So this week marks week 9 of the Spring semester. While a good many of my students are living it up in exotic locations and participating in drinking sex parties, I'm thinking about the state of things.
The [soon to be] kid
or sir not appearing yet. Jack's officially due on St. Patty's day. Everyone's hoping for something sooner. Tomorrow would be nice. Seriously. [Jack, are you reading my blog yet? If not, well get with the times, son].
The [insane] kid
Yep. Totally bonkers. Molly is so endearingly crazy that my teeth fall out only to grow back in again so that they can fall out more. About this, she says, "Do you like it, Daddy? Do you lub it? I lub it Daddy. Daddy. Daaaady. Awwww sooo Cuuute." [all of this followed by her trying to bite my nose--a game I started except that she uses her teeth and really does try to bite it off]
The [omfg get this baby out of me] pregnant wife
She's done. The bellybutton's popped. Get that kid out before I become collateral damage in a pregnant lady in pain rampage.
The Writing Front
At present I'm arming the mail cannon to fire a story to the Colorado Review for the Nelligan Prize. It'll likely be my only contest submission this year (despite the grave odds). But 1. I'm broke 2. I'm only entering because most pubs don't consider anything over 3k words let alone stories [like mine] that are largely over 10k.
The Cats
Hey cats, quit barfing. k thx bye.
The student blogging project
Totally kicking myself for not making the students post comments on a regular basis. Just about all of them are gung ho on waiting till the end and posting all 30 in one day. So much for blogs being a gateway to conversation and an extension of class discussions. Sigh. Also too bad since many of them are posting some real good content that could/should get some discussion face time.
The Dayjob
I like working for a truly global company. I have some German coworkers that don't mind me fumbling around in German in an attempt to get better. Plus, with database work on top of that, I'm both blissfully busy and working on stuff that doesn't make me hate life. Who'd a thought that?
D&D
Shut up. Yeah, Sue and I started throwing together some stuff for a new campaign last night. I love the early planning stages of new campaigns. It's the middlish parts where Sue expects me to have some kind of plan (at which point I've been gunning by the seat of my pants for far too long) that I start to fizzle and want to take a break. Here's to hoping for a nice long run on this new bit.
Reading
Joey Goebel's Commonwealth -- Nightly reading to Sue. Gotta love Goebel.
Chuck Palahaniuk's Pygmy -- Lunchtime at work reading. meh. I'll finish it soon.
Showing posts with label Reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reading. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
In Praise of Pat Rothfuss
So wayback in grade school I got hooked on D&D, and started reading just about every single TSR produced book out there; especially the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Ravenloft series. For most of highschool I read nothing but TSR fantasy and D&D rulebooks. And while I did branch out a little and read some Robert Heinlein and David Eddings, I stayed pretty true to the D&D offerings.
Then I started up college, and around started reading literary stuff. And with that came a sense of academic snobbery--the notion that the genre fantasy that I loved was somehow not good enough, and that I needed to aspire to higher things. Of course I was too young in my English career to feel that I had the authority to challenge the status quo, so I found new loves: postmodernism, experimentation, etc ad nauseum.
And my fiction, too, shifted away from fantasy into experimentation and postmodern screwity. But always in the back of my head, I've wanted to get back to the ole roots, and write up some worthy fantasy.
Back in November, I started just that with my NaNoWriMo project. And as soon as the semester's over with, I plan on setting up a regular writing schedule of no less than two nights a week to Sally Forth on said worthy fantasy project.
So how does all of this tie into Patrick Rothfuss? I'll tell you.
Rothfuss author of The Name of the Wind, is the kind of author that we all sort of envy. He had the testicular fortitude to draft up a giant novel over a period of (I think) seven years or so, and then publish it. And by Giant, we're talking rivaling Dostoyevsky. But in a good way (and not to bash Dostoyevsky, I love him, but today's kids...not so sure about that). Anyway, Rothfuss writes and eventually publishes this massive book. It's meaty, it's tasty, it has character development, and goddamnit the language isn't garbage. So, in short, it's fantasy, but fails to fall into any of the genre-pitfall traps that snooty folks poo-poo at when they condescend to genre writers.
