in the immediate future (a little too-immediate if comfort is to be considered), and I am thankful, very thankful, that I did not stick out my hand and join in the past hour of unproductiveness at the non-writing novel writing table.

Rainy Friday

It's been raining for several days now. I kinda like it. It makes the temperature bearable and I love the sound of plinking into puddles and trickling down the storm drain. Besides, it's the one time when there's that earthy smell that is simply rain.

When I lived in Chicago rain meant a battle. A struggle against getting too soaked walking, against puddles, against overhands ready to turn into waterfalls, against car tires spraying up walls of dirty, gritty water.

I'm so glad I moved.

Although the sounds of the night are different they are still remarkably the same. Instead of hearing homeless guys fight in the middle of the night and the 161 bus ding that it has arrived then ding again that the doors are closing, I awoke several times last night to the sound of a couple fighting.

Around 3:00 a.m. a car peeled out of the parking lot making the strangest noise given all the water sloshing around.

At 5:00 a.m. he's back and banging on the door of the apartment then on the window of his girlfriend's bedroom. Cindy let me in. I'm sorry. let me in, okay? Then Fuck it, Cindy, let me in. Then You want me to wait? Fine I can fucking wait and the car door slams again as he sits out in his car patiently waiting.

Or not so patiently as thirty minutes later he's back to banging on the window and yelling into the glass before he again slams the car door and peels out of here.

They only moved in a few days ago; this could be an interesting year. Much more entertaining than the homeless guys in Chicago.

What exactly are we saving?

"Save the Short Story" website -- again, I take issue with "saving" something that's been on the brink of extinction since the 1960s despite the dramatic increase in MFA programs churning out short stories, despite the rising number of independent lit magazines out there both in print and online; frankly it feels like adding the poodle to the endangered species list -- takes issue with agent Jeff Kleinman (by name) for his comments in the Jan/Feb 2009 Poets & Writers group interview of four "young literary agents."

1. That took freakin forever! Seriously. The rant against him went up on Feb. 3 ... but I read the article in Poets & Writers at Christmas. I actually had to hunt around my apartment for the magazine( it was buried under a stack of papers that need grading). All of a sudden, six weeks after the printing, there's issue being taken with it? Apparently not everyone got that whole "instant communication" memo regarding information and the use of the Internet.

2. The quoted statement was not that Kleinman hates the short story form but that they're boring and you [he] can't sell them in this market. I didn't find that whiny at all. Actually, I agreed with it.

First, it is hard to get involved in a new short story time and again. How much of yourself are you really willing to invest in a scene or setting or character that's not going to be around in twenty pages? If it disappoints you, there's no time, no place for it to make it up to you. It's a little bit like serial dating, knowing each time that you're never in it for the long haul. That wears on a person.

As a book-loving person, I need to say that I've only paid money for two single author short story collections in my life; both were required for class. I've checked a few dozen out of the library -- frequently collections by multiple authors like Best American Non-required Reading -- but I don't want to pay money for them any more than I want to pay for a box of chocolates I know is half coconut. When you don't end up finishing half the stories (chocolates) in the box, you really start to wonder why you paid for a whole box in the first place.

But that's only addressing the economic issue. I think the bigger issue is the fact that there's that much damn coconut.

I've had many discussions with Tanya over the past few months about this crazy notion that somehow got instilled in our brains: that to be "good" literary writers, to be "good" little MFAers, we have to write "serious" stories. So we kill off our characters, we rape them, we make them mentally unstable, we kill their kids, abort their babies, gag them when they should speak, we take away their money and hand them drug problems instead ... all because we need to be serious, serious, serious. We think we need to write about weighty topics in a nitty-gritty manner. It get so disgustingly realistic that we hit our readers' gag reflexes.

And, frankly, it pisses me off.

It also makes me not want to read short stories, because of the prevalence of this newspaper meets dirty realism stuff with a few hints of the insanely obscene thrown in. I just read a story in workshop where the narrator decides to tell the reader that his wife's nipples tasted like potato chips. Yeah. Not something I'm interested in paying money for.

