KT's Blagues

C Is for Cookie & It's Good Enough for Me

2011-12-29T17:28:00.005-05:00

After over eight months, I logged on to Crazyhorse's submission manager and saw that I've finally been rejected. It might have been nice of them to at least email me a form letter. Oh, well.

Current tally: A B C G I M N O Q U R S T W

Possible anagrams:
Angst Crumb Qi Ow
Gnaws Comb Qi Rut

It occurs to me that my blog has been in an angsty rut this year. Perhaps I need to adjust my Qi.

RIP, Christopher Hitchens...

2011-12-16T20:09:00.003-05:00

...and I guess you were right about women not being funny. Or I'm not funny, at least--not according to the editor of the "Funny Women" feature at The Rumpus (who also got my name wrong). So this is probably my tally for the year, unless I hear back from some other places in the next couple of weeks:

A B G M N O Q U R S T W

***Update: Check that--Santa brought me one last rejection before Christmas, from the Indiana Review, bringing me up to--

A B G I M N O Q U R S T W

This is good, because now if I want to make anagrams from my rejections I've got the -ing words. Here are just a few of the phrases I can now spell:

Worm Bang Quits
Worm Bangs Quit
Worm Bags Quint
Worm Gabs Quint
Worm Squab Ting
Worm Tang Squib
Worm Gnat Squib
Sing Quart Womb
Wing Quarts Mob
Wing Quart Mobs
Wing Squab Mr To

I Am the Charlie-Brown-with-the-Football of Submitting to McSweeney's

2011-12-08T11:57:00.006-05:00

So, I'm going to have to extend my project. I'll never have a rejection letter for every letter of the alphabet by the end of the year at this point, not when I keep returning to the same magazines as a dog returns to its vomit. (Sorry--I was just reading from Proverbs.)

I remember in my high school and undergrad creative writing classes how we were always warned about the submissions process and how it takes years before you even get good rejections and then maybe one day some magazine no one's heard of will accept something and then eventually you can move on to magazines that a few dozen people read, and maybe one day before you die you'll get something in Glimmer Train or something. And deep down I always thought: It'll be different for me. I'm going to send this story about a girl in college who wanders around and thinks about stuff straight to the New Yorker, and they are going to publish the shit out of it.

But this time I at least got a more specific rejection, so that's progress maybe(?):

While this certainly mounts an impressive war on Xmas, I’m afraid I’m going to pass. Thanks for the read.

Also, I am now completely obsessed with rejectionwiki.com. How did I not know about it before?

So I Still Need a "D"

2011-11-23T12:41:00.002-05:00

I have a piece up in Defenestration magazine, a site I submitted to primarily because I love the verb "to defenestrate." It's the first acceptance I've gotten since I set out to get rejected by a magazine for every letter of the alphabet.

I other news, I was apparently on WFSU again a few weeks ago and didn't know it. I'll post the mp3 once I get it.

Jesus and Judy Blume

2011-09-13T17:19:00.004-04:00

This is an excerpt from a new essay I'm working on, entitled "Bibliography of the Damned."

(It's supposed to be in the form of an annotated bibliography, but Blogger keeps messing up my MLA format. So just picture where the margins and indents should be.)

Blume, Judy. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. New York: Dell, 1986. Print.

It was the first time I had heard of a book being a secret thing, a dangerous thing. Up until then it seemed like all anyone wanted us to do was read—at home, at school, at church, everywhere. Billboards and public service announcements showed clean-cut, smiling children engrossed in books. Now all the girls were reading this novel, passing it around, and it was scandalous. It was the Lady Chatterley’s Lover of the fifth grade.

I wanted to read it, too. I’d heard that it talked about periods, a subject I desperately wanted to understand, since all I knew was that they were a curse brought on by Eve. But I couldn’t get past the first part of the title: “Are You There God?” How could anyone ask such a question? Of course God was there; as a good Southern Baptist girl, I knew this to be true. I had been saved when I was eight, after a Bible study teacher explained how if you didn’t place your faith in Jesus’ resurrection, you went to Hell, where you would be on fire forever, without ever burning up. That got my attention, since fire was one of my worst fears. I wouldn’t touch matches until I was thirteen. Who was this Judy Blume, then, to challenge the creator of the universe right there in her title?

My curiosity won out, though, and I read the first few pages. The basic plot concerns Margaret talking to God every day, even though her parents don’t belong to any religion. Good for her, I thought. Maybe this book wasn’t so bad after all. Then I read some of the things she was praying for: “I just told my mother I want a bra. Please help me grow God. You know where.” That was too much. Listen, Missy, Jesus didn’t come back from the dead just so you could get boobs. I put the book away and never finished it.

T Time

2011-08-17T15:55:00.003-04:00

I finally got my letter "t."

Tinhouse sent me my rejection this week, bringing me up to A B G M N O Q U S T W in the alphabet game. They had my story for almost six months, which has really put me behind schedule. I should be getting rejected by Crazyhorse any day now, but that still leaves over half the alphabet, and it's already August. What does it mean if I fail at my failure project?

Cover art and prologue

2011-04-30T22:38:00.009-04:00

Here's part of the graphic novel I'm working on. It's a little easier to read if you click on the images.

W

2011-04-27T12:22:00.005-04:00

For the Water~Stone Review, who rejected me this week, bringing me up to A B G M N O Q U S W. I hadn't been expecting that rejection, because it didn't look like they ever cashed my check, and I thought I missed their contest deadline. When I opened it, my first thought was Sweet, I got my "W" after all! Then I realized that it's only April, and I already have ten out of the twenty-six rejections I need. It was several more minutes before it occurred to me to be bummed that yet another magazine doesn't like me. So the alphabet project is having its intended effect.