Rothfuss not only has an ear for the natural flow of language, but because the story is told largely via dictation, his word choice necessitates such careful selection. And not only that, but he handles for a lot of the common type plot holes you'd see. The most obvious being, how can anyone dictate dialogue from years ago, or how can anyone conceivably keep up with the dictation. All of this is handled in the book in a natural, "Oh yeah that makes sense" kind of way. And that's how the whole book is largely. It's a rampage that somehow manages to take its time but also build incredible strong tension.
I read this book aloud to my wife in our nightly reading. Usually we read about a chapter's worth, but there were days where we'd read 50-70 pages in a drop without stopping. While that may not sound like much, keep in mind that reading aloud nets you, maybe 5 pages in 10 minutes.
And so dovetailing in with all of this is the fact that I received this copy from my best friend as a gift with him saying, "When I read this, it reminded me of how your fiction would look if you wrote fantasy."
I can say I'm deeply humbled by such a compliment, and also, driven to live up to it.
So long of the short, Pat, thanks for rocking out a fan-damn-tastic book. Thanks for paving a new road into the world of fantasy literature.
Then I started up college, and around started reading literary stuff. And with that came a sense of academic snobbery--the notion that the genre fantasy that I loved was somehow not good enough, and that I needed to aspire to higher things. Of course I was too young in my English career to feel that I had the authority to challenge the status quo, so I found new loves: postmodernism, experimentation, etc ad nauseum.
And my fiction, too, shifted away from fantasy into experimentation and postmodern screwity. But always in the back of my head, I've wanted to get back to the ole roots, and write up some worthy fantasy.
Back in November, I started just that with my NaNoWriMo project. And as soon as the semester's over with, I plan on setting up a regular writing schedule of no less than two nights a week to Sally Forth on said worthy fantasy project.
So how does all of this tie into Patrick Rothfuss? I'll tell you.
Rothfuss author of The Name of the Wind, is the kind of author that we all sort of envy. He had the testicular fortitude to draft up a giant novel over a period of (I think) seven years or so, and then publish it. And by Giant, we're talking rivaling Dostoyevsky. But in a good way (and not to bash Dostoyevsky, I love him, but today's kids...not so sure about that). Anyway, Rothfuss writes and eventually publishes this massive book. It's meaty, it's tasty, it has character development, and goddamnit the language isn't garbage. So, in short, it's fantasy, but fails to fall into any of the genre-pitfall traps that snooty folks poo-poo at when they condescend to genre writers.
Rothfuss not only has an ear for the natural flow of language, but because the story is told largely via dictation, his word choice necessitates such careful selection. And not only that, but he handles for a lot of the common type plot holes you'd see. The most obvious being, how can anyone dictate dialogue from years ago, or how can anyone conceivably keep up with the dictation. All of this is handled in the book in a natural, "Oh yeah that makes sense" kind of way. And that's how the whole book is largely. It's a rampage that somehow manages to take its time but also build incredible strong tension.
I read this book aloud to my wife in our nightly reading. Usually we read about a chapter's worth, but there were days where we'd read 50-70 pages in a drop without stopping. While that may not sound like much, keep in mind that reading aloud nets you, maybe 5 pages in 10 minutes.
And so dovetailing in with all of this is the fact that I received this copy from my best friend as a gift with him saying, "When I read this, it reminded me of how your fiction would look if you wrote fantasy."
I can say I'm deeply humbled by such a compliment, and also, driven to live up to it.
So long of the short, Pat, thanks for rocking out a fan-damn-tastic book. Thanks for paving a new road into the world of fantasy literature.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Good bye Spring '09, Hello Summer
As I type this, I'm finishing up the last of my grading deluge. I posted my composition class' grades the other day, and momentarily, Business Writing will be set to the books. It's an awful nice feeling to be 'done;' very much akin to the done-ness achieved at the end of a semester when you're a student. Funny how when you're a student you never consider how much work is involved on the prof's side of the house--really it's about the same as what the student faces.
Between Last Thursday and Sunday, I slammed through 71 five page essays. I just finished slugging through 5 business proposals weighing in at nearly 20 pages a piece (some more, some less), and sorting out grades on a multi-tiered system for them.