Short story writers have been torturing the form for years -- not even Alice Munro is completely able to escape my scorn on this count. I'm sick of "art" being "what's good for you" not "what you enjoy." Why does the short story have to be dense and difficult? I know, I know, making every word count gets thrown around a lot, but why does counting mean it can't read easily? Why does making every word count have to taste like fiber supplement? Why are we drinking down heinous short stories saying it's good for us! when even real, honest to god fiber supplement is getting a face lift?

**(is coconut, by chance, fibrous? wouldn't it be sweet if it really was and all my half-ass, zany metaphors actually flowed together?)**

Are there some gems of short stories out there? Yes. I'm not debasing the form just what's been done to it. Those gems are far outweighed by tortured prose, much of it churned out by MFA programs instilling the same feeling in their students that's making me sick of "serious."

3. I take greater issue with agent Zuckerbrot's comment "[w]hat about the people who say, 'I don't have time to read a novel'? Short story collection! You can start and finish in a short period of time." I hate to point out the obvious here, but a 200 page short story collection takes as long (or longer) to read as a 200 page novel. Are we meant to assume that she meant you can finish a single short story in a short period of time? Yes. But if that's her point, then why buy a collection? Get a subscription to One Story they only send you one story a month. [The ex-law student in me refuses to let logic errors slip past.]



Are these nice things I'm saying about short story collections? No. But I'm sick of the fiber's good for you! pep talk the short story gets. If it tastes like bark, I'm not eating it. If it reads like bark, I'm not reading it.

Am I still writing short stories? I have to; I'm being graded on it. But I don't think I've ever thought of myself as a "short story-ist." I'm a writer, and the short form is a place where I can gain the technical skills to do so.

--

In more upbeat news from the same edition of P&W, one of the 12 featured "debut poets" is giving a reading at WMU this spring. Jericho Brown will be reading from his collection Please. I've requested the collection (again, from the library) and hopefully I'll get a look at it before the reading.

MFA Application Cycle

January is the dead month for MFA applications. Most of them are due in December, a few hold deadlines open until January 15 but those are certainly few and far between. My advice to anyone in this year's application cycle: forget that you've even applied until February 20. Most schools don't start making offers until the first week of March, some won't be made until the end of March. I didn't know I was coming to WMU until April.

Be patient. Write something. Buy ten novels and tell yourself you're not allowed to check any stat board until you've finished all ten.

Last year I threw myself into a January version of NaNoWriMo with an abandon. It worked wonders; instead of obsessing over an application process I no longer had control over, I obsessed over a novel that whose creation was entirely up to me and my efforts. [BTW, I printed out that manuscript over break to hopefully start editing work on it. The nice part of not looking at it for 6+ months is that I'm actually surprised by both the plot and my writing, both of which I remember to be a lot worse than they are.]

This year I'm in the MFA. Great. I'm teaching, I'm writing, I'm taking classes -- all of it working toward publication and a teaching job. The fact that winter has dumped 8-10" of snow on me in the past 48 hours isn't bothering me too much -- I've got food in the fridge and I don't have to be anywhere until Monday.

So I called my father to chat, to get updates, to find out what his secret to cooking a tenderloin is (somehow I thought there'd be more than "season it with Mrs. Dash"). I find out that my grandmother is doing well after surgery, that there's no definitive answer about family members who are moving, and he asks if now isn't a good time to start applying for the Ph.D. program.

!!!

My father remains gungho on the idea of me getting a Ph.D. in creative writing. An MFA is terminal, but a Ph.D. is even more terminal -- which doesn't make sense but neither do the degrees. The program here at WMU has both an MFA and a Ph.D. program in creative writing. As I understand it, it is possible to transfer MFA credits over to the Ph.D. program without actually completing the MFA. My father sees this as a brilliant idea: less time spent in school, right? However, now isn't the time for such considerations. I've only spent a semester in the graduate program and have very little writing-wise to show for it. I certainly don't feel like I have a portfolio worthy of a Ph.D. application. And, as I reminded my father, this year's application cycle has passed. This transferring programs conversation is one I'll have with faculty, current students and the graduate advisor in the months to come.