I tried to explain the project to my students, and they were completely confused. One of them asked, "So you're, like, sending out bad stories on purpose to get rejected?"

No. Sadly, they are not bad on purpose.

A Rejection Letter that Puts Mine to Shame

2011-04-05T22:27:00.000-04:00

A for Effort

2011-03-31T23:14:00.003-04:00

From AGNI: "We enjoyed the writing and the voice, but finally the essay wasn't quite right for us. Many thanks."

Not too bad. It's only March, and I've already got A B G M N O Q U S. Holly suggested that I rearrange the texts of the actual messages to write suicide notes.

Ex: Dear Eds.

Earth does not meet my present needs, despite its evident merit.

The "earth" is from Blue Earth Review. I guess this sounds more like an "I'm becoming an astronaut" note, but I couldn't really find any other words that conveyed the idea of life or death. That could work, though, if I killed myself right after my astronaut story got rejected again. Or maybe I should submit something to Southern Living--then I could have "Thanks for the living, but I'm afraid I'll have to pass." They probably don't take unsolicited submissions, though. So I guess the suicide will have to wait.

Maybe I should submit to Bomb magazine--then I could turn my rejections into some kind of crazy anti-government manifesto.

Slow Rejection Week

2011-03-06T23:06:00.002-05:00

I'm still waiting to hear from AGNI, Tin House, and a couple of other magazines that I'm blanking on right now. It's to the point where I can't even remember where I submitted anymore. If I were to receive a rejection slip from Bass Angler Magazine tomorrow, I don't think I'd even be surprised. I'd shrug and say, "I guess they don't like stories about fake astronauts, either," and I'd send that story on to Pro Wrestling Insider.

I've taken a break from essays and short stories this week to finally start on my novel--I feel completely pretentious even saying the word "novel," but I guess that's what it is. It helps that I'm watching DK's cat for the next few weeks while she's overseas; sitting around in my dissertation director's house every day is excellent motivation. The other day I was sitting on the porch with the kitty and sort of drifting off, when a voice from the heavens shouted, "Get to work!" Well, ok, it was a voice coming over the loudspeakers at Leon High School, but I obeyed it all the same.

So I'm working on the novel.(Still sounds pretentious--I'm going to call it the "chain gang," as in "I spent all day yesterday working on the chain gang." Then people will just think I'm either a hardened criminal or a Sam Cooke fan.)And I need a good monster name. Any suggestions? Right now I'm calling it "the creeper" as a placeholder, because I want something with that feel, but that can't actually be the name, as it is a) already a Scooby-Doo villain, and b)what the kids are calling sleazy guys. And my monster is not sleazy, just hungry for the bones of children. But in a funny way.

Hugo is working on suggestions, too, but he's stumped.

WFSU Reading

2011-02-20T18:36:00.003-05:00

My minute and a half of fame was this afternoon, and my grandmother called to say that the whole family gathered around the internet to listen to me, just like in olden times. If you missed it, here's the piece that I read:

Rejection Update

2011-02-17T20:09:00.003-05:00

Fun fact: Out of all of the stories I've been sending out, my fake astronaut story has garnered the most rejections, having been turned down by The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Quick Fiction, and Blue Earth Review. So it's been quite useful for my alphabet project, especially with that Q.

I wasn't too bothered about Quick Fiction and Blue Earth Review, because in retrospect the story really needed way more revising. And I never expected to get The New Yorker, because I cannot compete with John Updike's corpse.

This makes my third try with McSweeney's, and I may be getting too hopeful, but it seemed like a nicer rejection than usual. My first rejection email from them, which I received in 2004, read, "Thanks for the look, but I'm afraid I'll have to pass." That was it, verbatim; I know because it's been echoing in my brain for seven years. The second time I submitted, I never heard back. This time, the email read, "Thanks for giving us a shot with this, but I'm afraid we're not going to use it. Hope you'll keep trying." Is everyone just writing nicer form letters now? Did they pass some kind of law? Or is this maybe a good sign?

Of course, most of my thesis committee also thought it was a pretty stupid story. I'm starting to think it might only be funny to me, and I've decided that I'm ok with that. I love obscure indie stuff--books, bands, movies--and what's more obscure than something with an audience of one?

Some Things Considered

2011-02-16T10:26:00.003-05:00

I'm going to be on the radio this Sunday afternoon at 5:19, during All Things Considered. My piece will only air on WFSU, but for my resume I'm totally going to put that I was on NPR. And who knows--maybe Ira Glass will still be in town, and he'll hear it, because I'm sure he makes a point of listening to all of the different NPR stations wherever he goes, right? That seems only reasonable.

If you're not in Tallahassee, you can listen here.

A Love Song for Valentine's Day, or, How I Sold My Soul for Björk

2011-02-14T14:54:00.003-05:00

I was seventeen years old when I found Satan in the junior's department at J. C. Penney.

They had recently installed a bunch of televisions showing music videos while you shopped, to make the place seem more hip, less like a J. C. Penney. I wasn't used to watching MTV, because we didn't have cable, and I mostly only listened to Christian music: Amy Grant, Point of Grance, Michael W. Smith, or, if I really wanted to rock out, maybe D. C. Talk or Audio Adrenaline. My stepdad had a video, Rock and Roll: a Search for God, that explained how listening to AC/DC would brainwash you into sacrificing babies for blood rituals. If I did listen to secular music, it was usually jazz, because everyone knows that music becomes inherently pure and innocent once it's old.

