Again, ?
Good God, I am tired but can't sleep. I've been lying in bed since 12:30 in a Halo/grad school/future plans/Sarah delirium and all I want to do is brush my teeth. And floss. For some reason my teeth feel like they need it. Also my head hurts. I feel like I'm on meth.
Yesterday (today?) I drank a great and astounding amount of coffee, and also ate part of a coffee-flavored chocolate bar that cost three dollars at Hy Vee. Don't worry, I bought it for a special occasion.
If you're looking for something to read, here are some things I've found great recently:
Dogwalker, by Arthur Bradford. Short stories featuring bizarre and shiftless characters in rough situations. One features a character named Catface who has a catface disease.
Sirens of Titan, about a rich earth playboy who is fucked over by fate and a time- and space-traveling megalomaniac.
Tree of Smoke, about Nam, where Kevin was conceived.
Candide, one of the most brilliant and funny and true and short books I've read. I really do think you would like this one, particularly Bil and Martin and Morgan, probably because it uses a more weighted and cynical but also hopeful and capable wit that you might enjoy. This is the best book I've ever read in a single sitting.
Monday I rode to Des Moines to sell a towering stack of books to Half-Price Books. After the horrors of past moving experiences, I decided that my next move would involve only what would fit in my car, and now my library is much smaller. At Half-Price Books I carried box after box to the sell desk, and then wandered around the store till they'd analyzed my bundle of junk. They handed me sixty-one dollars. At the desk, the clerk told me she was excited to check out my stack. "We get excited whenever somebody young comes in here," she said. "Everyone else just sells us Danielle Steel." "There's good stuff over there," I said, but then got nervous because I'd kept all the really good stuff for myself. "You should check it out. I'm a writer guy." "Oh!" she said. "From where?" "Well...Ames." "Oh." "Yes." "The nice thing is, here we're all writers." "I applied here once," I said, "but something came up." Really what came up is the manager asked why I didn't have higher ambitions. He had a large head. I drove back to Albia that day, in summer of 04, and probably called Alyssa or went over to Garrett's apartment to play CTF on Sidewinder, and eventually was hired to research laws governing private development of meatpacking businesses and the physical requirements of professional dog groomers.
Now it is April of 08 and I can not tell you how very old I feel. If you people who are older than me feel anywhere near as old as I do, I can only wish you were here right now to eat a steak or some fish with me and talk about it. I don't know why it is, but I regularly feel about 65. Actually, I do know why it is: 1) I live in a town where everyone I see is at least two years younger than me, and usually more like seven. Every time I go to Des Moines I feel restored, like I've swum through the fountain of youth to get from Ames to Kevin's apartment. 2) People I used to sit around playing the Ninja Turtles game on NES with are now married and likely going to be teaching history at ACHS next year. I'm referring to Meagan here. 3) I'm 25 and my current sources of income are paychecks from the English Dept. and the student loan I took out this year. 4)I still sleep on a mattress on a floor like a damned hobo. The first fucking thing I'm buying when I move out of here is a real bed. I swear to almighty dog that it's going to be stuffed with golden feathers or the hair of virgins or something equally decadent and expensive.
Here are some story ideas I've developed, either by myself or in conjunction with other brilliant people, and abandoned, usually at bars or breakfast counters:
1)To quote directly from the note I scrawled while drinking coffee at Borders: "Recipe for an immortality cocktail: mix the blood of these ten cute animals; drink. Unicorns. Koalas. Kittens. Caribou. A virgin male human. (This last one was struck through.) Penguin. Hippo. Exotic bird. Mountain goat. White owl. Three-weeks dead vulture."
2)Story where man's dead girlfriend, who he choked out with a shoelace, helps him solve a mystery. (?)
3)Story about drilling holes into a bar. (again, ?)
I have ridden a great wave of production in the past few weeks, pumping out short fiction like a wave pool pumps out kiddy vomit, and the reason is that I've started writing stories based entirely on dreams. Seriously, it's very useful for adding a certain attractively surreal quality to otherwise stolid fiction.