Here are some more stats:
Overall, I read over 3,050 pages of student writing this semester, and that doesn't include revisions; so I wouldn't be surprised if there was another 150-300 pages sneaking around that average that I didn't account for.
I went through 7 pens.
I averaged 10-15 student emails per day.
For my business writing class, we read two books: Matt Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma, and D. Michael Abrashoff's It's Your Ship, as well as three 30 page articles from CQ Researcher, and a good chunk of The Business Writer's Handbook
In Composition, we read five essays: Gerald Graff's "Hidden Intellectualism," Christopher Lasch's "The Lost Art of Argument," Sven Birkerts' "The Owl Has Flown," Susan Bordo's "The Empire of Images in the World of our Bodies," and Arlie Russel Hochschild's "From the Frying Pan into the Fire." We also watched and discussed Steal this Film.
On the side, I managed to read Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism, Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts, and The Watchmen. Currently, I'm reading Robert Coover's The Public Burning, and Nation of Rebels by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.
Oh and I haven't written a word of fiction since...um...maybe November? So sad.
As far as students, I noticed a dramatic improvement in attentiveness, class participation, and overall quality of writing in comparison to the fall semester. Part of this is due to students moving into the comp class after having taken an introductory class (which is optional based on entrance tests), and/or repeating the class after having failed in the fall. In any event though, we generated a lot of good discussion, and I didn't have any 'dead' sections like I experienced in the fall. I also had a dramatic improvement in seeing students going to get writing tutor help; largely this was a good thing.
I did however learn that there are several topics that I never want to read about again. They include:
Now that I have a couple semesters under my belt, I hope to start revising and deviating my lesson plans a bit for the future. I want to incorporate more focus on MLA citation in my Composition classes--this semester's addition of the Annotated Bibliography assignment revealed that many students are still clueless about proper citation. Also, in one of our departmental meetings, Craig presented a sort of handout relating to asking "Good Research Questions." It's something I hadn't considered before, and when I presented it a couple weeks ago, the students really seemed to like it; so that'll go in much earlier in the semester. Also, I think I'd like to develop Problem Statement Format introductions more clearly from the start-- the weaker writers in my classes always benefit from this, as it helps them form a clear direction to their papers. Currently, PSF comes in around week four; I think I'm going to move that up to hit before the first essay is due.
I altered the way I handled open revision this semester (in the fall I didn't put a timeline on revision and received a deluge of last-minute revision), and it worked really well, so I'll definitely keep that as an option.
I'm also working on creating a sort of revision checklist of common errors that I'd say 80% of my students make. Things like putting your punctuation inside your quotes, proper citation format, not opening or ending paragraphs with evidence, etc. Hopefully such a document will help them organize their workshop sessions more, and help them get away from focusing only on grammatical feedback.
So now that School is over for the moment, I've been working at gainful summer employment. At the moment RGIS is my only current holding. I had my paid training session today. The work is ridiculously easy; the hours are awful. Strange times are dealable--Verizon hardened me against weirdo shifts, but the pay is awful, and they only have me down for 17 hours in the next 2 weeks; nowhere near enough to pay the Man.
Fortunately, I managed to land an inteview tomorrow for a Marketing/web development gig at a place that's less than two miles from my house. From the sounds of it, it might solve all the summer monetary problems. So I'm looking forward to that with gusto.
Plus, since my next big project is to build the site for Ontologica, it'll be nice related practice. Speaking of Ontologica, I am finally going to be able to start drafting the essay that's been floating in my head since before Rod posed the notion of putting this journal together. Although I'm not traditionally an essay writer, I'm pretty psyched up to write this, so hopefully it'll pan out well.
Finally a note on the homefront: Sue's gone back to work, and though on many levels I feel like I'm somehow failing at bringing home enough money to cover bills, her work environment has changed drastically for the better, and she's really enjoying herself there; which is really good (and it's really helping with finances).
Molly's just coming out of a real bad stint of no sleep week (see my previous blog post). I guess most of the molars have cut through, because after nearly a week of no naps, and really poor sleeping at night, she's more or less back on her regular schedule (though the daytime nap is more floaty now--she used to crash immediatly after lunch, now it's hitting anywhere between 10:30 and 14:00). She and I have been hitting up the Zoo pretty regularly, and Molly likes that a whole lot. We'd like to hit some other zoos this summer, so hopefully that'll happen--kind of all dependent on work schedules and whatnot.