So I was browsing through all the high-waisted jeans and Tweety Bird shirts, when I heard what sounded like a really cool jazz song, but with screaming in it. I looked up, and there on the TV was some chick dancing with a mailbox; it was pretty much the greatest thing I'd ever seen.

I grew up in an extremely conformist community. Everyone was a conservative Baptist, everyone loved sports and barbecue, the girls all curled their bangs and dreamed of having four children with their high school sweethearts, and the boys all dreamed of having bigger trucks. If you deviated from any of this, you kept it to yourself. Rock music meant Hootie and the Blowfish, because they were from South Carolina, too! Looking back, I think the reason I didn't listen to secular music back then wasn't because I was deeply committed to my Lord and Savior so much as I just hadn't ever heard anything good.

Björk changed everything, though. After a few months of asking myself the hard questions--Was "It's Oh So Quiet" ok, since it was a jazzy song? Would that fact that I couldn't understand most of what she was saying neutralize any Satanism present in the lyrics?--I purchased Post on cassette tape (while on a mission trip, no less).

So here it is, the song that cost me eternal salvation. And happy Valentine's!

Nothing Compares to "U"

2011-02-11T11:34:00.000-05:00

Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Upstreet, which sent me my rejection this morning? Their letter did include this line: "I hope you won’t let this deter you from submitting to upstreet again." Does that count as one of those nice rejections I've heard about, one of those that are a little bit better than the standard form letter? Or do they just have a super-polite form letter?

Anyway, this is good, because the only other U magazine I know of it Utne, and I don't know enough about eco-friendly Buddhist performing arts collectives to write anything for them. Plus I don't think they take unsolicited manuscripts, which would be an easy way to get rejected, but I don't really think it should count unless a real person sits down, reads my story, and decides it's crap. I feel dishonest otherwise.

So here are the letters I've collected so far: B G M N O Q U S. I think I need some more vowels.

Give Me an "N"

2011-02-10T17:41:00.000-05:00

For the New Yorker, which rejected me with lightening speed--I just sent them my piece eleven days ago. I know what you're thinking: I already had an N thanks to Narrative, so why submit to another N magazine? It's because I was also thinking how getting rejected by the New Yorker is an important life experience for a writer, one that I should not miss out on just because they start with a redundant letter. Also, I've been told that they write really sweet form rejection letters, which they do. I especially like how they said they couldn't use my piece "despite its evident merit." That is how the classy magazines do it.

I've since submitted a story to Upstreet magazine, which I had never even heard of before, but there aren't a lot of U's. Now I'm trying to decide what's next. Maybe something that starts with L?

Pity the Fool

2011-02-02T16:01:00.000-05:00

"We are Fools For Christ's Sake" - 1 Corinthians 4:10

I've been planning to revise this essay I wrote a few years ago called "I Was a Clown for Jesus," which is about my adolescent years spent in a Christian clown group at my church back in South Carolina. Christian clowning goes back to the wacky 60's Jesus movement and is based on the above scripture; the idea is basically that you learn Christian humility by, well, humiliating yourself. We went around to hospitals and nursing homes, trying to cheer people up, but mostly really scaring them. I don't think it helped that the miniseries of Stephen King's It had come out just the year before.

I loved every second of it, though. It was run by our youth minister's wife, who was sweet and adorable and wore cool shoes. Also, she was from the Midwest, which meant she was exotic. Every time she said "pop" instead of "Coke," it was like hearing someone speak French--totally glamorous.

That dressing up as a clown was somehow nerdy or embarrassing never occurred to me, as I was an embarrassing nerd. Whenever my mom picked me up after a clowning performance, I, still in full makeup, would wave at all the cars we passed on the way home, enjoying the drivers' surprised looks. Yeah, that's right, I would think to myself. I'm dressed up like a clown, and it is awesome.

I was also completely obsessed with a certain boy in the group. I was sure that we were going to get married and go to Africa as missionaries. Then we'd come back to South Carolina and live in this particular house I passed on the way to school every day, a house I referred to as "The Charmings' House" because of its resemblance to the house on this amazing TV series. I had the whole thing planned out, down to our four children and how we would all be raptured up to Heaven. The best part of clown group by far was riding in the car next to him on the way to the nursing home. One day it was just the two of us helping the youth minister's wife with a project for kids, and afterwards she took us out for ice cream, which I thought of as kind of a date. At least it was as close as I would get to any sort of date for many, many years.

So I'm trying to revise the piece now, as part of my endeavor to collect rejection letters, and I keep preaching to my nonfiction students about the value of interviewing other people for your memoirs, because it adds layers, plus you can't always trust your memory. And I decided that I should take my own advice, so I Facebook messaged my onetime future husband--now a Baptist minister, so thank freaking Zeus it didn't work out--and asked him what he remembered about the clown group. His response? "I remember how embarrassing it was to ride in a car like that. I hated that part of it. Beyond that.....I'm not recalling much. Does that help?"

Hmmph. The nerve.