Dave, I hope you will direct Allison to this: Last night I dreamt that she was an investigative reporter and I was for some reason at a press conference with her. I was confused but showed signs of being useful, if there would be a scuffle.
Again, ?
Let me tell you a little story about our apartment. The story is, the people who live around us, meaning both up- and downstairs, used to be loud fuckers. If you've stayed here, you know what I mean; the music, which started every night around 2:10, after cars pulled into the parking lot, smashed through the walls and sounded as if it were being played in your very head. This was annoying on the weekends, when I was awake and people would be over and we'd be sitting around playing Halo, but was horrible on the weeknights, when I'd already have forced myself into bed and would be barely able to close my eyes anyway.
New paragraph:
This changed a few months ago, when at 3:30 or so Sarah, who had come down for the night, still could not sleep due to the rave in the basement. Goathead went down to have a friendly chat with them and I, who almost never fly into a rage anymore, went down and punched the door until they opened. They looked like fish in a bucket after about three m-80s had been dropped in. They were obviously stoned. Something acidic was said regarding police. The music stopped. I immediately felt bad but was also able to go to sleep, and for once this year didn't have to fall asleep next to my girlfriend feeling too impotent to create a quiet environment at 4 in the morning.
The next day I slipped a note under their door apologizing for punching their door, explaining that I likely wouldn't call the police, but that I would appreciate it if they would be quiet after two. That was it, until that weekend, when I hosted a party of my own. Several lit and ex-lit majors were here, as were Cricket and a crew of graphic designers. I was sitting on my desk talking to Krystal and Lauren and Joe when one of Cricket's friends answered the front door and a basement dweller came in. Maybe he came to give me fish, to use Goathed's terminology, but the place was bloated with large and angsty-looking people. Anyway, he was lovely and thanked me so many times for not calling the police that it was obvious he was high. I gave him a Modelo and it was as if I'd handed him a cup of ambrosia. I was reminded of a time earlier this year, when I'd given a Killian's to the guys upstairs after asking them to shut the fuck up, and they reacted as if I'd poured them a glass of cellar-aged wine. These people are used to swilling fermented sweat out of tin cans.
I've become a fairly good amateur chef, and like the difference in the Modern English song, I'm getting better all the time. Really, I'm pretty good. Goathed is probably better, because every few weeks he'll brandish a wok and mix together a bunch of dead creatures from the sea and produce something delicious, but I'm not bad either. Here are a few recipes:
1) Breakfast slop, alternately referred to as the Eggy Mess:
Find your ipod. Pause whatever you're watching on the expensive and foolishly-purchased tv. Heat oven to medium-high and dump in hashbrowns and veggie sausage. Eight minutes later, forget to stir the skillet of food. Two minutes after that, violently curse god and rush to the kitchen without socks. Dump in sliced onions, tomatoes and peppers. Finally, three egss, beaten. Salsa. Alternately, ktchp & mstrd. Stir up and experience orgasm in mouth. Seriously delicious. There's enough food here for you and a date. Wish you had more friends in town. Wish your girlfriend were around. Eat enough to sastify two people while watching a Six Feet Under DVD.
2) Disturbing Eggs
Nearly the same, but instead of hash browns, black beans. Turns the eggs gray. Put it in a colorful tortilla and think about eating brains.
3) Heart of Darkness
No real recipe here, but this would be a badass name for a dinner.
4) Fishparagus
Dump some butter into a pan. Medium-low heat. Filet of tilapia. Get excited. The smells are like being a kid. Dad's home from the reservoir, has sat around his desk with a knife gutting a stringer of fish, and is now in the kitchen frying the fuck out if it. While overcome with nostalgia, put asparagus and butter into another skillet. Wonder if you washed the asparagus enough. Wonder if you're supposed to eat the weird parts on the tip. Think about how it looks like a skillet full of deformed and tiny penises. Eat and feel vaguely happy, but also unsettled.
5) Chinese pizza
Call John Vorwald. Fulfill old curiosity.
