for trent

i am going to miss you, trent. you knew how to live your life, and i'm sure you still do. alive--the glory and disproportionate unabashed reveling that was yours--you knew how to really live. myself, i'm just a corner hermit, coming out into the light occasionally, mostly because you coaxed me. and maybe i am prone to exaggerate, but no one will care if i do so in memory of you. hey, remember me up there in the great beyond. i haven't forgotten you down here in the mediocre right-now. don't worry about us down here, we can make it, as long as we remember to live. i know you read over my shoulder the poetry i won't show anyone else, the stories i deem unfit for human consumption. maybe you could drop me a note sometime and let me know how i am doing. i'll see you when i get there, someday. i am going to miss you, trent. i love you.

--in memory of trent--

i just want to say

dammit! not to anyone, in particular. but to mr. trenten johnson in particular, the humongo faculty membro, or something like it anyway. congrats. i got turned down at the travelodge for a kid in a t-shirt and shorts. guess i need to show off my knees more. the sex appeal must have blown the manager out of his socks. i need to get more sexy knees and show them off more at job interviews. also i have applied at a number of other worthless summer jobs and no one wants me. yet. a college grad with only three months on his hands is not a hiriable commodity, it appears.

oh. big shout out to sarah, in london. and so on. i am just rotting here in provo. literally. rotting. oh, the stench... you didn't want to know. my characteristic wit has flown the coop.

i am working on what i like to call a "longer project" aka a novella. it is going pretty well so far. have a few short stories floating around in the literary journal abyss. a few more in various stages of completion. wish this could be my permanent job.

big ups to speshul K. for no reason, really. but she is pretty cool. and she actually blogs.

it has been raining for like, over a month here in wretched p-town. it is like, monsoon weather. like, it actually seems like, a rainy season or something. wtf. wtf. wtf. i think i am going to die.

heard there was an international blogger conference, at which said bloggers tried to defend the accuracy and quality of the reporting and writing on their blogs. no wonder i wasn't invited.

one last wtf to tide you all over. wtf. oops, that was two. oh well. you can never have too many. wtf.

my only serious post ever

so i hate to be sentimental, or even serious, but i am really going to miss you guys. it seems as though everyone is about to be off to different places, and i'll just be, you know, living here, in a basement, in provo. not that i won't be going places too eventually, but it is just the immediacy of graduation that is affecting me i suppose.

anyway, i love april, and i love you all, and i am sad to see it end. my blog will still be here, and you know my email address too... i'll still be your friend if you want, even though i am not around to bother you with long pointless stories, garnished with a hook. i am glad that i could be friends with all of you. kleenex? don't mind if i do.

just one last thing -- nothing that we did was insignificant, even if we are the only ones that know about it. everything that we will do will be meaningful, because we are the ones doing it. i am wretchedly sappy, and i don't care at all. i love you.

don't forget -- can you do that for me?

as promised

here it is. bad, yes, terribly bad. but amusing, yes again, most likely. as for how many commas i can cram into very short sentence fragments, i am tired of trying. ask the ann doty contest people whether they still feel good giving me that award after they read this. composed in a fit of passion, a violent spasm, i make no apologies (except the ones i already have) for its grace (or lack thereof) and so here it is. thanks to trent for the inspiration. i expect this one will get me the nobel prize, for, you know, glorification of the mongoose, or something.

The Mongoose Dance or
Wikki Tikki Tavi Shakes His Wittle Ass

I stood behind a table and saw you,
Ass up in the air, shaking with rage.
I see no snake, no writhing, no venom
But your own spittle flying from sharp-
Edged little incisors, paws
Hugged to your furry chest, nails bitten ragged,
Ragged, ragged. and then your legs pushed against the floor,
Hindquarters jumping, jumping
And i thought of what turned you on.
My own presence, un-nibbled nails,
Meticulous use of communal grooming,
Me and my own un-bouncing behind.
I need to get ahold of myself, find a way to
Scare off my own set of hooded cobra
Eyes, false signals of alarm. Two black dots rise up,
Threatening, dart at me with frightening speed.
But I don’t move. I trust in my mongoose.
I realize I’ve been hedging, keeping you from
Truth. But can I help if saw your animal instinct
Rise and give me proof,
Undisputable, that you were a werewolf indeed in your
Youth? Age has turned you into a wiser creature,
One that trembles with shame at my indifference, my
Callous behaviour: I took a short video of your dance,
Spread it over the internet, claimed the dance was my
Own invention. The choreographer gets the glory;
Brittney learned that the hard way. Still,
Covetous of your moves, knowing that a video won’t elec-
Trify me like your presence will, I have to ask:
Can you do that for me?
Can you shake that ass?
Can you teach me how to dust off the grass
Clippings from the seat of my pants?
Can you do that for me?

