i have a hundred papers on my desk, hooray

and the economy, i mean, i look around and see the economy, out drinking, not doing what it should be doing, a sluggish little economy. bastard. the economy, whew. saw it spending money on strippers the other day and i'm like, okay, we all need a little time off, but financially speaking, not the wisest there. i don't know. i'm going to be grading papers for a while. goodbye.

today i heard a guy yelling into his cell phone

i was walking to class today. it was sunny, cold, windy out, and there was a guy sitting in his car screaming, You haven't changed. You're not capable of change. If you changed, I don't know what I'd do. then he took his cell phone and banged it on his steering wheel three times. by this point, i had stopped walking and was pretending to look at a tree so that i could hear him. after banging the cell phone on the steering wheel, he said in a calmer voice, You still there?

i saw The Wrestler. it's as good as everyone says. the story isn't necessarily new, but it's effective and Rourke's performance really is terrific. also, bruce springstreen knows how to write affecting songs for movies. good job bruce springsteen.

i had a pork poblano this weekend that was amazing. i'll probably now want to go to this restaurant to eat for several weeks in a row, at least once a week, possibly twice week, until i get tired of eating pork poblanos.

one of our cats is really into The Empire Strikes Back.

Shane Jones' Light Boxes

i read this yesterday in a couple of hours. it's 167 pages, a squat book with much white space, and a good textual design that reminds me of Barthelme's Snow White. though it's 167 pages, it's probably around 20 K words. the story is a fantasy/fairy-tale type thing, though that doesn't really do it justice. it's a dark fairy-tale, and the imagination on each page is both striking and subtle. the prose is clear, precise, and rarely goes for more than it can acheive. though on some occassions, i did wonder why some lines weren't cut. some things, dialogue especially, felt out of place or forced or something - in general, these were small things, easy to let slide. the story is about February, that grey and gloomfilled month, which has descended on a particular town for over year. children have disappeared. flight is no longer possible. and sunlight, like warmth, is gone. the townspeople decide to wage war against February. they are led by Thaddeous and Selah and their daughter, Bianca. what unravels is a not a fight against cold, but a struggle against sadness and loss. there's even a fun metafictive element. i won't reveal more. i really liked the book. it's moving, sometimes sad, sometimes dark, but possibly the thing i liked most about the book was its warmness. the warmness i think comes from two things: the author's imaginative world is so complete unto itself that it feels nice to live inside that world for a short time; the second thing is that the characters, while only roughly sketched in that fairy tale way, are characters you want to see win. even the dark character, the bringer of sadness, February himself, you feel sympathy for. and of course, in the end, Light Boxes has nothing to do with a fairy tale world.

jon raymond will oldham old joy wendy and lucy

i saw Old Joy it seems like a couple years ago. maybe it was only a year ago, i don't remember. it has Will Oldham in it and i saw primarily because i listen to his music all the time, so i wanted to see him in a movie. the film was very quiet. two men, friends in some past, meet again and go camping for a weekend. there is nothing left between them. they have trouble talking about anything openly or spontaneously. one is sort of a liberal, domestic type, the other played by Will Oldham is a kind of hippie-loafer. there's an odd moment of physical contact when they get to some hot springs they've been hiking toward. the moment is awkward and strange, but not without real connection. then it's gone. apparently this was a story by Jon Raymond, from his book Livability. i never knew this. i just bought his book of stories. and now emily just told me there is an excellent-looking new movie, also based on one of Raymond's stories, called Wendy and Lucy, which also has Will Oldham in it. these quiet films, with a lot of nature/city play are always ones i feel 'closest' to and always ones i seem to watch with care.

mild-paranoia and book purchase

Light Boxes by Shane Jones

Last Days by Brian Evenson

The Loser by Thomas Bernhard

Ever by Blake Butler

A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer by Christine Schutt (google book)

The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball

also: a good writing by Greg Napp on elimae.

i didn't have enough money to really buy these books, but i don't care. i wanted new things to read. i'm excited about all of them.

i'm beginning to believe the swedish lad i pass on the way to school who wears addidas outfits everyday does so in jest.

the teacher who teaches next to my classroom, i believe, stands next to my door and listens when he lets class out early.

three pot-bellied men with enormous voices walk down my street far too often to be anything other than 'troublemakers.'

i have decided that i will snap a photograph of the swedish-addidas lad, then when he asks what the hell i think i'm doing, say, Just snapping me a photograph of that beautiful mountain, friend.

i think there has to be a way to write and not care. i don't think you can write and care about getting published. in the same way you can't write and think about what you're doing. you have to be able to write and just let it happen. this, amazingly, takes 'years of practice.' but my feelings about stories is that they have to be effortless, or seem to be effortless. anything that's overly written bothers me right now. i have hard time reading some things because the sentences seem over-crafted, like each word is a stone that had to be sanded and remade. that's a terrible use of figurative language.

february Hobart

is live. there are good writings over there. thanks to matt bell for putting together a very cool issue. i really like the picture with my story. it makes me laugh every time i look at it.

i no longer have a fever.

i have not had coffee in over a week.

i've lost between 7 and 10 pounds.

i washed all my clothes and sheets so that i won't reinfect myself. i'm not sure this is even possible or necessary.

i woke up on friday night sweating so much that i had soaked the sheets through a shirt i was wearing. i think that's when the fever 'broke.'

interestingly, amoxicillin only costs four us dollars.

decongestants really do have a purpose.

i'm still having a 'hard time' remembering things. like emily played a song last weekend and i said, That sounds a little like Elliot Smith. and she said, It is Elliot Smith. that happened to me all week. i think it's evidence that the fever killed parts of my brain.

weird fever

today i got home from teaching to sleep because i was having a fever. someone gave me sickness. my students come up to me and say things like, I'm sick today. i have to tell them to stop doing this. so i got home after class at 12 or so and went to sleep. i had a fever of 101, not too bad, but i felt bad. anyway, i went to sleep. then i heard loud pounding. i woke up, i don't know how long i had been asleep. i was very confused when i woke up. the room was yellow? that made me worried. why was the room yellow? the banging sound went on. i went to my front door, which leads to a hallway where there is a main door, an entrance to the duplex where i live. a man was standing there. i was very confused. he was standing not at my door, just in the hallway, which was yellow-tinted. You can come in whenever, I said. he stared at me. I mean, I'll just leave the door open, I said. Then you can come in and do whatever needs done. I think I have a leak. I'm not feeling well, so just come in. he stared at me. i went and sat down on my bed, leaving my door open. after a few minutes, i realized i shouldn't have left my door open because my cat could get out. i went to the front door again and asked the man if he had seen a black cat. No, he said. he held a hammer; i had not seen it before. he started banging away on the front door to the duplex. So you don't want in my apartment? I said. he said no. a few minutes after that, i got on a bunch of clothes and went out in the snow and yelled for my cat. i found him an hour later hiding under the sink. the hammering was scaring him. then i went to sleep again.