Here are seven things about me. I was tagged by Evelyn.
1. I was born outside of Columbus, Ohio, in Gahanna. My mom used to say: "If you can say banana, you can say Gahanna." For a while, I thought she was referring to Gehenna, which is a way of referring to Hell.
2. Sometimes I'm honestly a little uncomfortable with my admiration for Black Metal. But only sometimes.
3. In elementary school, a kid told me not to sit with him and his friends at lunch even though I was "a nice guy and all." I'm still sort of bugged by the fact that I said, "Okay," and got up and left. I even continued to be nice to that guy. (I even remember his name: Nate Elam.)
4. When I start to get stressed out before a flight, I think about Joe Kittinger to make myself feel more courageous. I am considering getting a Joe Kittinger tattoo.
5. Here are some questions I ask myself:
6. When I sit down to write, as I am about to write, up to the moment I begin hitting keys with my fingers or scratching on paper with a pen, I hate writing. It is only during the act of writing, and after I have spent a period of time writing that I actually like writing.
7. I try to update this on Mondays, but quite often I do it on Tuesday instead. This is because I am often tired when I get home from work, and never really want to finish the posts I work on Monday afternoon.
Seven people: Shane Jones, Ken Baumann, Shya Scanlon, Catherine Lacey, Travis Nichols, Ross Simonini, Gene Morgan.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Ontonagon
The village of Ontonagon sits, indifferent to it all.
Indifferent to it all.
Wooden peers just from its belly. It drums its fingers on them. It raps them with its knuckles. It runs its fingers over them, like a man playing a washboard.
Ontonagon begins to whistle. It whistles high, it whistles low. It waits and raps its knuckles, it whistles high and whistles low. It ignores events happening nearby—the violence, the screaming, the fires and the settling ash. Ontonagon recalls a day last year instead.
§
Ontonagon removed a long, narrow slab of the concrete of its shoulder. The narrow slab shuddered, surprisingly un-solid, indeed.
Ontonagon pulled a mirror from its generous pockets and used it to look into the newly revealed interior of its shoulder. Within, Ontonagon spied a family of bats. The bats were gnawing on root vegetables and worms.
Ontonagon explored its self-inflicted wound with a stubby finger. The bats, alarmed, grabbed hold of the finger with their pin-like teeth. Ontonagon pulled the finger out and held it up in front of his face. Coated in bats, it undulated with the flap of their wings.
§
Ontonagon rubbed the weird memory from its eyes, and decided to go to sleep.
Read parts ONE and TWO and THREE.
***
Lakeside - BLK JKS
***
The painter Rachel Howard.
Indifferent to it all.
Wooden peers just from its belly. It drums its fingers on them. It raps them with its knuckles. It runs its fingers over them, like a man playing a washboard.
Ontonagon begins to whistle. It whistles high, it whistles low. It waits and raps its knuckles, it whistles high and whistles low. It ignores events happening nearby—the violence, the screaming, the fires and the settling ash. Ontonagon recalls a day last year instead.
§
Ontonagon removed a long, narrow slab of the concrete of its shoulder. The narrow slab shuddered, surprisingly un-solid, indeed.
Ontonagon pulled a mirror from its generous pockets and used it to look into the newly revealed interior of its shoulder. Within, Ontonagon spied a family of bats. The bats were gnawing on root vegetables and worms.
Ontonagon explored its self-inflicted wound with a stubby finger. The bats, alarmed, grabbed hold of the finger with their pin-like teeth. Ontonagon pulled the finger out and held it up in front of his face. Coated in bats, it undulated with the flap of their wings.
§
Ontonagon rubbed the weird memory from its eyes, and decided to go to sleep.
Read parts ONE and TWO and THREE.
***
Lakeside - BLK JKS
***
The painter Rachel Howard.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Oconto
(Sorry. Sick yesterday.)
***
Oconto wakes up on the shore of Green Bay, and wipes the frost from her eyebrows and the fine, downy hair on her earlobes. Lodi is the patron saint of Oconto, and holds her no ill will.
Oconto walks north to see what she can see.
In time, Oconto finds the bodies of Ishpeming and Peshtigo, and she lights a fire. She burns the bodies and stands warming her hands. She little suffers the loss, but imagines that later it will hit her square in the chin.
It is unreasonably cold. Unreasonably cold.
Oconto sees a plane approaching, a passenger jet filled with people. An overbooked flight. It left six people behind. The people in the seats are crowded together and uncomfortable. And unhappy. They are antsy.