well, there it is. go on. indulge yourself. read it again. you know you want to.

in response to...

yes, in response! the exclamation point is warranted, because i am breaking my silence for a reason other than mere frippery. oh, i may bandy foolish words on this blog, but now i cease to jest. in other words, i make myself sound like an even bigger moron than i am in real life. as if that's even possible. but really...

in response to sarah, who wants to know why we write...

we just do. it is a part of the basic human urge to create. you live in a cave, you eat meat, you paint on the wall. or, closer to home, you go to a university, you live in a hovel, you complain about your conditions in writing because your roommates won't listen. okay. seriously though, i question why i write, and whether i can or not about a million times a day. i propose staving off the finality of answering the question by saying that we write for different reasons at different times. if we always wrote for only one reason than we would probably wear that reason out, even if it were true that we are all posessed beings that have no choice but to slave away perfecting long sequences of words.

in response to trent, who thinks that he can use big words and get away with it...

if all literature is epidiectic, does that mean that you then presume to cut out the past role of the epiphany in literature? if you are privileging one thing over another than you are necessarily setting yourself up for blind spots. i am not saying that i necessarily think that the epiphany is or was a good solution, and from your statements it appears that you think that the epiphany has been used as subject matter but not as the real base or argument. i would be interested in seeing your ideas on how to solve the problem. i have my own little hunches, but hunches they will remain until i expand them. until you explain your secrets, i shall have to conclude that your blog was composed in the good-spirited nature of sycophancy.

in response to mary, who makes top ten lists and tries to pawn them off on us...

top anything lists are never a good idea. besides, i disagree with yours heartily, and for no other reason than that it is not my own list.

and in response to aaron, who hides on his blog in silence (different from my own now very vocal self)...

you cat! hissing in the orchard! wrapping yourself in a shroud of fog! hiss away, i know your secret. i know, i know, i know... you've been rendered genderless. neutered, i believe it is. oh well. some cats hiss because they don't want others to know their secrets. well, you can stop hissing and post on your blog, because your secret's out pussycat.

secrets

this is just a teaser to make you talk to me, in case you are ignoring me for some reason. i just found out some very interesting information regarding myself and the mayhew contest. but that's all i'll say about that. want to know more, talk to me yourself. there.

the slowest post ever

if this stupid blog could load pages any slower, it would. right now i am sporting a battlestar galactica bracelet courtesy of the LTEU symposium that i was forced to go to for class. well, at least i came of with free booty, otherwise known as cool stuff, aka my bracelet. plus i got to hear the man himself, jerry pournelle, talk about the role of science in science fiction. in a few words, he said: a good science fiction novel = few assumptions made. in other words, less fake scientific concepts thrown at you. to translate that into a concept more understandable to those of us on the super-secret subcommittee for the distibution of graphically vulgar flyers, he means simply that the new wave of science fiction is obsessed with techno-porn. i would like to have made that phrase up, but i am not that lucky. jerry beat me to it. damn him. techno-porn is an adult theme, said jerry, and adult themes sell better than juvenile ones. except that doesn't make them any more real, does it jerry? he got into the industry when there wasn't any money in it, but his bestselling novel made "a hell of a lot more" according to the venerable jerry. i didn't ask him the pertinent "more than what" question for fear that the answer might be more graphic than i could stomach. after all, i was halfway through my swiss cheese and honey ham sandwich, and i didn't want dangerously sexy robots disturbing my lunch. i assume that sexy robots would be a huge part of techno-porn, but then, i wouldn't really know. you'll have to ask jerry yourself for that answer. well, i'm off, but let this be a lesson to you: if you think that your writing is no good, just insert some blank-porn, and you'll be a bestseller overnight. the possibilities are endless: gamma-ray-porn, cspan-porn, magnetic-porn, blender and microwave... you get the idea. see you on the bestseller list.