Meanwhile, I give you today's stupid people of the day award! It goes to yet another brilliant neighbor of mine. No, not smokey, no not the guy who nearly burned down the opposite building with his grilling/lighter fluid escapades. This award goes to a young woman with a Prius.

Coming back from her shopping/lunch trip, she pulls up in the general vicinity of her parking spot and blocks half the road with her car. Turns on her flashers, gets out, leaves the driver's side door open, opens the back hatch and takes out a brand new collapsible shovel. First she attempts to shovel with the itty-bitty short handle. After several scoops she realized that the handle can get longer and extends it the extra foot.

She spends the next 10-15 minutes shovelling out a parking space for her car. Without gloves on. This whole time her car is blocking more than half the snow filled road, door open, engine running. I'm really surprised none of the passing cars ended up taking her door off.

Snow heaved to the side -- she's effectively moved the snow over to the next parking spot instead of putting it anywhere else -- she gets back in her running car -- what do you want to be she's been blasting the heater this whole time? -- and pulls in. The shovel has been put into the back of the car where I can see at least a half dozen plastic grocery bags flapping in the wind. But when she leaves the car she's only carrying her purse and an Arby's drink cup.

Bravo, honey. Bravo. May the 4" of snow yet to fall this weekend give you problems.

(front and center is a Honda Civic. The snow reaches up to touch its front bumper.)

The iGeneration

Complete and total proof of the iGeneration, not the tech generation, the iGeneration -- we're not just big on technology, we use it to personalize our generic, consumer-driven lives:

http://www.bookbyyou.com/default.asp?id=Bs_B_Y-Google&source=google

It gets even better ...

I've stated before that this past semester's workshop has been a crash course in contradictions. If my first workshop wasn't proof that "you can't please everyone" (where I got comments back and two people had marked the same dozen lines in the story, one marking each as "love it" and the other person marking them "cut it"), then the final comments from the instructor should have been proof enough.

While I was at the Kenyon Review workshop working for a week focused wholly on openings, I brought in the first three pages of a short story called "Cake." I took almost all of the suggestions it improve the opening because that was undoubtedly the weakest part of it.

Among the other changes I had made was implementing a suggestion -- Brad Kessler's suggestion I believe -- to refer to an unnamed character as "the witch," not just once but throughout the story.

I reworked it over the past six months and as we only had two workshops per person this semester, our instructor wanted us to turn in either a rewrite of a workshop story or another story that we'd recently worked on. This story wouldn't be workshopped by the group but he would send up back comments. I sent in "Cake."

I have his comments back.

He stated that he liked the story, that it was my smoothest and strongest story that he's seen, but that the whole "witch" thing was just too corny.

*headdesk*

I need more readers to weigh in on the situation. The change is minor, cosmetic really, but it is now an annoyingly important detail.

Do You Really Sell Ice Cream?

Back when I was settling in to my apartment and my grad school schedule I posted about the ice cream truck and it's fricking annoying 60+ minute circling of my neighborhood while playing a continuous loop of "pop goes the weasle." Oh, and it looked like the mystery machine from Scooby Doo.

Well, it's October and the stupid thing still hasn't gone away despite the temperature not breaking 65 F for the past couple of weeks. Except now it plays "Do Your Ears Hang Low." Not an improvement.

I was still wondering at how much business an icecream truck could do in a neighborhood of college kids. Maybe we're big on nostolgia. Maybe we're big impulse buyers. Then my cousin told me "It's drugs."

What?

Apparently she's well aware of ice cream trucks as drug dealers toodling through America's neighborhoods.

Seriously?

She admits that it might be an urban myth as she's never bought drugs from an ice cream man, but given my white suburban-ish pot smoking neighbors I'm thinking it might just be.

That just doesn't seem very Good Humor to me.


But then I googled "good humor man" under images to get the above and what did I find? An image of "today's ice cream truck" -- just like the Mystery Machine that haunts my neighborhood. And -- lo and behold! -- in that picture the van is being pulled over by the cops.