Oconto reaches out for the plane, and takes it by the fuselage. She shakes the plane gently, and the crowded, frustrated people are thankful to get their minds off of their uncomfortable seats. They, instead, concentrate on what seems to be their impending deaths. They offer prayers of thanks to Oconto.
Read parts ONE and TWO.
***
(Sorry about the ads.)
***
I was walking to work today and a man passed me and offered me drugs, saying: "Got that bud..."
I looked at him and said, "No. No thank you."
I did this because I believe it is very important to be polite. I believe in manners.
***
HAPPINESS IS
Fuck You, Penguin
***
Oconto wakes up on the shore of Green Bay, and wipes the frost from her eyebrows and the fine, downy hair on her earlobes. Lodi is the patron saint of Oconto, and holds her no ill will.
Oconto walks north to see what she can see.
In time, Oconto finds the bodies of Ishpeming and Peshtigo, and she lights a fire. She burns the bodies and stands warming her hands. She little suffers the loss, but imagines that later it will hit her square in the chin.
It is unreasonably cold. Unreasonably cold.
Oconto sees a plane approaching, a passenger jet filled with people. An overbooked flight. It left six people behind. The people in the seats are crowded together and uncomfortable. And unhappy. They are antsy.
Oconto reaches out for the plane, and takes it by the fuselage. She shakes the plane gently, and the crowded, frustrated people are thankful to get their minds off of their uncomfortable seats. They, instead, concentrate on what seems to be their impending deaths. They offer prayers of thanks to Oconto.
Read parts ONE and TWO.
***
Reservoir Park - The Dutchess & The Duke
(Sorry about the ads.)
***
I was walking to work today and a man passed me and offered me drugs, saying: "Got that bud..."
I looked at him and said, "No. No thank you."
I did this because I believe it is very important to be polite. I believe in manners.
***
HAPPINESS IS
Fuck You, Penguin
Monday, December 08, 2008
Peshtigo
God realizes that his actions were reckless and melodramatic, and so he brings back the world.
§
Peshtigo, newly reborn, rises from the earth, his body a conflagration. Flames from his ears lick the passing clouds. They darken from the fire, they burn, they sprinkle ash into Lake Superior.
Lake Superior, an ash film over it, gets disgusted and begins to drain.
§
Lodi has returned to land, and she is walking from the edge of the Keweenaw Peninsula down to Hancock. Before she gets there, though, she sees Peshtigo on his knees before Lake Superior, begging it to stay.
Lodi pulls her rifle from her back.
§
Lake Superior sinks into the mud, through the mud to an aquifer. The aquifer welcomes Lake Superior, and the two getting along very well indeed.
Peshtigo, ablaze and filled with regret for driving away Lake Superior, begins to cry.
Peshtigo's tears are a petroleum product. They fall from his eyes like Molotov cocktails. They scatter northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. The crowds run for cover, but all the buildings are made of wood and dry, and they turn the upper midwest into a bonfire.
§
Lodi sees all this through her rifle scope.
Read part ONE.
***
Bon Iver - Woods
***
Gilbert
and
George
***
A new story by Ryan Boudinot.
UPDATE:
Ryan is now blogging about film at The Rumpus.
***
Another UPDATE:
I'm at Rain Fade.
§
Peshtigo, newly reborn, rises from the earth, his body a conflagration. Flames from his ears lick the passing clouds. They darken from the fire, they burn, they sprinkle ash into Lake Superior.
Lake Superior, an ash film over it, gets disgusted and begins to drain.
§
Lodi has returned to land, and she is walking from the edge of the Keweenaw Peninsula down to Hancock. Before she gets there, though, she sees Peshtigo on his knees before Lake Superior, begging it to stay.
Lodi pulls her rifle from her back.
§
Lake Superior sinks into the mud, through the mud to an aquifer. The aquifer welcomes Lake Superior, and the two getting along very well indeed.
Peshtigo, ablaze and filled with regret for driving away Lake Superior, begins to cry.
Peshtigo's tears are a petroleum product. They fall from his eyes like Molotov cocktails. They scatter northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. The crowds run for cover, but all the buildings are made of wood and dry, and they turn the upper midwest into a bonfire.
§
Lodi sees all this through her rifle scope.
Read part ONE.
***
Bon Iver - Woods
***
Gilbert
and
George
***
A new story by Ryan Boudinot.
UPDATE:
Ryan is now blogging about film at The Rumpus.
***
Another UPDATE:
I'm at Rain Fade.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Ishpeming
Ishpeming straddles Lake Superior to Marathon, reaches into the water, pulls out a clump of frozen hotdogs, breaks them apart one by one, rolls them between its fingers, heats them on the thigh of its corduroy pants, and throws them into the sky. Comets they thereup become. Ishpeming laughs like a frog.