"R" Is for "Reject"

2011-01-26T12:10:00.001-05:00

My new year's resolution for 2011 is to get rejected more. Specifically, I plan to get a rejection letter from one literary magazine for every letter of the alphabet: AGNI, Brick, The Chattahoochee Review, and so on. I have a head start, having already been rejected by these fine people:

Blue Earth Review
Glimmer Train (twice)
McSweeney’s (twice)
Narrative
Opium (twice)
Our Stories
Quick Fiction
Superstition Review

I'm currently awaiting rejections from Water Stone Review, which will give me a nice W, and Black Warrior Review, which I had already submitted to before remembering that I don't need a B. I also have an excess of O's, and I briefly contemplated collecting rejections that will spell out dirty words instead. For example, once I get rejected by Black Warrior Review, I can spell BOOBS. But I really want the whole alphabet.

My one problem is that I don't know of any journals that start with X. If it comes down to it, I may have to start my own and reject myself.

New idea for an rpg

2010-07-15T13:09:00.000-04:00

New Comic Soon

2010-03-05T21:51:00.000-05:00

The next issue of Lydia Feeds the Pigeons comes out on April 14. We'll have another release party at WXYZ. I got to do the cover art this time:

If you missed the first issue, you can order it here.

Culture and Shit

2009-09-12T12:25:00.000-04:00

The FSU Opera is doing The Barber of Seville in November and Xerxes in March. Who's in?

Coming Soon: Oprah's Get-Rich-Pilates-Sudoku Calendar

2009-09-08T22:16:00.000-04:00

I found my eleventh grade English teacher on facebook recently, and she wrote a note on my wall that said, "I keep waiting for your first publication--have I missed it?" Sigh. No, Mrs. B., I haven't technically accomplished anything with my life, although I did beat my high score on the Home Movies flash game.

Most of the time I feel too discouraged to even submit anywhere. Also too lazy. I figure what I really need is a great title that'll ensure tons of book sales, and then the rest will take care of itself. Possible ideas:

-Who Moved My DaVinci Code?

-The Five Sexy Teen Vampires You Meet in Heaven

-He's Just Not That into Your Parachute

-Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Zombies

-The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Zombies

-The Prayer of Zombie Jabez

-Tuesdays with Ann Coulter (that one is also a zombie book)

-The Time Traveler's Sisterhood Pants

-Who's Looking out for the Sweet Potato Queens?

-Julia Childs's Joy of Sex

Last Panel

2009-09-04T17:14:00.000-04:00

Comics

2009-08-25T15:36:00.001-04:00

Here's what I made in my comics class this summer. Or most of it--I still have to ink the last page. I may get to teach the class starting this Sunday, if some people sign up for it.

I'm famous!

2009-07-29T16:56:00.000-04:00

awkwardfamilyphotos.com

new painting

2009-06-25T21:38:00.001-04:00

If I were always as productive as I have been the past week or so, I would probably have some sort of career by now. I painted the above animal porn, revised two essays, and finished two of the books from my list of shame, Bleak House and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

And for anyone who came across this post by Googling "animal porn" and got nothing but a stupid update on my reading list, I sincerely apologize.

Here's Another Thing I Did

2009-06-01T20:17:00.000-04:00

I copied this from the Book of Kells. I think the text is from Mark, although I'm not sure, since I've already forgotten around eighty percent of everything I learned this year. My calligraphy is crap. But hey--pretty birds!

You Dazzle Me Dot Dot Dot

2009-05-06T18:41:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted in a while, because school stole my life. The semester ended last Friday, though, and, after a few months of writing essays and staring at medieval manuscripts and trying to tell Jane Austen's novels apart, I decided I needed something that wouldn't require too much thinking--no thinking at all, in fact. Something that would make my brain feel like it was rolling around in a nice, cool patch of mud, like a pig does. So I read Twilight.

I did enjoy how easy it was to read. And I was interested in the Mormon subtext. But those were the lamest vampires in the history of literature. And Meyers sure loves ellipses . . . it was like . . . she couldn't . . . think of any way to show the characters' internal struggles, so she just leaves space for the readers to fill in whatever they want . . .

Then of course there's her use of the word "literally." At one point, the protagonist says, "This school was literally my hell." Literally. So she's literally dead and this is the literal afterlife, and it is the literal Judeo-Christian Hell, and Satan is there in the flesh, and he's her gym teacher? (Only Meyers would say "Gym," because gym is a proper noun in her world. And, apparently, in her editor's world.)

Ok, I shouldn't complain. I knew it would be silly before I read it, and that is in fact why I read it. I mention it only because, as I was ranting about the widespread misuse of the word "literally," Chris came up with a brilliant idea to combat it, and I intend to put it into practice: From now on, whenever I use a figure of speech, I'm going to add the word "figuratively."

Ex. I was so shocked that I figuratively crapped my pants.

It'll be a passive-aggressive reminder to the world that you can't put a "literally" there. Unless you actually did crap your pants. I also think it would be fun to start incorporating ellipses into my everyday speech; instead of saying "um" or "you know" when I'm trying to think of what to say next, I'll say something like, "I guess dot dot dot I'd prefer to go to El Jalisco dot dot dot unless you want to go somewhere else." Especially around my students, who love to put ellipses in their dialogue. It'll drive them figuratively insane.

Too tired to move on...

2009-03-16T17:01:00.000-04:00

I finally removed myself from moveon.org's mailing list. I've always felt too guilty to do it, as if by no longer getting their emails I will singlehandedly destroy all hope for civil rights, education, and democracy in general. As if the second I click on "unsubscribe," every baby seal in the ocean will instantly club itself. I appreciate what they do, but I don't need them sending me emails every three seconds about various issues I'm already aware of. Because I. Read. The Damn. News.

They wanted to know my reason for unsubscribing. I put, "have become republican k thx bye."

