Somewhere off the Face of the earth

So in Early December, I posted here saying that I won at teh NaNoWriMo. And since then, it's been pretty quiet here on this blog. Sorry about that.

Call it a New Years Resolution, or perhaps a Interesting-challenge-because-it's-also-an-assignment, but my goal is to blog weekly for the next fifteen weeks in hopes that I get back into a more regular swing in updating the currently lacking ramblesnatch in this pitiful blog's existence.

Either way,

Here't Goes:

Between watching my now thoroughly insane (as in Holy-shit-kids-have-way-too-much-energy-and-why-can't-I-have-a-tenth-of-that insane) daughter sugar herself up into a Christmas frenzy (the first such frenzy [being the first year she was cognizant of holiday fun] of several impending frenzies, I'm sure), and trying to ease the discomfort of Sue's pregnancy (apparently all boys are Assholes [my term not hers] in the womb--I'm sorry mom), and revising the Shadowman project (I finished a solid pass just this past week -- W00t), I've been talking and thinking and prepping for classes, which started yesterday. (I just realized: In the above I listed a bunch of stuff, but not anything about work. It was there too; but that's the ignorable bit; it's like sleep, I guess--an interim between the other, more important stuff. Not that work is bad like it was in the Verizon days, but thankfully and blissfully, contracting has been relatively stress free, and thus totally ignorable like the fifth child out of six).

This time around I've picked up two, a Rhetoric and Comp and a Basic Writing. And it is because of the Basic Writing Course that I'm challenging myself to blog regularly, because that's exactly what they'll be doing. Specifically, I've beet talking to my friend Grace a lot about various topics related to my course themes. Most of our discussions have revolved around a mutual dislike towards Facebook (which started out with Grace mocking me for joining fb back in June or July, and ended with Grace saying "see I told you it was Evil" when I quit in early December). We've also spent a goodly amount of time talking about newsmedia and the current shift that's starting to happen between print and online content.

Personally, I never read a newspaper. I've always found them boring, and the size, formatting and layout annoys me, not to mention the cost. However, slashdot, Google News, and for a good long time BBC news have all replaced any sort of need for reading traditional newspapers. Granted, I'd like to pick up some more sources; in researching essays for class, I've found that online content on Salon, The Atlantic, and a couple other places is really top notch. But I am the king of taking on too much, so while I have good intentions, I don't really foresee my news reading circle expanding much (especially in the face of how much I've been lagging in reading fiction).

So with that said, I think online news is the way to go. I'm sure I'll cover my take on the whole Rupert Murdoch/News Corporation vs. Google bit here soon, probably next week, but I think print journalism is dying, and no one is really going to miss it. While I sit far enough into the tail end of Generation X to not fully understand the usefulness and ubiquity of Twitter and Social networking (perhaps because I'm just not that social--I like my cave, and I don't like to leave it), but I do think that them kids with their cellphones and twitter feeds will be getting most of their news from that. With each successive generation we become more attuned to multi-tasking. And as that becomes more of a necessity, doing things like sitting down to read the paper will become increasingly preposterous. More likely, we'll catch a bit of news in a deadspot between text messages, while waiting in traffic on the road, or have it shipped to us, pre-filtered and set up to our desires via Twitter, RSS and all that other fun Web 2.0 stuff that makes teh Intarnets useful to us.

McDonalds is Craptacular

Went to McDonalds today for a Shamrock shake--you know a green drink for St. Patty's day.
"Sorry we don't have those anymore," says the disconnected voice coming through the drive thru window as I STARE AT THE FUCKING PICTURE OF A SHAMROCK SHAKE ON THE PLACARD.

Assholes.

So I got a Frosty and Fries from Wendy's instead.


My daughter stole my fries....all of them.

Morning Derail

I'm typing this with my laptop precariously balancing on one knee, while my daughter sleeps in my arms.

It's been a rough morning.
It's been a wonderful morning.

Let's start at about 2:36 AM. Molly starts crying--nightmare.
Sue gets up to rock her to sleep; no luck, brings her to bed with us, and Molly goes into "let me pick at your face and drill your nose with my razor finger, mama" mode. (Usually, I'd qualify all of that as a big long hyphenated word, but today, that sounds too complicated.)

So back to bed with her.

She cries.

