Beware the Ramblesnatch

Ahoy! (did you know that Alexander Graham Bell originally wanted us to say that instead of "hello" when answering the telephone?....Now you do).

Yeah, I haven't bloggered in a while, so you might want to take a gander and only read the headings that look interesting, that way you won't have to read too much of the logorrhoea babble snapping from the Ramblesnatch's mouth much in the same way Error gives birth to and eats her children.

Publishing News
Not a whole lot going on right here except for a trickling stream of dismissals...but hey, at least GlimmerTrain and Playboy took the time to send me a letter. I like getting mail, even if it's a "sorry, this isn't what we're looking for" type letter. I did however send five stories seventeen ways on Friday of last week, so my fingers are crossed that something will stick somewhere.

Residency Prep
Can't wait. I like Dave Harrity's countdown in his post. Since today's the first, it's down to 24 days, and once those worksheets come ramblin' in, those days will dissipate like a fart in a windstorm.
Speaking of the residency and all it's glory, I'm going to be driving down this time, and by that I mean to say that my beautiful wife and forever companion and really good friend, Sue (the Queen of all Foxes) will be accompanying me for this residency. We're both very excited, and we're planning on rolling into Dodge a day early so I can show her the sights and sounds of 4th street (or should I say Fourth Street [since none of you ever seem to abbreviate...{long winded southerners}]). So yes, Sue will be coming down for fun entertainment, and now that the sick days of the 1st trimester are over, she'll be up for plenty of eating and merriment in general.

How Goes the Pregnancy?
Glad you asked. Sue's doing wonderfully, and she's been very glowy and happy. We're both glad that the days of all day morning sickness are over, and now I'm spending more effort reminding her to take it easy than anything else. She's been painting a beautiful fairytale forest mural in the baby's room (I'll post pictures after we get all the crap out of the baby's room), and also lots of general cleaning and nesting. We're planning to raise somewhere around $50,000 next weekend when we have our yard sale, so that'll give us some very nice bling for our trip down South.
We still don't know if it's going to be a boy or girl, but we're going to find out on May 9, for sure. I'll be sure to post results and more pictures if we have them. Again, I'm pretty sure we'll be holding a contest for the-most-creative-names-for-our-baby-that-we-won't-use at residency. So have a list ready.

Music and Books
Since we're in our between-semester-time-off, I've had a chance to 1. spoil myself and buy seven cds and 2. Read some non-required reading. I want to talk about that for a bit:

1. Scarling - "So Long, Scarecrow" - Scarling, a band made up of Jessika (the former singer of Jack off Jill) and some other talented people, has been a favorite of mine for about as long as I've been on Pandora. The entire album has a very consistent wall-of-sound/noise-with incredibly-melodic-vocals feel to it. Lots of distortion and girly-goth angst.
2. theSTART "Initiation" and "Death via Satellite" - theSTART has a very edgy rocky punk sound with a great female vocalist
3. Hungry Lucy - "To Kill a King" - A while back, I fell in love with the song "Alfred" from her CD "Apparitions," but aside from that song, I wasn't keen on the whole album. However, Sue really likes Hungry Lucy, so I went ahead and picked up "To Kill a King," and it's an incredibly consistent downtempo-sort-of-ethereal-goth-darkwave-thing (with the exception to the three or four remix songs [which I could probably do without]). I'm just finishing my first listen through right now, and I'm very happy with this CD.
4. Nine Inch Nails - "Year Zero" - While I might not be an "original" NIN fan (I jumped on the bandwagon with the "Closer" album), I've been enjoying Trent's music for a long time, and aside from two tracks on "With Teeth," I was sort of let down by the last album. "Year Zero" seems to make up for that letdown of the last album. It feels like a sort of going-back-to-the-roots-of-industrial-rock cd with lots of sampling and vamping and heavy fat beats. At times, while rolling in my Honda, I feel a little bit like I'm in a ricer with all the Bass in this album, but it sounds Very much like a NIN album, but it doesn't sound rehashed or boring to me either. I'm very happy. On a side note, listening to it today, I began to wonder if Trent tries to Sing like David Bowie, or if he just sounds like that nowadays...either way, I can hear a little bit of Bowie in his vocals this time.
5. Android Lust - "The Division" - Android Lust is described somewhere as a sort of Female version of NIN. The girl was born in Bangladesh and like NIN, she's the primary musical vision for the group. The music is very synthetic/industrial with samples of moaning and screaming at time. Visceral, angry, female vocalist, awesome.
6. Kelli Ali - "Psychic Cat" - Kelli Ali was the original lead singer for one of my favorite bands, The Sneaker Pimps. She wasn't an original member of the band, and eventually, the band kind of wrote her out of the band. However, fortunately for me, Kelli continued making music. "Psychic Cat" sounds similar to the Sneaker Pimps' debut album "Finding X" and I'm particularly a fan of her song "Speakers."
7. Joey Goebel The Anomalies - Ok. I'm done with music. I want to talk about this book. I'm sure all of you know Joey. If you haven't read any of his books yet. Do it. Stop reading this post. Stop looking at Pr0n on the intarnets. Get out of your house. Buy his books. Make him a famous man. Because he's a fucking genius. I read this book aloud to Sue as a sort of nightly bedtime story thing, and the book was entertaining as hell, yet deep. Real, yet funny. Depressing, true, and solid. When reading it, I couldn't help but project Weseley Willis' speaking mannerisms to Luster Johnson's dialogue, and goddamn if Joey didn't intend it, then well Weseley's ghost must have been flowing through him when he was writing. In some parts, Sue and I laughed until we nearly cried. Indeed it was a Harmony Joybus ride. And immediately after finishing it, I grabbed his 2nd book Torture the Artist and put it over at the bedstand. We started it last night, and it's shaping up to be just as wonderful.
8. McSweeney's Quarterly Review #23 - I'm not finished with it yet, but there's a story in it by Wells Tower. He's phenomenal. If you happen to get a chance, read "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned." It appeared in the Anchor Book of New American Short Stories Edited by Ben Marcus. Wells has a way with really drawing you into the characters and doing things in weird shit situations. Sue actually hated the Wells Tower story in this particular issue of McSweeney's, but It reminded me a lot of my dad's camp and some of the folks that live up there all the time.
9. Steven Millhauser The Knife Thrower and other Stories - John Seay, a former Spalding student, turned Law student friend of mine recommended this to me. The whole thing is a bunch of Magical Realism type bits, and there are a couple of real gems in there. This is the first collection of stories I've read that relies so heavily on Magical Realism, and it kind of rubbed me the wrong way in that I felt overloaded with the "suspend reality for this one, ok?" motif. They were all well crafted, and Millhauser is excellent at using a 1st person plural narrative, but all smashed together, it kinda felt like a little too much too fast.

What I've been writing
Not an Autobiography has been moving along pretty smoothly considering the slowness of semester 2's beginning. I'm up to seven stories, and I have two very strongly identifiable selves, the beginning of a 1st person self, and secret plans of somehow trying to unite Johnny and Clare's paths. The last couple stories I've written focus heavily upon the nature of the Gloaming, aka, the deplorable condition of my locale of employment. I spent most of the last three months actively trying to find another job without much luck. So for the moment, I've given up and turned to spewing my aggression into fiction, and it's helped.

And thus the Ramblesnatch eats itself, ending the post.