Book Shame Meme

2009-02-22T23:00:00.000-05:00

So the BBC probably never said that thing about people only reading six books or whatever. But since confession is supposed to be good for the soul, here's a list of my own:

Twenty-Five Books I Am Ashamed of Not Having Read:

1. Bleak House--Uncle Mark was my AP English teacher, and he assigned it to us, but seventeen-year-old Katie was all like, "It's eight hundred pages long! And he keeps talking about the stupid fog!" Mark still lectures me about it every time I see him.

2. 1984--I like Orwell. I like dystopian literature. I don't know why I haven't read it yet.

3. Brave New World--Not only have I not read it, I'm constantly confusing it with 1984.

4. The Unbearable Lightness of Being--Laura gave it to me for Christmas ten years ago, and I love the movie. But have I read it? No. And yet I've read Valley of the Dolls three times.

5. Howard's End--Couldn't even tell you what it's about.

6. Swann's Way--I always try to read it in French, telling myself that I since I have a freaking French degree, it would be wrong to read a translation. So thanks to my own pretentiousness, I never make it past page six.

7. Anna Karenina--Is this the one where she throws herself in front of a train?

8. Madame Bovary--Or is it this one?

9. Moby Dick--I haven't read it. But I have seen the cartoon.

10. Ulysses--I know, I know.

11. Finnegan's Wake--Sigh. I know.

12. As I Lay Dying--I've taken three southern literature classes, each with a heavy emphasis on Faulkner. Somehow I never got around to this one.

13. Waiting for Godot--As I understand it, he never shows up.

14. The Satanic Verses--I started reading it on a plane, not knowing that it begins with a hijacking. I'm a nervous enough flyer without any help from Mr. Rushdie.

15. Troilus and Cressida--It was assigned in two of my Shakespeare classes, and I slacked off both times.

16. We Were the Mulvaneys--I love Oates, and I also love titles that are complete sentences, like A Good Man Is Hard to Find, or Don't Bend over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes. I don't know why I haven't read it.

17. Invisible Man--But I do know that it's different from The Invisible Man.

18. Women in Love--In fact, "The Rocking Horse Winner" is the only D. H. Lawrence I've ever read.

19. Tess of the D'Urbervilles--Once Uncle Mark asked me what Hardy I've read, and I lied and said I'd read Tess, but really I've only seen part of the miniseries.

20. Oliver Twist--I really think I'd get into this one, too--the main character's a kittycat, right?

21. Crime and Punishment--I spent four years as a Russian major, pretending to get everyone's Dostoevsky jokes, of which there were many, because Russian majors are big dorks.

22. Daisy Miller--I also always laugh at that one Gilmore Girls episode with all the Daisy Miller jokes, but I have no idea what they mean.

23. Of Human Bondage--I bought a copy, because I thought it sounded kinky, but I think I was misled.

24. The Call of the Wild--On second thought, I'm not ashamed of this one; I hate nature crap.

25. The Red Badge of Courage--That one's really short, too; I probably could have read a good chunk of it in the time it took me to compile this list.

***Bonus shame!!*** Additionally, although I have probably read every word Dave Barry ever wrote, I have never read anything by Willa Cather. I have never read anything by Norman Mailer (Mailor?) or James Dickey. I haven't read any of Updike's Rabbit novels, although I do know that they are not about literal rabbits (oh, yeah--haven't read Watership Down either). I have never read any books by Saul Bellow. In fact, I can't think of a single title of a Saul Bellow book. I'm not really sure how I know his name. I guess I have a lot of reading ahead of me.

My Old English final project

2008-12-09T22:38:00.001-05:00

This is part of Aelfric's sermon on creation, in the form of a Jack Chick comic, more or less. The boy did all the straight lines for me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T09:23:00.001-05:00

My Second Attempt at Being a Radical Activist

2008-11-13T20:48:00.000-05:00

I spent the weekend in Atlanta with Will, and on Saturday we went to one of the rallies against Prop 8. The last time I went to a demonstration, it was against the Iraq war, and I did a pretty shitty job then. It was on UGA's north campus, and I was all ready to protest my little heart out, until I got there. The first people I saw were Bathrobe Billy and the League of the South. I ended up standing quietly off to the side, as if to say, "Yeah, I'm against the war, but I don't know these people."

The Atlanta protest was supposed to include a candlelight vigil, which was a challenge, because the wind wouldn't stop blowing. Will kept relighting our tapers, but we finally had to give up.

Thankfully, there was a guy there giving out posterboard and markers to anyone who wanted to make a sign. The people around us had some great ones--my favorites included "Progess doesn't grow on bigotries"--in the shape of a tree, "Jesus had two fathers," and "Who do you think designed your wedding dress?" There were also lots of puns involving the number eight, "Stop the H8," "Gays are GR8," etc., and it made me wonder why no one was commenting on the other gay marriage bans that were just passed. I briefly considered "Florida is Bigoted 2," but I didn't know if anyone in Atlanta would get it. We kept thinking. Here we were, two writers, so surely we could come up with something witty, right?

Ok, so we don't work well under pressure.

How I Became an Agent of Satan

2008-11-06T23:46:00.000-05:00

I had my students read the George Saunders story "Sea Oak" last week, as a sort of Halloween treat. Then I gave them a quiz, as an extra treat. As I was grading the quizzes today, I found a note from one student, which read, "My faith will not allow me to discuss this story, due to its graphic content. 'Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord.'"