We try to sleep despite the crying. All parents know that's a lie. In reality, the parents lay a room away from their crying child, eyes closed pretending to sleep and hoping the other will get up and care for the kid, or better yet, hoping the kid will just embrace the beautiful idea of sleep and, well, sleep through the night...maybe just once, but preferably every night.

So at 3:18, I get up, try to rock, and backrub Molly back into the land of sleeper crystals and whatever weird thing babies dream about.

Twice I make it to the door before tears.

At attempt 2, Sue offers Molly in bed with her part 2. By now it's 3:47, and since the alarm is going off in 13 minutes anyway, I relent, stay up, and head down to grade papers until my conscience clears me to maybe work on some fiction.

4:05 and Sue calls down; Molly drilled her nose good again (maybe I'm making that up for dramatic effect). Either way, Molly is standing in the bed when I fetch her.

So the routine begins. And this is the, my kid should be asleep, I want to be asleep, but the kid doesn't want to sleep, so let's do awake things routine.
1. diaper change. check.
2. food. She ate about 1/4 of a banana...so hunger wasn't the issue.
3. set up a sleeping nest in the living room--trick said child to sleep by having sleep be somewhere 'fun.' Check.
4. Let kid roam/play until the sleep demons take over....fail.

It's always the toughest when Molly continues crying when you've done everything you thought she needed. food, clean butt, not cold, has binky, George (her monkey, but not that Curious asshole--fuck him. I hate curious george. Molly's george is cute [for a monkey] and has a really weird outie belly button that's somewhat creepy and yet endearing.), place to sleep, and is eye-rubbing tired.

Change plans. We lay down together. This scares me. I'm still tired. I have the perpetual, sleep through everything important fear. I soldier through though. Stay awake, she doesn't. Score.

Wait...my reward is to grade bad revisions. Oh well, satisfying my concience. Grading begins at about 5ish.

During this time, Molly sleeps with a lot of restless in her. Butt in the air, creeping slowly off the nest until a face drag on the carpet is enough for me to try to intervene. But the best laid ideas are often dashed, right? My desire to help turns into a wakeup call, some more tears.

So we jump back to stage 4. Let her roam. She does this long enough for me to start grading again.

Then the cute starts. Her little tired self comes over to the couch and she lays her head on my keyboard, a feat that I'm still not sure how she pulled off, since I was sitting proper on the couch, meaning she had to kind of twist and stretch to get her head there. Either way, she ended up joining me on the couch in my arms, and I started to one-hand grade (I'm letting the kids submit essays electronically this semester, so I'm doing track changes).

As she nestles in, she grabs a shall laying over the couch and wraps it about her; I guess Sue's smell makes her more comfortable, and since she doesn't often sleep in my lap, I kind of stop grading.

This Molly sleeping in the lap thing is pretty common for Sue; they do it all the time, but I don't often get the honor of being a pillow, so I stop grading all together, and turn to her little body. Looking at her all curled into me, breathing smooth now, warm, wrapped in a shall, I have one of those great parenting moments. This is my daughter. She is tiny and beautiful and love and sleeping. Sleeping finally because I am her safe. I am her protection from whatever awful dream kept reoccuring tonight.

So my morning plans are somewhat derailed. I'm probably not going to check as many things off my checklist of overachievement. But instead I get something rare and wonderful. A small beauty, a moment worthy of reverie and experience.

So I'm going to stop writing now, and enjoy it for as long as I can.

The failure of the 2008 Summer Olympics

As I sit here watching fireworks that fired off in a 12 hour offset, I'm thinking that the 2008 Olympics, the first summer games I've ever actively paid attention to pretty much sucked. It didn't suck because China was the host, or I felt that there was some form of preferential treatment/cheating going on (though that I dea has crept into my head), it's the fact that NBC did an abso-fucking-lutely horrible job covering the games.

From the opening ceremony to the torch's last moments, I've had the games on durning primetime nearly every night (background noise as we played with Molly, really), and during that time, I saw: a tiny bit of fencing, bicycling, swimming, biking, volleyball, diving, more swimming, more volleyball, more diving, gymnastics, more volleyball, more diving, more swimming, more volleyball, a bit of running, more volleyball, a moment of trampoline, more diving, more gymnastics, more volleyball, more diving, more volleyball, more volleyball.