So now that I've written a blog post that, by all website usability rules is far too long, I'm going to end with a hopeful note about summer.
I hope summer rocks as much as I think it's going to rock.
Between Last Thursday and Sunday, I slammed through 71 five page essays. I just finished slugging through 5 business proposals weighing in at nearly 20 pages a piece (some more, some less), and sorting out grades on a multi-tiered system for them.
Here are some more stats:
Overall, I read over 3,050 pages of student writing this semester, and that doesn't include revisions; so I wouldn't be surprised if there was another 150-300 pages sneaking around that average that I didn't account for.
I went through 7 pens.
I averaged 10-15 student emails per day.
For my business writing class, we read two books: Matt Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma, and D. Michael Abrashoff's It's Your Ship, as well as three 30 page articles from CQ Researcher, and a good chunk of The Business Writer's Handbook
In Composition, we read five essays: Gerald Graff's "Hidden Intellectualism," Christopher Lasch's "The Lost Art of Argument," Sven Birkerts' "The Owl Has Flown," Susan Bordo's "The Empire of Images in the World of our Bodies," and Arlie Russel Hochschild's "From the Frying Pan into the Fire." We also watched and discussed Steal this Film.
On the side, I managed to read Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism, Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts, and The Watchmen. Currently, I'm reading Robert Coover's The Public Burning, and Nation of Rebels by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.
Oh and I haven't written a word of fiction since...um...maybe November? So sad.
As far as students, I noticed a dramatic improvement in attentiveness, class participation, and overall quality of writing in comparison to the fall semester. Part of this is due to students moving into the comp class after having taken an introductory class (which is optional based on entrance tests), and/or repeating the class after having failed in the fall. In any event though, we generated a lot of good discussion, and I didn't have any 'dead' sections like I experienced in the fall. I also had a dramatic improvement in seeing students going to get writing tutor help; largely this was a good thing.
I did however learn that there are several topics that I never want to read about again. They include:
- The Drinking Age
- Gun Control
- Abortion
- Steroids
- Gambling
- The Smoking Ban
- Stem Cell Research
- The Death Penalty
- Alternate Fuels
- Global Warming
- Illegal Drugs
- Capitalism
- Piracy
- The Information Age
- Counterculture
Now that I have a couple semesters under my belt, I hope to start revising and deviating my lesson plans a bit for the future. I want to incorporate more focus on MLA citation in my Composition classes--this semester's addition of the Annotated Bibliography assignment revealed that many students are still clueless about proper citation. Also, in one of our departmental meetings, Craig presented a sort of handout relating to asking "Good Research Questions." It's something I hadn't considered before, and when I presented it a couple weeks ago, the students really seemed to like it; so that'll go in much earlier in the semester. Also, I think I'd like to develop Problem Statement Format introductions more clearly from the start-- the weaker writers in my classes always benefit from this, as it helps them form a clear direction to their papers. Currently, PSF comes in around week four; I think I'm going to move that up to hit before the first essay is due.
I altered the way I handled open revision this semester (in the fall I didn't put a timeline on revision and received a deluge of last-minute revision), and it worked really well, so I'll definitely keep that as an option.
I'm also working on creating a sort of revision checklist of common errors that I'd say 80% of my students make. Things like putting your punctuation inside your quotes, proper citation format, not opening or ending paragraphs with evidence, etc. Hopefully such a document will help them organize their workshop sessions more, and help them get away from focusing only on grammatical feedback.
So now that School is over for the moment, I've been working at gainful summer employment. At the moment RGIS is my only current holding. I had my paid training session today. The work is ridiculously easy; the hours are awful. Strange times are dealable--Verizon hardened me against weirdo shifts, but the pay is awful, and they only have me down for 17 hours in the next 2 weeks; nowhere near enough to pay the Man.
Fortunately, I managed to land an inteview tomorrow for a Marketing/web development gig at a place that's less than two miles from my house. From the sounds of it, it might solve all the summer monetary problems. So I'm looking forward to that with gusto.