You may wonder what I'm listening to as I write this. The answer is, 89.3, the Current. This is a Minneapolis station that I'm listening to on internet radio. It's a kickass station. Strange to visit a town that has its shit together regarding its publicly-funded radio stations. Here in Ames you can listen to classical all day and jazz for about three minutes at night and NPR programs in between. Right now it's disturbing because the DJ rarely cuts in and when she does she says the strange and vaguely desperate things DJs say when the only people listening are insomniacs and, presumably, trash men. It has me thinking how hideous it would be to work some early-morning job. God help me if I ever have to be awake now in a professional capacity.
Some of you may remember when we called Lazer from Garrett's apartment, around five AM, during the Halo all-niter years ago. It is one of my favorite memories. Andy was back and bought a bottle of ten-dollar whiskey and I thought, this man must have found El Dorado. At the time I was having intense soul-searching private battles over whether or not I could afford to drop 4 dollars for a Veggie Delite at Subway.
...
There is a strange thing going on with grad school here. Last year at a breakfast meeting I asked Krystal, who was a year ahead of me, if I would be able to enjoy my second year at all. My fear was that, as my education neared its end, I would be overcome with anxiety about leaving Iowa, finding a job, etc. Krystal told me I would be fine and she was right. There is so much paperwork and so many obscure portals to find and then crawl through that now the end of this donkey show seems to be a glittering oasis at the end of a long stretch of hell. My inbox and my bag are full of student papers, I've got a sheaf of official forms in my drawer, and when I think about a real paycheck again I almost hemorrhage dollar bills in anticipation.
This happened last time I graduated from college. It's nice to be back there again, in the heady and idiotic days of late spring, with a future both bright and terrifyingly empty opening up. There's a feeling I had both then and now, that things are going to work out for the best, even though intellectually that seems ridiculous. And in retrospect, it was; after I graduated I lived in my parents' house for months and was without a job and sank into a bitter funk and sent resumes to the most ridiculous of places. The thought of being in that place again is miserable. But it's nice to feel the electricity of possibility again, even if it's shocking and dangerous.
I have this plan to cheer me up about this bout of insomnia by eating pizza slices for lunch, at this place downtown.
I have already enacted this plan to cheer me up about this bout of insomnia: canceling office hours tomorrow. Nobody comes anyway. Office hours, if you're unfamiliar with that terminology, are the hours when you, the instructor, sit around your office waiting for students to show up and ask you about class. In the past year, someone has only come twice, and it was the same student both times. The first time I wasn't there. The second time she came in and started crying about the impact of her fiance's suspected unfaithfulness on her ability to complete homework assignments.
Now, inexplicably, she has dropped out. I keep thinking I should check with her but it seems unfair to the other students who have dropped out and who seemed so disengaged that I didn't bother emailing them.
The worst thing about teaching freshmen, if you're wondering, is that they force you to care about the things you don't want to care about. For example: I care very little about the moral obligation for a student to be mentally present in class. If a student wants to daydream for fifty minutes, it's fine with me. (I myself have probably killed 50+ hours of my academic life mentally imagining different scenarios in which I struggle to survive a biplane crash.) But when that student starts actively fucking with you, you have to either back down or stand up for some idea of authority that you barely even associate with. For example, today during student presentations one girl would not stop click click clicking around on her computer. I had asked previously that everyone either log out or just not fuck around online while their colleagues were talking at the front of the room. I decided to be cool and ride things out, but then computer girl started printing. Printing! It was a loud debacle. I gave a speech about how clicking around is rude and disruptive and pisses me off. I am usually benevolent like a fat Santa Claus and when I swore they all looked like I'd executed a puppy at the front of the room.
. . .
Rominger, happy birthday. I dedicate this unwieldy post to you.
. . .
update
Hi, me again. This installment of Dinosaur Comics had me thinking about how adding "in bed" after a phrase can not only enliven fortune cookie fortunes, but also elements of this last blog post. (If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you don't understand how to fully read Dinosaur Comics.)
For example:
The recipe for Chinese Pizza becomes "Call John Vorwald. Fulfill old curiosity. In bed."