In all, I'd say 80% of NBC's primetime coverage was volleyball. And I have no idea why this was decided as the penultimate sport to display. Sue and I were stunned at the beauty of the trampoline finals--why didn't we get to see more of that? And what about Judo? I didn't even see highlights of that. And Tae Kwon Do? All I saw was a brief highlight reel about the Cuban kicking a Ref in the head, on purpose--that should have been prime time front and center.

My wife's a former Junior Olympics medalist in discus. There wasn't any coverage for that--and an American took gold in Discus. Sue syas though that they never televise the non-running sports of track & field. That's sad.

I remember in the past there were special channels you could order for the games, so that you could see more things....Hell, I'd expect at least that NBC would devote most of the day to the games, but no. Daytime TV garbage reigns over Olympic awesomeness. Not only that, but it's sad that the games didn't start until Prime Time. We should have had 24/7 coverage with only breaks for the news. All the other shows are completely unnecessary. We only get the Olympics ever four years; why limit our experience even more?

The announcers also need to shut the hell up. Especially during the diving. That woman announcer, I don't remember her name, constantly criticized everything anyone did, and almost always under-scored the athletes' scores compared to the judges. These people are the world's best, I don't want to hear how they fucked up a tuck or left their feet straight. I wanted to be amazed by a prowress I'll never know. I don't need to hear nitpicky garbage from some announcer trying to fill the tv silence.

Commercials. I swear NBC orchistrated the Olympics footage to be actually less air time than commercial time. Seriously, they'd show two dives, cut to commercial. Show another dive, cut to commercial. I know commercials are quickly overruning our TV land, but they were especially bad during the Olympics.

So what did I like? The atheletes. Everyone who competed was fantastic. China did a great job hosting (although they really spent way too much money putting it all together (I hope they don't let their Olympic grounds fade into decripitude like Athens)).

Well Enough wining for me. Here's to hoping that London's Olympics get better coverage, less fucking volleyball and more diversity.

The good news is that now that the Olympics are over, I won't be watching anything except movies again. Ahh Netflix, you are my friend.

End of an Age

So now I'm graduated. After two years, a lot of fun, hardship, and other bits in between, I am a Master of Fine Arts. How's it feel? Same as always, but different.

I guess the big thing that everyone says is, "well it'll feel different when you don't have to send out a packet." True. But at the same time, I have to keep going, keep writing, but now without deadlines, and that's (for me at least) the true test of my experience. To me, the only difference between a student and a "professional writer" is that students still feel the need for implanted structure; something to force them to do what they want to do--to write. Supposedly, by the time we graduate, we should feel that deep-gut need to write on our own rather than on someone else's timetable. Or at least that's how I see it.

In that vein, I think I'll probably be successful. I have a dedicated time of day (4AM - 7AM) to write every day, and for the most part, it seems to be working out. Plus too, there are other opportunities for "packets:" submitting stories, job hunting, setting up reading/lecturing gigs.

I guess the trick for me will be to keep my goals pretty high, yet attainable. Currently, I'm looking to finish Not an Autobiography this year. I'm also hoping to snag a teaching job before the year's out as well.

I'll end with some fun statistics:

Before grad school: 2 publications, maybe 4 rejections, 6 total submissions

During grad school: 4 publications, 68 rejections, 90 total submissions, 2 contest wins, 1 runner up, 1 Pushcart Nomination

For the visual folks, I paper my office's closet with all my rejections:


















And here are the acceptances:
So as you can see, it's a long tiring road, but that, I guess, is the magic of a graduate program like Spalding. Before I started, I wasn't writing all that regularly, and I wasn't seriously trying to get published beyond the couple stories that college workshops polished up all nice and pretty. But as I progressed through the program, I began to develop a stronger sense of my goals as a writer, as well as an academic. And I found as each semester waxed into the next, my neurosis about having to write and then going upstairs and staring at a blank screen slowly disappeared. So while I may be spending a lot less time in front of the computer, the time spent here feels a lot more productive than the time I used to spend here, and that, I suppose is a good thing.

So all in all, having a MFA isn't all that different, other than the fact that I can apply for a real career with it, and it's conditioned me into a more structured writer, and helped me net some publications, and meet wonderful new writer friends, and well, I guess it was a pretty good idea afterall.