Plus, since my next big project is to build the site for Ontologica, it'll be nice related practice. Speaking of Ontologica, I am finally going to be able to start drafting the essay that's been floating in my head since before Rod posed the notion of putting this journal together. Although I'm not traditionally an essay writer, I'm pretty psyched up to write this, so hopefully it'll pan out well.
Finally a note on the homefront: Sue's gone back to work, and though on many levels I feel like I'm somehow failing at bringing home enough money to cover bills, her work environment has changed drastically for the better, and she's really enjoying herself there; which is really good (and it's really helping with finances).
Molly's just coming out of a real bad stint of no sleep week (see my previous blog post). I guess most of the molars have cut through, because after nearly a week of no naps, and really poor sleeping at night, she's more or less back on her regular schedule (though the daytime nap is more floaty now--she used to crash immediatly after lunch, now it's hitting anywhere between 10:30 and 14:00). She and I have been hitting up the Zoo pretty regularly, and Molly likes that a whole lot. We'd like to hit some other zoos this summer, so hopefully that'll happen--kind of all dependent on work schedules and whatnot.
So now that I've written a blog post that, by all website usability rules is far too long, I'm going to end with a hopeful note about summer.
I hope summer rocks as much as I think it's going to rock.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Louisville, Kate Nash, and a smattering of random
So residency is here again, and though it may be futile for me to blog about Louisville since most of my readership is either currently here with me or recently graduated, but WTFN (as in Why the Fuck Not), right?
Although it's only Saturday, and I'm sure I'll be tired and cranky by Thursday, Residency looks to be very very well laid out in terms of planning and sluffing and overall interest in what's going on. Workshop this res for me looks to be particularly good--I really enjoyed all of the pieces, and they were all very thematically different. AND, I get to be workshopped first. Shut up.
Sue, Molly and the fam are due in Thursday and Friday. I'm a little sad that they'll all miss my readings and lectures
But, since the first thing everyone said to me at Residency went like this: "Hi Drew, How are the baby and Sue? Got any pictures?" I think everyone will be generally happy to see them, and I'll be happy to see my wife and baby (which I already miss terribly). Win-win.
On to new musics:
Thanks to the wonders of my favorite online radio, Pandora, I've found several new bands and other musical type groups that I'm very much obsessed with lately. Kate Nash is at the forefront of this new wave in my musical tastes. Kate's music reminds me a little of Bjork, a little of Anna Nalick, a little of the Dresden Dolls, and a lot of none of them. She has a very [for me] unique sound and sings in a lovely cockney. Her songs are pretty bawdy, and very story-esque. Normally I can't hear lyrics for shit, but because she uses the cockney accent, and because her instrumentation is pretty simple, her lyrics shine out. I first got hooked on her music with the song "Merry Happy," but since I've bought the album, nearly every track is fantastic. My favorites include "Foundations," "The shit song," "Birds," "Dickhead," and "Pumpkin Soup." I guess Kate also won best breakthrough artist in england for last year. I hope she sticks around, because I thoroughly love her music.
I've also, thanks to Pandora, been finding a number of more instrumental bands that I really dig: The Section Quartet (like Apocalyptica, they redo rock songs with their strings.), The Last Cord (very dark instrumentals), Matmos (kinda weird, but also good), and Tom Waits (probably some of the most miserable music I've ever heard. I love his voice and the misery).
Ok I guess that's it. I lied about the smattering of random. I'm sure you don't mind.
Although it's only Saturday, and I'm sure I'll be tired and cranky by Thursday, Residency looks to be very very well laid out in terms of planning and sluffing and overall interest in what's going on. Workshop this res for me looks to be particularly good--I really enjoyed all of the pieces, and they were all very thematically different. AND, I get to be workshopped first. Shut up.
Sue, Molly and the fam are due in Thursday and Friday. I'm a little sad that they'll all miss my readings and lectures
- Lecture: Structural Screwity: A Brief Guide to Reading and Writing Experimental Fiction
- Tuesday, May 27 @ 1:30 PM ELC Lectorium
- Reading: from "Deconstructing Happily Ever After" (2008 Kentuckiana Metroversity Contest Winner)
- Thursday, May 29 @ 1:30 PM ELC Lectorium
But, since the first thing everyone said to me at Residency went like this: "Hi Drew, How are the baby and Sue? Got any pictures?" I think everyone will be generally happy to see them, and I'll be happy to see my wife and baby (which I already miss terribly). Win-win.