I stared at the note for a while, and then, because I didn't know what else to do, I wrote in the rest of the quotation, "...my strength and my redeemer, Psalm 19:14." As a former Bible Drill state finalist, it bugged me to see the verse incomplete. I didn't know what else to say, though. This was a good student, not someone trying to get out of an assignment. It didn't seem right to count off for her sticking to her beliefs.

I get frustrated, though, with the number of students students who want to be sheltered from the big scary literature. When I was a freshman, I was a member of the Baptist student union. I owned every album DC Talk put out. I sincerely believed that Jesus was reading my thoughts every second of the day, and so I would silently apologize whenever I thought anything bad. And yet, when my comparative literature professor assigned the Marquis de Sade's Justine, it never once occurred to me to refuse to read it or write about it.

As best as I can remember it, every time Justine tries to be virtuous, something horrible happens to her. She becomes the sex slave of some evil monks, some guy performs a series of bizarre surgeries on her--I think at one point she was dipped in honey so that flies could slowly eat her skin? It's been twelve years since I read it, but I remember that it scared the crap out of me. Meanwhile, her long lost sister decides that moral compromise is Ok with her, so she becomes a high-class prostitute and ends up marrying a nobleman, and then everyone says what a virtuous woman she is, because she's rich and powerful. Then Justine gets struck by lightning. It took me that long to figure out that it was satire. (I was used to Jane Austen, who almost never wrote about evil monks and their sex slaves.) But when I did, I thought, Oh. That's actually hilarious. And that paved the way for a lot of other great books that I might not have read otherwise.

I finally wrote my student a note saying that I understood her position (she has no idea how much), but that I hoped she might give Saunders another chance, that his story is meant as satire, and he's not suggesting we should all become strippers (or zombies) any more than Jonathan Swift really wanted to eat babies.

Or maybe I'm thinking about this wrong. Maybe reading Justine was what sent me down the path of unrighteousness that I'm on today. Growing up, I was taught Colossians 2:8, "See to it that you are not taken captive by hollow and deceptive philosophy that depends more on the teachings of this world than on Christ." But no, I had to go and listen to my godless pinko professor instead of the Lord. And now I'm passing my evil ways on to my own students.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha...

2008-10-03T23:59:00.000-04:00

Of Montreal at the Moon

2008-09-15T09:26:00.001-04:00

December 4

Loving the Alien

2008-08-03T11:16:00.000-04:00

Figure 1 The Apotheosis of Marvin by Anonymous

I went to Sunday School this morning to make my mother happy and also because I wanted to document the Marvin the Martian mural in the youth wing of Mauldin First Baptist Church. I'm always telling people about this workand no one ever believes me, including my mother, who has never made it over to that part of the building in the twelve or so years that the mural has been there. (It's a big church, just shy of megachurchdom.)So here it is.

Uncle Mark and I have puzzled over the inspiration for this piece. He pointed out that artists throughout the ages have included scenes of contemporary life in religious art, not to mention portraits of donors, live models, etc. Masaccio's Brancacci Chapel frescoes, for example, featured portraits of the Brancacci family. And a lot of people in Mauldin probably think Marvin the Martian is real, so there you go.

Figure 1a, Detail
Here we see Marvin in the Garden of Eden, holding out the apple to tempt Adam. Does this make Marvin Eve? If so, what does this piece say about spirituality and gender?

Figure 1b, Detail
Heavens to Murgatroyd! Marvin's rigid moral code makes him perfectly suited for receiving the Ten Commandments.

Figure 1c, Detail
As I told Uncle Mark, I can see Marvin as the Old Testament God--he was, after all, continually trying to destroy Earth--but what are we to make of Marvin as Jesus? The issue is further problematized when we consider that Marvin wears the armor of a Roman Centurion. This identification of Jesus with his own executioners is a bold statement on the nature of good and evil--even the most egregious sinner can be saved through the imitation of Christ. Note the stigmata.

Figure 1d, Detail
How can our skeptical, scientific world make sense of the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes? The artist's answer: Jesus had Martian superpowers.

Figure 1e, Detail
Random dude with a sword and a soul patch. I got nothing.

2008-07-22T16:50:00.000-04:00

My grandparents, with their ukeleles. From JPG Magazine.

Books I have read so far this summer, in no particular order:

2008-07-15T13:49:00.000-04:00

Colette--Claudine à l'école

I was supposed to read this for a French class four years ago, and it looked good, but I was taking so many lit classes then that doing all my homework would have cut into my TV time. I really loved it, though, now that I have read it. Claudine is a schoolgirl in early 1900's France. She has a crush on Mademoiselle Lanthenay, her teacher, who ends up having an affair with Mademoiselle Sergent, the headmistress. My copy still has Colette's bastard first husband's name on the cover, because he took the credit for it when it was first published.

Allison Bechdel--Fun Home

Wonderful graphic memoir examining the author's father's suicide. Beautiful drawings.

Ahdaf Soueif--In the Eye of the Sun

I bought this book almost ten years ago at Jackson Street Books in Athens, just because it had a pretty cover, and it spent a long time on my shelf, looking pretty. It's about an Egyptian woman in the 70's, her family, her husband, the affair she has with an Englishman, and about a thousand other things. It reminds me of War and Peace, in that it keeps going back and forth between the family story and historical events, which I had to keep looking up as I read, because I'm completely ignorant. It was worth it, though.

E.M. Forster--A Passage to India

Set during the British occupation of India. An Englishwoman falsely accuses an Indian man of rape. Being colonized sucks.