Resting on my hotel bed, I compose

myself after a 6.5 mile walk around state college. A walk that, according to my friend, Gmaps Pedometer, burned 1048 calories. Nice. Surprisingly during/after said walk, I never got hungry for dinner, so I'm guessing the lunch I had at Plyler's Buffet on the way to State college had a full trucker caloric intake of 10,605 calories. It was worth it though. Strangely enough, there were some English ladies (as in Tea and Crumpets not wah wah wah 19th Century Russian Lit wha wha wha). English ladies in Brookfield, PA was, well pretty strange, but also somewhat cool.

If I had an accent, I'd be an English one, and I'm not talking "cup 'o tea, with the missus kind", I'm talking "oi git y'r fookin' arse off me bumpa 'fore me garden breaks open y'r bib n' brace." When I'm alone in foreign places like I am today, I often consider trying to uphold an accent for all conversations....become someone else for a day. Unfortunately, my anti-social nature precludes me from most social interaction, and I generally don't keep up the charade outside my head.

In any event, I've never really been to State College Before. Sure, I was here once in high school with my physics class to look at their nuclear reactor, but we didn't really walk around. So the goal on my walk today was two fold: 1. find gifties for my wife and baby (because all dads have to come back with presents when they go to faraway places. It's a law of fatherhood) 2. observe strangers.

So I did a lot of wandering. I found that College and Beaver streets had plenty of shops and restaurants, so I kinda wandered around there for a while. As I looked at people, I noticed that State College is a lot like a big city; no one smiles, no one notices you; everyone is invisible. I like anonymity but, I really felt almost alien here. Perhaps it's because I'm a decade older than a good chunk of the population, or because I just don't think/act/like a college student anymore (did I ever think/act like a college student? <---maybe for a minute, week).

My observations: America is homogenizing. We're getting fatter. Cell phones are ubiquitous. I didn't feel bad for listening to my headphones because everyone else was doing the same thing.

I remember college being more divided, clique wise. Granted, I only walked a small area, but I'd say 90% of the people I saw fit into a general category of sameness. I saw only a handful skaters, and hippies, and no other groups. Where oh where did all the goth kids go? Punks? Emo? anything? Everyone had that Old Navy, Gap, Abercrombie shit look. Everyone drove expensive cars--I've never seen more Mercedes, BMWs, Volvos, and muscle cars...Isn't state college really expensive? Where the fuck are they getting money to shop for homoginity clothes AND have fancy cars?

We're getting fatter. In a way, I think this is a good thing, to a degree. I'm talking to you, girls. Thanks to all the friends over at Al Key Hall, there weren't all that many rail thin guys and gals floating around. Most people had substance. And I think that's good. It's good because I used to religiously watch America's Next Top Hot Model, and always rooted for the Plus Size model. I don't follow the show so much anymore because, well, the plus size girl never wins...and honestly 10 is not Plus! Fuck 10 is like the "don't go any lower than that, sister" mark for me. The last episode I watched, the girls were bitching at the one girl because she was a 0. A fucking 0. C'mon, who could fall in love with something so thin? That's why I love my wife. She's short. She's beautiful. She has curves, and she's not going to get rid of them because America wants her to. So bravo to all you other girls out there who don't believe that 2, 4, 6 are sexy. You can be healthy and a 10-12. You'll look good, feel good, and not count calories when Ben and Jerry come over for dinner, after dinner, and midnight snacks.

Cellphones: Jesus Christ. I hope someone develops a Cellphone Bomb. Hate em. 'nuff said. Got behind 3 people on the way from Erie to here that nearly caused accidents thanks to Cellphones--one near my house actually; he decided that while he was taking his call at the wheel, he'd also create a new lane to get from Rt 5 to 955; nearly ran me into the meridian. I think he was a priest. Fuck you Church.

Music: One time, a long time ago, my friends and I were talking about superpowers. The first one I listed was "appropriate background music for all situations." I think this one is starting to come true, on an individual level. Everyone down here has iPods, earbuds. Tuned in, tuned out. I was doing the same, and I noticed that all the stores had their music up real loud, so you had to listen to what they wanted, unless, of course you turned your shit up louder.

Tomorrow the conference starts. I present on Saturday. I'm hoping to meet some old profs, and maybe find me a job. That would be the all time best experience. Either way, I'm looking forward to this weekend--especially since I'll get to see my wife and baby on saturday after the conference (I've missed them much this week).

I forgot to bring my camera cord, so I can't upload any of the photos I took today, but maybe I'll edit and add later.

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.