On to new musics:
Thanks to the wonders of my favorite online radio, Pandora, I've found several new bands and other musical type groups that I'm very much obsessed with lately. Kate Nash is at the forefront of this new wave in my musical tastes. Kate's music reminds me a little of Bjork, a little of Anna Nalick, a little of the Dresden Dolls, and a lot of none of them. She has a very [for me] unique sound and sings in a lovely cockney. Her songs are pretty bawdy, and very story-esque. Normally I can't hear lyrics for shit, but because she uses the cockney accent, and because her instrumentation is pretty simple, her lyrics shine out. I first got hooked on her music with the song "Merry Happy," but since I've bought the album, nearly every track is fantastic. My favorites include "Foundations," "The shit song," "Birds," "Dickhead," and "Pumpkin Soup." I guess Kate also won best breakthrough artist in england for last year. I hope she sticks around, because I thoroughly love her music.
I've also, thanks to Pandora, been finding a number of more instrumental bands that I really dig: The Section Quartet (like Apocalyptica, they redo rock songs with their strings.), The Last Cord (very dark instrumentals), Matmos (kinda weird, but also good), and Tom Waits (probably some of the most miserable music I've ever heard. I love his voice and the misery).
Ok I guess that's it. I lied about the smattering of random. I'm sure you don't mind.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
On the Up and Up (with fingers crossed)
Despite being scheduled 2nd shift during a packet week, I successfully completed and sent my 33 page first draft of the ECE last Friday. And while the pressure's not completely off, I feel markedly relieved to be at least done with the drafting stage. For me, drafting is the pits. In a way, critical papers are kind of easier than creative pieces because you have to structure them very thoroughly, and such structuring leads pretty much in one direction: supporting your thesis and proving it. The lack of the creative spark in such composition, makes critical sentence slugging kind of boring after a few pages. While thinking up the things to say, and researching is very exciting, laying it all down is pretty boring.
But at least until I hear back from Louise, I'm taking a break on the ECE and working on some new creative material and getting back to reading non-research books. I'm currently about halfway through Barthelme's Forty Stories, some of which I really like, and other bits that are just a bit too quirky to really capture me. I'm also reading Rachel Harper's book out loud 1 chapter per day to Sue. It's a great book, and I'm really glad that it was picked for this fall's book in common for fiction. Our nightly poem is coming from the Poetry section of McSweeney's Quarterly vol 23--they do this big poetry chain thing where 10 poets pick 10 poems. Since I haven't read much poetry, I'm hoping all the exposure will turn me on to some more people. So far, it's been kind of lukewarm; Dave's book was much better in every way. I'm also looking forward to reading Lincoln's Melancholy, the new issue of Fence, Opium4, Democracy (Joan Didion), and Demonology (Rick Moody). If I get through that, I'll be about half way through the list of books that I considered for this semester.
But at least until I hear back from Louise, I'm taking a break on the ECE and working on some new creative material and getting back to reading non-research books. I'm currently about halfway through Barthelme's Forty Stories, some of which I really like, and other bits that are just a bit too quirky to really capture me. I'm also reading Rachel Harper's book out loud 1 chapter per day to Sue. It's a great book, and I'm really glad that it was picked for this fall's book in common for fiction. Our nightly poem is coming from the Poetry section of McSweeney's Quarterly vol 23--they do this big poetry chain thing where 10 poets pick 10 poems. Since I haven't read much poetry, I'm hoping all the exposure will turn me on to some more people. So far, it's been kind of lukewarm; Dave's book was much better in every way. I'm also looking forward to reading Lincoln's Melancholy, the new issue of Fence, Opium4, Democracy (Joan Didion), and Demonology (Rick Moody). If I get through that, I'll be about half way through the list of books that I considered for this semester.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
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:
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.
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:
- 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.
- theSTART "Initiation" and "Death via Satellite" - theSTART has a very edgy rocky punk sound with a great female vocalist
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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."
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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