Umberto Eco--The Name of the Rose

A monk in the 1300's investigates a series of murders in an Italian abbey. Way more interesting than Murder, She Wrote.

Uzodinma Iweala--Beasts of No Nation

Short novel about child soldiers in an unspecified African country. I liked the narrator's voice, and the subject matter is powerful, but I felt like something was missing. Maybe it was just too short. Worth a look, though.

Khaled Hosseini--The Kite Runner

People who have read this book can't shut up about how everyone has to read it. And yes, everyone does.

Walker Percy--The Moviegoer

Reminded me a lot of The Stranger. I haven't looked, but that's probably what everyone says.

Susanna Clarke--Jonathan Strange& Mr. Norrell

Also reminded me of War and Peace, but in a funnier, Harry Potter-ish sort of way. I kept picturing the Raven King as David Bowie from Labyrinth.

Thomas Mann--Death in Venice

Stalk, stalk, stalk, stalk, die.

Oscar Wilde--The Picture of Dorian Gray

I'm ashamed to say that I hadn't read this before. It's great, of course.

Adam Johnson--Emporium

I first read Johnson's story "Teen Sniper" in an undergrad creative writing class. I had no idea until recently that he went to FSU. Crazy, funny stuff.

Scott McCloud--Making Comics

McCloud is the god of comics theory. I think I want to do a graphic novel for my dissertation, provided my lazy ass is up to it.

Christopher Moore--Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal and Bloodsucking Fiends

Lamb was fantastic--the story of Jesus told as a wacky comedy. Weirdly, it manages to be more or less respectful to the Christian tradition. Apparently it's even used in some (I'm assuming more liberal) Bible studies. Bloodsucking Fiends was hit or miss, but I had to read it first so I can read You Suck.

Jeffrey Brown--Cat Getting out of a Bag and Other Observations

Kitties! Kitties are cute! I like kitties!!

Joss Whedon--Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight comics, vols. 1&2

Takes up where the TV show left off. Faith has to pretend to belong to the British aristocracy. Warren comes back. Dawn turns into a giant. Yes, I know how nerdy I am, and I don't care.

Marjane Satrapi--Embroideries

Tells you a little more about some of the women from Persepolis, including the grandmother. Just lovely.

Jeff Smith--Bone vol.1: Outfrom Boneville

Funny, weird comic. I want to read the rest.

Art Spiegelman--Maus vol.2: And Here My Troubles Begin

I read Maus I a long time ago, and of course it's great, but I didn't get around to part two, because when are you ever in the mood to read about the Holocaust? But it's such a beautiful book, even if afterwards you have to get under the covers and weep.

Will Eisner--Dropsie Avenue: the Neighborhood

Graphic novel about the evolution of a neighborhood in the Bronx. It starts with Dutch farmers bitching about all the English people moving in, then English people bitching about the Irish, etc. Way more interesting than I expected.

Debbie Drechsler--Daddy's Girl

Aaaaaaaaaaa disturbing.

R. Crumb--The Book of Mr. Natural

Cool drawings. I don't think I understand the 60's.

Jaime Hernandez--Love and Rockets vol. 7: The Death of Speedy

I just picked this up off Chris's shelf without having read any other Love and Rockets comics, so I couldn't follow it all, but it was still really cool. I want to read the rest.

David Sedaris--When You Are Engulfed in Flames

I told myself I wasn't going to buy any new books until I read all the ones that have been collecting dust in my apartment. Then I saw this at the airport and said, "Well, I didn't know there was a new David Sedaris out. Of course it doesn't count."

Try My Hot Salty Balls

2008-07-14T13:08:00.001-04:00

I was walking in Greenpoint last winter with Laura and her boyfriend, and he asked if I was a vegetarian. I said that for the past month or so I had been trying to go back to vegetarianism, or pescetarianism anyway, since fish are not cute. I added that I had previously been vegetarian for about four years but that I had given up.

"Yeah," Laura said, "because of Will's mom's balls."

When Will and I were roommates I would occasionally go home with him, during which time his mom would try to tempt me with various meat dishes. "Are you sure you don't want a little piece of chicken?" she'd say, or "Doesn't this bacon look good?" It never worked, not until that one year when Will came back from seeing his family at Christmas, and his mom had sent a big bag of sausage balls.

Sausage balls are cholesterrific little mounds of artery-clogging goodness. My paternal grandmother used to make them all the time, up until her fourth or fifth heart attack. I can't ever turn them down. Once, when I was working at the UGA library, someone brought them for some office party we were having. The next day I came in to work and realized that we had forgotten to put the leftovers away. And when I saw the sausage balls, which had been left unrefrigerated for twenty-four hours, sitting on top of a desk, not even wrapped up, did I eat some more anyway? Oh, yes. Yes I did.

And so when Will brought these home and put them in our refrigerator, I forgot all about my family's history of heart disease. I forgot what pig farming does to the environment. I forgot about Babe. By morning, I wasn't a vegetarian anymore.

I mentioned this to Chris, who pointed out that they could probably be made with soysage. I wasn't sure; soy products are kind of hit or miss. Soy milk and bacon are delicious, whereas soy cheese is like eating orange Play-Doh. I once tried a product called "I Can't Believe It's Not Chicken!" and found myself completely able to believe it. But we decided to try making vegetarian sausage balls:

1 lb. grated sharp cheddar cheese

1 lb. not sausage

3 C Bisquick

Mix ingredients, roll into 1 in. balls, and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes. Mine came out looking a little more biscuit-y than regular sausage balls--I might use less Bisquick next time--but they tasted exactly the same. And those tubes of real sausage are pretty gross, anyway. I had never made sausage balls myself before, mainly because I didn't want to touch the dead animal mush. I think I could even be completely vegetarian now, if they would just start making convincing soy shrimp.