My bitchy rant about students becomes "they force you to care about the things you don't want to care about. In bed.
That's enough of this juvenile behavior.
I can't figure out how to shut off this bold.
Yesterday (today?) I drank a great and astounding amount of coffee, and also ate part of a coffee-flavored chocolate bar that cost three dollars at Hy Vee. Don't worry, I bought it for a special occasion.
If you're looking for something to read, here are some things I've found great recently:
Dogwalker, by Arthur Bradford. Short stories featuring bizarre and shiftless characters in rough situations. One features a character named Catface who has a catface disease.
Sirens of Titan, about a rich earth playboy who is fucked over by fate and a time- and space-traveling megalomaniac.
Tree of Smoke, about Nam, where Kevin was conceived.
Candide, one of the most brilliant and funny and true and short books I've read. I really do think you would like this one, particularly Bil and Martin and Morgan, probably because it uses a more weighted and cynical but also hopeful and capable wit that you might enjoy. This is the best book I've ever read in a single sitting.
Monday I rode to Des Moines to sell a towering stack of books to Half-Price Books. After the horrors of past moving experiences, I decided that my next move would involve only what would fit in my car, and now my library is much smaller. At Half-Price Books I carried box after box to the sell desk, and then wandered around the store till they'd analyzed my bundle of junk. They handed me sixty-one dollars. At the desk, the clerk told me she was excited to check out my stack. "We get excited whenever somebody young comes in here," she said. "Everyone else just sells us Danielle Steel." "There's good stuff over there," I said, but then got nervous because I'd kept all the really good stuff for myself. "You should check it out. I'm a writer guy." "Oh!" she said. "From where?" "Well...Ames." "Oh." "Yes." "The nice thing is, here we're all writers." "I applied here once," I said, "but something came up." Really what came up is the manager asked why I didn't have higher ambitions. He had a large head. I drove back to Albia that day, in summer of 04, and probably called Alyssa or went over to Garrett's apartment to play CTF on Sidewinder, and eventually was hired to research laws governing private development of meatpacking businesses and the physical requirements of professional dog groomers.
Now it is April of 08 and I can not tell you how very old I feel. If you people who are older than me feel anywhere near as old as I do, I can only wish you were here right now to eat a steak or some fish with me and talk about it. I don't know why it is, but I regularly feel about 65. Actually, I do know why it is: 1) I live in a town where everyone I see is at least two years younger than me, and usually more like seven. Every time I go to Des Moines I feel restored, like I've swum through the fountain of youth to get from Ames to Kevin's apartment. 2) People I used to sit around playing the Ninja Turtles game on NES with are now married and likely going to be teaching history at ACHS next year. I'm referring to Meagan here. 3) I'm 25 and my current sources of income are paychecks from the English Dept. and the student loan I took out this year. 4)I still sleep on a mattress on a floor like a damned hobo. The first fucking thing I'm buying when I move out of here is a real bed. I swear to almighty dog that it's going to be stuffed with golden feathers or the hair of virgins or something equally decadent and expensive.
Here are some story ideas I've developed, either by myself or in conjunction with other brilliant people, and abandoned, usually at bars or breakfast counters:
1)To quote directly from the note I scrawled while drinking coffee at Borders: "Recipe for an immortality cocktail: mix the blood of these ten cute animals; drink. Unicorns. Koalas. Kittens. Caribou. A virgin male human. (This last one was struck through.) Penguin. Hippo. Exotic bird. Mountain goat. White owl. Three-weeks dead vulture."
2)Story where man's dead girlfriend, who he choked out with a shoelace, helps him solve a mystery. (?)
3)Story about drilling holes into a bar. (again, ?)
I have ridden a great wave of production in the past few weeks, pumping out short fiction like a wave pool pumps out kiddy vomit, and the reason is that I've started writing stories based entirely on dreams. Seriously, it's very useful for adding a certain attractively surreal quality to otherwise stolid fiction.
Dave, I hope you will direct Allison to this: Last night I dreamt that she was an investigative reporter and I was for some reason at a press conference with her. I was confused but showed signs of being useful, if there would be a scuffle.
