Pain

I can't remember when it was that I stopped crying when I hurt myself. Like when I was out running around and I fell and skinned my knee and started crying, right?

Remember that? How you used to get a scrape or a cut and you'd cry? And then one day that stopped making you cry? I get a cut or a scrape now and, really, I never cry. My eyes have watered from pain. I've hurt myself and gone on an expletive-laden tirade. I've gotten all red-faced.

Sure. I've done those things. Sure.

But I don't start crying.

Unless I'm in some sort of emotional pain. If someone important to me dies. Or—and this hasn't happened in a while—when I have some sort of girl-boy breakup thing. Crying might happen there.

But not when I stub my toe. Not if I break a tooth. Not if I slip when I'm out running and my knee is skinned and my iPod goes skittering across the pavement. I don't cry then anymore.

But I was thinking, maybe I should? Maybe I should make some adjustments to my way of thinking about myself and my different kinds of pain, and maybe I'll cry when I hurt myself and never cry again when I have some sort of emotional trauma.

I think if I can change my behavior, if I can think myself into a place where I cry when I stub my toe but not when my girlfriend tells me I'm an asshole and she never ever wants to see me again, I'll be able to carry on less stressful relationships with people.

I might even stop being an asshole.

I'll just be a guy who is openly crying, full-throated crying, unashamedly crying because he cut his finger when he was quartering potatoes for potato soup. I'll just be a guy who sniffles and winces as Bactine is applied. All that.

This is a good idea, I think. I'm going to have to look into it. If I figure it all out, maybe I'll blog about it.

Until then...

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Zachary Schomburg. I will say something about him on HTMLGiant this week.

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Disintegration Loop.

Fog

An odd turn of events: I actually don't know what to blog about this week.

After a few years of feigning the inability to blog in order to constrain and confine my imagination hereon, I find that I sort of don't know what to do this week.

The Man Who Couldn't Blog just can't seem to blog. Or write anything, really. For a while now.

Shit.

Well, instead of blogging, I will post this photo I took. It is of a repurposed street sign. It now warns about people coming out of the fog.



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Matthew Derby has a blog. Matthew Derby is a very good writer.

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Shya Scanlon has a blog. Shya is a very good writer.

His most recent update says that Dawn Raffel mentioned his chapbook, Poolsaid. Dawn Raffel is a very good writer.

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Someday very very soon, happycobrabooks dot something will be something. I swear. Any day now.

UPDATE:

There's something there, but it's not finished. Don't go to the Happy Cobra Books website yet.

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UPDATE:



Enjoy.

Dipset

Cam'ron of Dipset is the brand new spokesman—sorry, person—for the American Death Industry. He believes that this verifies to spokesperson-watchers—who are, we are all aware, legion and shit—that he is a man of great intellectual heft. Finally, he will be taken seriously. He wakes up every day with a renewed sense of self.

His new self engages in mirror conversation with the old, less-respected-for-his-gravitas Cam'ron.

A tree in the yard, privy to the nuances of the conversation, dies.

The soul of the tree reaches the center of the Earth, where its roots are plugged into the soul of the rest of the world.

The rest of the world survives an attack by the soul of the tree killed by the subtext of self-doubt that occurred during Cam'ron's conversation with himself in the mirror.

The soul of the world takes its revenge by destroying all trees the world over. As the trees the world over wither, Cam'ron boards a helicopter—an ex-military helicopter that was purchased by the American Death Industry to transport its spokespeople—and is flown to Providence, Rhode Island, where he meets with the American Death Industry and is shot in the face.

Dipset, motherfucker.

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Blake wrote a bunch of pieces about famous dead people. I have been writing responses. Above is my response to his piece on Tupac.

(I have one left, Blake. Then we should find a publisher.)

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I miss pills. I stopped taking pills. I think I should start taking pills again.

What do you think?

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Daniel Bailey's east central indiana. It is good.

Interviews

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First, an interview with Lydia Millet.

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Next, an interview with Michael Kimball.

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And finally, an interview with Brian Evenson.

Also on that page, a story by me called Apple.

(And a story by my friend Blake Butler.)

This is a three interview post. Very exciting, I think.

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I linked to my brother's new website last week, but only by making the change on the sidebar.

He said someone followed the link and looked at his site.

This is his new website. Everyone should go and look at it. He's a very talented painter.

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Again, VOTE OBAMA. Tuesday. The fourth. Vote.

OBAMA.


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UPDATE:

Hey. He won. Thanks everybody.

Thanks for doing what I told you to do.