the inscape booth

so k and i just finished rocking out at the buth for a week straight. i hope some more byuers know about the old Inscape publication now. cross your fingers and wish for good submissions. you might also want to wish that some of the staff members grow an ear (or an eye) for good lit and start loving my stories that i give to them. or maybe my stories just suck and i'm deluded. oh well. cheers to the buth! N-SCA-PAY 4-EVER!

update on helicopter guy

he actually hasn't been coming to class lately, but that's ok because he has a great replacement. she seems to be incapable of separating herself from any of the material that we discuss, and all her comments are based purely on her own experiences. for example: she made some comment about how she played softball in high school. in my opinion, her softball days are not relevant to our class discussion. i could be wrong though--how important is our own personal experience in terms of what we try to express to other people? i feel that she could communicate her ideas more easily if she just said what she was thinking, but she seems incapable of doing that. i know i am guilty of rambling monologues, stories, and so on, but for the most part they have no point, and i love to hear myself talking, so that's enough motivation for me to keep spewing out endless tales and keeping anyone listening to me hooked.

that's enough revelation for one paragraph, i think.

hey! i'm not dead

or at least it appears that way. after a month of blogless stupor, i have decided to rebuke those naysayers that said i was a thing of the past. and so, correction--i am not a thing of the past. as to deeper musings about writing and so on, i'll get to that later. just thought i would establish that i am still alive. ok then.

my memory

i forgot that i didn't have class today, so here i am. who knew it was a mon-wed class? not me, that's for sure. my wife would answer that question, like she always answers that question, by pointing to herself and saying "me". ok, i accept the fact that my memory is failing fast. while i still retain some vestige of self-importance let me just rant about: KIDS THAT TRAVEL BUT DON'T CALL HOME TO LET THEIR PARENTS KNOW THAT THEY AREN'T DEAD. whew. that was enough capitals for a whole month of posts. regardless of the fact that is just finished reading "a prayer for owen meany" which i'll refer to as "the capitals book", i don't think that i can abuse it in a similar fashion. so kids that travel. my brother is one of these. he recently moved up to rexburg, id to attend byu-i. unfortunately, no one knows if he is alive, or if he was mauled by a mountain lion, or run over by a semi, or other such nonsense, because he hasn't called a soul. nobody knows what his number is, so we can't call him. i personally think that he has been abducted by an idaho farm girl who can bench at least 375. that's me maybe 2 1/2 times. wow. anyway, also falling into this category are kids that travel with ILP, the company that my wife works for. a recent group, delayed in new york after returning from russia, forgot to call their parents and tell them not to pick them up at the slc airport. this resulted in late night and early morning phone calls from worried parents to my house, which disturbed my sleep terribly. my wife's boss, who is the happiest person alive and never gets upset, said upon hearing the news, and i quote, "why the hell didn't they call their parents?" i almost died laughing. so, to all kids that travel -- you are more brain dead than i am. which means that the score is now my memory 1, yours 0. good enough for me.

me and the helicopter guy

so-it's a new semester and we are lazily debating various aspects of the english language when this guy, who happens to be wearing an army shirt--no coincidence, he is in the army--counters a point that i made and my teacher elaborated on by asking what exactly we mean by nationalism being a problem. A problem? i suppose if you are in the army and support the babbling idocy of dear old W, and if you go to sleep dreaming of being a helicopter pilot (no comment on the riduculous waste of money and fuel those things are), then you probably don't see the problem with America becoming a nation of self-absorbed pompous asses who think that America is the greatest thing since swiss cheese. Cheese with holes in it, right? Everybody needs it. Anyway, i kept my mouth shut and let my teacher be diplomatic in telling helicopter guy that he is a fool; it is only the second day of class, and we will be sure to have some beautiful debates in class this semester. so, me and the helicopter guy.

also: I am the new editor of inscape; call me demi-god--everyone else does.

also: Special K is the assistant editor; call her demi-goddess--I do.

More special updates about helicopter guy as we prepare to clash.