Again, ?
Let me tell you a little story about our apartment. The story is, the people who live around us, meaning both up- and downstairs, used to be loud fuckers. If you've stayed here, you know what I mean; the music, which started every night around 2:10, after cars pulled into the parking lot, smashed through the walls and sounded as if it were being played in your very head. This was annoying on the weekends, when I was awake and people would be over and we'd be sitting around playing Halo, but was horrible on the weeknights, when I'd already have forced myself into bed and would be barely able to close my eyes anyway.
New paragraph:
This changed a few months ago, when at 3:30 or so Sarah, who had come down for the night, still could not sleep due to the rave in the basement. Goathead went down to have a friendly chat with them and I, who almost never fly into a rage anymore, went down and punched the door until they opened. They looked like fish in a bucket after about three m-80s had been dropped in. They were obviously stoned. Something acidic was said regarding police. The music stopped. I immediately felt bad but was also able to go to sleep, and for once this year didn't have to fall asleep next to my girlfriend feeling too impotent to create a quiet environment at 4 in the morning.
The next day I slipped a note under their door apologizing for punching their door, explaining that I likely wouldn't call the police, but that I would appreciate it if they would be quiet after two. That was it, until that weekend, when I hosted a party of my own. Several lit and ex-lit majors were here, as were Cricket and a crew of graphic designers. I was sitting on my desk talking to Krystal and Lauren and Joe when one of Cricket's friends answered the front door and a basement dweller came in. Maybe he came to give me fish, to use Goathed's terminology, but the place was bloated with large and angsty-looking people. Anyway, he was lovely and thanked me so many times for not calling the police that it was obvious he was high. I gave him a Modelo and it was as if I'd handed him a cup of ambrosia. I was reminded of a time earlier this year, when I'd given a Killian's to the guys upstairs after asking them to shut the fuck up, and they reacted as if I'd poured them a glass of cellar-aged wine. These people are used to swilling fermented sweat out of tin cans.
I've become a fairly good amateur chef, and like the difference in the Modern English song, I'm getting better all the time. Really, I'm pretty good. Goathed is probably better, because every few weeks he'll brandish a wok and mix together a bunch of dead creatures from the sea and produce something delicious, but I'm not bad either. Here are a few recipes:
1) Breakfast slop, alternately referred to as the Eggy Mess:
Find your ipod. Pause whatever you're watching on the expensive and foolishly-purchased tv. Heat oven to medium-high and dump in hashbrowns and veggie sausage. Eight minutes later, forget to stir the skillet of food. Two minutes after that, violently curse god and rush to the kitchen without socks. Dump in sliced onions, tomatoes and peppers. Finally, three egss, beaten. Salsa. Alternately, ktchp & mstrd. Stir up and experience orgasm in mouth. Seriously delicious. There's enough food here for you and a date. Wish you had more friends in town. Wish your girlfriend were around. Eat enough to sastify two people while watching a Six Feet Under DVD.
2) Disturbing Eggs
Nearly the same, but instead of hash browns, black beans. Turns the eggs gray. Put it in a colorful tortilla and think about eating brains.
3) Heart of Darkness
No real recipe here, but this would be a badass name for a dinner.
4) Fishparagus
Dump some butter into a pan. Medium-low heat. Filet of tilapia. Get excited. The smells are like being a kid. Dad's home from the reservoir, has sat around his desk with a knife gutting a stringer of fish, and is now in the kitchen frying the fuck out if it. While overcome with nostalgia, put asparagus and butter into another skillet. Wonder if you washed the asparagus enough. Wonder if you're supposed to eat the weird parts on the tip. Think about how it looks like a skillet full of deformed and tiny penises. Eat and feel vaguely happy, but also unsettled.
5) Chinese pizza
Call John Vorwald. Fulfill old curiosity.