Well, shit. Maybe my cousin isn't paranoid.

I'm in the Brochure!

The Kenyon Review has updated their Writer's Workshop website to include 2009 details -- and I'm in the brochure!

There I am, out of focus, but fully engaged in workshopping -- see how that pen is poised?

In other news, Chicago's Transit Authority is exercising its merchandising muscle. Personalize coffee mugs or t-shirts with the signage from your favorite L stop, get a retro messenger bag (which actually look pretty cool), or -- my favorite -- decorate your bathroom with a full color shower curtain.
Honest to god, it's the largest map of the L system I have ever seen printed.

So how long before the Kenyon Review starts merchandising and I see that great picture of me in workshop blown up to the size of a shower curtain?

Crazy Neighbors: Part III

This incident happened over labor day weekend and given how frequently I repeated it to people I thought that I had blogged it before this.

I was blissfully asleep. The party must have been hosted at some other apartment so the neighbors that I share a bedroom wall with hadn't been blasting music that night. (Side note: last night the music was so loud that I could actually identify lyrics from that Carrie Underwood song about cheating.)

About 2:40 am: I am suddenly awakened. My window is open and two stories below there's a group of guys talking on the sidewalk. I realize what's happened and I stop paying attention and try to tune out their drunk heckling and go back to sleep.

Sleep, so close, so close.

Then somewhere an alarm starts going off. Idiots leaned against the wrong car or something.

The drunk heckling takes on a slightly different tone, one akin to oh, you're in deep shit now/that was so cool man. The guys leave and the voices stop.

The alarm is still going off fifteen minutes later. I'm beginning to think this isn't a car alarm.

Then two more voices outside my window.

Guy: So you’re just going to some strange guy’s house to have sex with him?
Girl: Well tomorrow’s Labor Day so it’s not like I have anything to do.
Guy: You’re so cool, you know that. You’re so cool.

Seriously?

I get out of bed and go into the living room. I am finally suspicious that this alarm might be coming from within my building. Sure enough, blinking through the peep hole of my front door is a strobe light.

I open the door and am practically deafened by the siren (how did I mistake this for a car alarm from my bedroom?) but over that there's a guy going down the stairwell is yelling to someone below "It wasn't pulled up here."

Okay well that answers that. Drunken idiots pulled the alarm. This was back when the "finishing touches" were still being put on my building by the construction crew. One of these final touches was the plate in the door frame that allows the door to stay closed and locked. So at this point, the door was wide open both day and night. Drunkies had reached just inside the door and pulled the alarm immediately to the left then laughed and ran away.

So, we're at the 25 minute mark when I hear pounding in the hallway. Hopeful that someone is fixing the situation! I peek out.

It's my neighbor -- whom I will now and forever refer to as Smoky because of his charming 5am introduction -- standing in the hallway, again wearing only gym shorts, with a hammer raised over his head. He is in the process of beating the crap out of the siren/strobe light warning unit on our landing.

Seriously?

We have a brief "wtf?" conversation over the noise and then I go back inside and look for an after hours emergency number, which I did not find. Meanwhile I'm watching outside and I see our friendly neighborhood rent-a-cop is leaning on a car on the other side of the street watching our stairwell.

Well if rent-a-cop already knows this is going on then I'm assuming there isn't anyone I can all that hasn't been anyway.

Then at about 3:15 am a little Toyota pulls up, parks in the middle of the street, talks to rent-a-cop and then goes into my building. About ten minutes later the siren, blissfully, stops.

Sleep!

So the next morning I open my door and there on the landing and all the way down the stairwell are the pieces of the siren/strobe light device that had been on the wall the night before.

I thought Smoky had given up on the hammer actually working. Nope. Looks like he really did beat the shit out of it. Casing, plastic mount, and computer circuits all just lying around not attached to one another or the wall.

So I gather up all the pieces in a grocery bag and turned it in to the office the next day. That shit looks expensive and I'm not paying for Smoky's anger management issues.