In its lungs, cancer grows like educational dinosaur sponges. In its brain, cancer grows like soap bubbles under a flowing faucet. In its eyes, cataracts are solidifying.
Ishpeming teases the lanes of the roads apart with his fingernail. He grasps and gives a hard tug. Cars fly off into Minnesota. The sparrows in his ears are pissing Ishpeming off.
§
Lodie is a sniper, and kills cities for a living. She is on a raft in Lake Michigan. When she sees Ishpeming, Lodie pulls the rifle from her back.
The bullets are filled with mercury and shaped like little drill bits. And spin like little drill bits.
Lodie steadies the boat by steadying her breathing and then steadying the water around the boat.She dips a finger in the water, and it stops all it's God damned roiling.
The shot hits Ish's temple, and it burrows in. The mercury injects, hits the blood stream, runs around looking for the heart. When the mercury finds the heart, it coats the sides and dissolves the valves between the chambers. This leaves Ishpeming royally fucked.
Lodie turns away, and does not see the city fall.
§
Ishpeming falls. The ground shakes and then the ground stops shaking.
Someone opens up a bottle and pours malt liquor on Ishpeming's feet. That same someone walks for a long time in order to pour malt liquor out near each of Ishpeming's hands. The bottle is empty at the final thumb and someone is unable to take a memorial drink.
God, who lives in the sky, ignores the entire situation, instead concentrating on a new project. He has started a band with some friends, and is on the phone trying to hustle up a gig or two in the next couple of months. The band has been getting pretty good lately, and has been practicing twice a week. God doesn't think much of his singing voice, but the other members of the band are pretty keen on it. It's a good time for God.
§
The corpse of Ishpeming does not stink as it rots to pieces. The rot is not so much organic as it is mechanical. It is, like, entropy.
Or something.
The comet, still zipping around the heavens, tears through God's drummer's neck. The drummer dies. Blood is everywhere in God's garage.
Outraged by the death of drummer (the best of all the drummers who called God after seeing his flyer on a light pole) God destroys the universe.
TO BE CONTINUED
***
***
Order Blake's book.
***
UPDATE:
Go here and read the top story linked, "The Behavior of Pidgeons" by my friend Gabriel Blackwell.
In its lungs, cancer grows like educational dinosaur sponges. In its brain, cancer grows like soap bubbles under a flowing faucet. In its eyes, cataracts are solidifying.
Ishpeming teases the lanes of the roads apart with his fingernail. He grasps and gives a hard tug. Cars fly off into Minnesota. The sparrows in his ears are pissing Ishpeming off.
§
Lodie is a sniper, and kills cities for a living. She is on a raft in Lake Michigan. When she sees Ishpeming, Lodie pulls the rifle from her back.
The bullets are filled with mercury and shaped like little drill bits. And spin like little drill bits.
Lodie steadies the boat by steadying her breathing and then steadying the water around the boat.She dips a finger in the water, and it stops all it's God damned roiling.
The shot hits Ish's temple, and it burrows in. The mercury injects, hits the blood stream, runs around looking for the heart. When the mercury finds the heart, it coats the sides and dissolves the valves between the chambers. This leaves Ishpeming royally fucked.
Lodie turns away, and does not see the city fall.
§
Ishpeming falls. The ground shakes and then the ground stops shaking.
Someone opens up a bottle and pours malt liquor on Ishpeming's feet. That same someone walks for a long time in order to pour malt liquor out near each of Ishpeming's hands. The bottle is empty at the final thumb and someone is unable to take a memorial drink.
God, who lives in the sky, ignores the entire situation, instead concentrating on a new project. He has started a band with some friends, and is on the phone trying to hustle up a gig or two in the next couple of months. The band has been getting pretty good lately, and has been practicing twice a week. God doesn't think much of his singing voice, but the other members of the band are pretty keen on it. It's a good time for God.
§
The corpse of Ishpeming does not stink as it rots to pieces. The rot is not so much organic as it is mechanical. It is, like, entropy.
Or something.
The comet, still zipping around the heavens, tears through God's drummer's neck. The drummer dies. Blood is everywhere in God's garage.
Outraged by the death of drummer (the best of all the drummers who called God after seeing his flyer on a light pole) God destroys the universe.
TO BE CONTINUED
***
***
Order Blake's book.
***
UPDATE:
Go here and read the top story linked, "The Behavior of Pidgeons" by my friend Gabriel Blackwell.
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