You may wonder what I'm listening to as I write this. The answer is, 89.3, the Current. This is a Minneapolis station that I'm listening to on internet radio. It's a kickass station. Strange to visit a town that has its shit together regarding its publicly-funded radio stations. Here in Ames you can listen to classical all day and jazz for about three minutes at night and NPR programs in between. Right now it's disturbing because the DJ rarely cuts in and when she does she says the strange and vaguely desperate things DJs say when the only people listening are insomniacs and, presumably, trash men. It has me thinking how hideous it would be to work some early-morning job. God help me if I ever have to be awake now in a professional capacity.
Some of you may remember when we called Lazer from Garrett's apartment, around five AM, during the Halo all-niter years ago. It is one of my favorite memories. Andy was back and bought a bottle of ten-dollar whiskey and I thought, this man must have found El Dorado. At the time I was having intense soul-searching private battles over whether or not I could afford to drop 4 dollars for a Veggie Delite at Subway.
...
There is a strange thing going on with grad school here. Last year at a breakfast meeting I asked Krystal, who was a year ahead of me, if I would be able to enjoy my second year at all. My fear was that, as my education neared its end, I would be overcome with anxiety about leaving Iowa, finding a job, etc. Krystal told me I would be fine and she was right. There is so much paperwork and so many obscure portals to find and then crawl through that now the end of this donkey show seems to be a glittering oasis at the end of a long stretch of hell. My inbox and my bag are full of student papers, I've got a sheaf of official forms in my drawer, and when I think about a real paycheck again I almost hemorrhage dollar bills in anticipation.
This happened last time I graduated from college. It's nice to be back there again, in the heady and idiotic days of late spring, with a future both bright and terrifyingly empty opening up. There's a feeling I had both then and now, that things are going to work out for the best, even though intellectually that seems ridiculous. And in retrospect, it was; after I graduated I lived in my parents' house for months and was without a job and sank into a bitter funk and sent resumes to the most ridiculous of places. The thought of being in that place again is miserable. But it's nice to feel the electricity of possibility again, even if it's shocking and dangerous.
I have this plan to cheer me up about this bout of insomnia by eating pizza slices for lunch, at this place downtown.
I have already enacted this plan to cheer me up about this bout of insomnia: canceling office hours tomorrow. Nobody comes anyway. Office hours, if you're unfamiliar with that terminology, are the hours when you, the instructor, sit around your office waiting for students to show up and ask you about class. In the past year, someone has only come twice, and it was the same student both times. The first time I wasn't there. The second time she came in and started crying about the impact of her fiance's suspected unfaithfulness on her ability to complete homework assignments.
Now, inexplicably, she has dropped out. I keep thinking I should check with her but it seems unfair to the other students who have dropped out and who seemed so disengaged that I didn't bother emailing them.
The worst thing about teaching freshmen, if you're wondering, is that they force you to care about the things you don't want to care about. For example: I care very little about the moral obligation for a student to be mentally present in class. If a student wants to daydream for fifty minutes, it's fine with me. (I myself have probably killed 50+ hours of my academic life mentally imagining different scenarios in which I struggle to survive a biplane crash.) But when that student starts actively fucking with you, you have to either back down or stand up for some idea of authority that you barely even associate with. For example, today during student presentations one girl would not stop click click clicking around on her computer. I had asked previously that everyone either log out or just not fuck around online while their colleagues were talking at the front of the room. I decided to be cool and ride things out, but then computer girl started printing. Printing! It was a loud debacle. I gave a speech about how clicking around is rude and disruptive and pisses me off. I am usually benevolent like a fat Santa Claus and when I swore they all looked like I'd executed a puppy at the front of the room.
. . .
Rominger, happy birthday. I dedicate this unwieldy post to you.
. . .
update
Hi, me again. This installment of Dinosaur Comics had me thinking about how adding "in bed" after a phrase can not only enliven fortune cookie fortunes, but also elements of this last blog post. (If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you don't understand how to fully read Dinosaur Comics.)
For example:
The recipe for Chinese Pizza becomes "Call John Vorwald. Fulfill old curiosity. In bed."
My bitchy rant about students becomes "they force you to care about the things you don't want to care about. In bed.
That's enough of this juvenile behavior.
I can't figure out how to shut off this bold.
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