Month: January 2010

i really need to quit tumblr… this is becoming a highly addictive behavior….

beattitude:  i currently have 44 books checked out and 20 on hold. guilt, check. anticipation, check. time to read these books? um. theconceptlibrarian: magicmolly:

Engaging with the New York Public Library taps into all sorts of unexpected economic anxieties and pleasures.

Ordering books online to be delivered to your local branch brings a feeling of great wealth. For example, figuring out how to nab brand-new books with minimal wait time is akin to having an endless credit line at Barnes & Noble, while picking up a stack of freshly-delivered oversized art books and rare scholarship is like winning access to an antiquarian’s private collection.

The feeling warps when you go home and log into your NYPL account to tally up the damage. This is when you see that you have 13 books checked out, and several are due within the week, and two of these cannot be renewed because someone else has ordered them. With this discovery comes a troubling sense of indebtedness.

There are two ways to respond: ignore the debt (while fighting back a tide of guilt) or quickly pile up all half-read or non-essential books and run back to the library to return them. Dumping an armload of books lightens the psychic load and provides a measure of relief when you check your account to see that this time you owe only 9 books, and these all have a solid two weeks before they begin to accrue fines.

Oddly enough, the logical extension of this method (returning all of your books at once and immediately) does not bring about feelings of relief, but rather feelings of poverty. With no books checked out, it becomes clear that you have nothing to lose but also nothing to gain.

A good balance is to have six books out and at least twelve books on hold, so that a sense of satiety (the six books) is matched with a sense of anticipation (the twelve books on hold) which combines to overshadow the lingering sense of debt embodied in your six homebound library books.

Q.E.D., I think.

fluffynotes: Hot tip: The “acquisitions editor” whose name you found in Writer’s Market doesn’t exist. She ain’t real. Think you’re coming off professional by addressing your submission to the proper editor—the editor you’ve never corresponded with, spoken to, or even found mention of on google? Put down your crack pipe: there’s no such donkey as “Ethel Largetits, Acquisitions Editor” (or “Barry Bigschlong” or “Annette Sexton”). Publishers frequently make up a fake “acquisitions editor” so they can tell which submissions are solicited or come from informed sources and which are coming from people who’ve found them in Writer’s Market. When a manuscript comes in addressed to Ms. Largetits, it’s an instant tip-off that whoever sent it is not in the know. Bing! Into the slush pile, where your intrepid unpaid intern (aka “Ethel Largetits”) will skim it, send you a signed rejection letter (“sincerely, Ethel Largetits”), and forget you exist. http://internspills.blogspot.com/2009/04/attention-would-be-authors-this-is.html

ireadintothings: You will become literature, and you’re already a poem in my head.

deltafoxtrot:

I know,  I posted this last year… but I’m in a mood

Sandpaper between two cultures which tear one another apart

I’m not a means by which you can reach spiritual understanding

Or even learn to do beadwork
I’m only willing to tell you how to make fry bread
1 cup flour, spoon of salt, spoon of baking powder
Stir, add milk or water or beer until it holds together
Slap each piece into rounds -let rest
Fry in hot grease until golden
This is Indian food
Only if you know that Indian is a government word
Which has nothing to do with our names for ourselves
I won’t chant for you
I admit no spirituality to you
I will not sweat with you or ease your guilt with fine turtle tales
I will not wear dancing clothes to read poetry Or explain hardly anything at all
I don’t think your attempts to understand us are going to work so
I’d rather you left us in whatever peace we can still
Scramble up- after all you continue to do
If you send me one more damn flyer about how to heal myself
For $300 with special feminist counseling
I’ll probably set fire to something
If you tell me one more time that I’m wise

I’ll throw up on you
Look at me
See my confusion, loneliness, fear, worrying about all our
Struggles to keep what little is left for us
Look at my heart

Not your fantasies

Please don’t ever again tell me about your Cherokee great-great grandmother
don’t assume I know every other Native Activist
In the world personally

That I even know names of all the tribes
or can pronounce names I’ve never heard
or that I’m expert at the peyote stitch
If you ever again tell me
How strong I am
I’ll lay down on the ground & moan so you’ll see
at last my human weakness

Like your own
I’m not strong, I’m scraped
I’m blessed with life while so many I’ve known are dead
I have work to do dishes, to wash a house to clean
There is no magic
See my simple cracked hands which

Have washed the same things you wash

See my eyes dark with fear in a house by myself late at night

See that to pity me or to adore me are the same
1 cup flour, spoon of salt, spoon of baking powder, liquid to hold
Remember this is only my recipe

There are many others
Let me rest
Here
At least

– Chrystos, Menominee

the temp in the recording studio is 50°F & for some reason my voice sounds really good in the audio files. anyone know why/how that happens?

i wish i knew how to quit you…

i hate it when someone produces a movie that sounds like me life…

yes, today’s podcast is behind schedule. it is experiencing a two-hour delay due to icy roads, frozen lattes & climate change in general…

one of my new year’s resolutions was use tumblr less… it’s not working…

This episode was recorded the week after the River Arts District studio stroll weekend (yeah, I know, it’s a bit late). It features an essay about writing titled “The Field.” Also, I read two poems, “Dead Italians” by Jennifer L. Knox and “asunder” by Craig Arnold. Listen to episode 13 here.

the only thing i miss about not owning a television is viewing nfl & nhl games. thanks nbc sports for running the sunday night game online!

pancakes & coffee for breakfast… somehow i don’t think i’ll try a 2 mile run today… 19°F & feels like 1°F with 20 mph wind…