Yet More Proof that My Grandparents Are Cooler than I Am

2008-05-21T23:54:00.000-04:00

Here's their ukelele band in concert. I'm playing with them tomorrow.

Me fail English? That's Unpossible.

2008-04-14T09:51:00.000-04:00

In fact, I'm gonna get me a PhD and learn to really write the English good. And I'll be staying here at FSU. For one thing, we have a great faculty. Plus, I don't want to clean all that crap off my desk.

Blah

2008-04-11T10:06:00.000-04:00

So I passed my thesis defense, and now I'm running around turning in various forms to various people. All the paperwork is harder than the actual writing was. I took this one form to the office of grad studies, and the lady there told me--I am not exaggerating--"No, you take that one to the English department, and then they send it to us. Then we throw it away." Well, I'm glad all of this has a purpose.

My String of Good Luck Continues

2008-03-27T14:18:00.000-04:00

Today I was going out for coffee, and they were giving away free coffee in front of Bill's. Then I came back to my office and found that someone had left a box of Girl Scout cookies on my desk. Crap. Something terrible is going to happen and second now. V came in and kicked me, but not very hard. So my new strategy is to brag about how great my life is until everyone hates me and I have no friends. That should pacify the gods. (Yeah, I believe in a higher power if it's the kind that wants to smite me.)

Let Me Tell You about the Day I Became a Deranged Bag Lady

2008-03-21T12:07:00.001-04:00

This morning, when my alarm went off, I got up, turned it off, and went back to sleep. I woke up again at 7:45 and threw on the first clothes I found, which turned out to be an outfit that makes me look like a woman who home schools her kids to keep them from finding out about evolution. I was running down the street, trying to get to the 8:00 class I teach, and the apple I had packed for breakfast fell out of my purse and rolled down the sidewalk. So I yelled "Fuck you, motherfucker!" at the apple. Then I ate it anyway.

2008-03-20T17:35:00.000-04:00

Sloppy self portrait done without looking at myself. Made with Art Rage.

New Toy

2008-03-20T14:24:00.000-04:00

The Boy gave me a drawing thingie. I'm still figuring it out. I call this "The Girl Who Needed Some Cake." Made with Gimp.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

2008-03-19T16:12:00.000-04:00

This afternoon I finished my thesis and submitted it to my committee. Then I bought a ticket to fly back home to G-Vegas for the weekend, because my lovely cousin Ansley is getting married. Since it's so last minute, all the tickets were upwards of $900--unless I added a hotel. So I did, and now I'm only paying $400, and I have a room at the Hilton. As I was checking my email, I got a message from Georgia State saying I've been accepted to their PhD program. When I called Laura to tell her all my news, I discovered that she's also going to be in Greenville this weekend, so we're going to hang out.

All of this happened within about an hour, a bajillion fabulous things. Overall, this has been a remarkably good year for me--I'm dating an incredibly great guy who has a cat, I've actually been writing every day like I always say I'm going to but almost never do, I've had lots of Adventure Club fun. There are two people I don't hate running for president. Right now the entire Buffy series is marked down 50% on Amazon. Life is fantastic.

This is terrible.

Too many good things are happening in a row. I'm due for some kind of catastrophe at any minute. So I need all of my friends to do me a favor: the next time you see me, slap me. Spit on me. Kick me in the shins and then push me down the stairs. I need you to do this. I need bad stuff to happen to me, fast, or else I'm pretty sure my plane is going to crash.

Last One

2008-03-18T18:59:00.001-04:00

The T word is almost finished and ready to submit. Blah.

Your Name on Rice

2008-03-18T18:55:00.000-04:00

More of My T-Word

2008-03-18T18:07:00.000-04:00

The iguana's name is Britney.

He's supposed to be holding a potato that he made into a bong. That turned out to be harder to convey than I originally thought it would. I don't really care at this point, though.

Illustration for "Lookalike"

2008-03-13T18:09:00.000-04:00

She is confused.

more thesis illustrations

2008-03-04T14:17:00.000-05:00

Pictures are good, because you don't have to read anything.

Can you find the kitty?

Illustration for "Bonnie Best"

2008-03-04T13:27:00.001-05:00

I guess I'll have to change the line about how it doesn't look like a sex offender's house. Story here

Who writes short-shorts? I write short-shorts.

2008-03-04T12:41:00.000-05:00

I can't decide if this one's going in or not.

Your Name on Rice

What I like about my job is I take something insignificant and I make people really see it. I have a stand at the Pavilion Nostalgia Park, and I make necklaces, key chains, all kinds of stuff. I write your name on an ordinary grain of rice, and I put it in a little pendant full of oil that magnifies it, so you can read it. I can draw pictures, too, whatever you want. It’s a traditional Turkish art form, but I learned it from a video I ordered. My ex-wife never thought too much of what I do, and the other night I heard my daughter tell a girl from her middle school that I’m an orthodontist. Her friends’ parents are all orthodontists. But that’s all right, because today Myrtle Beach is packed full of tourists lined up to watch me draw mermaids and dolphins and seahorses under the words Misty loves Trevor. One guy’s been standing here all morning, watching me work. Does anyone ever just sit for hours and marvel at the magic of braces? They don’t.

The guy watching me has been silent this whole time, but now he asks, "Can you make one with my name?"

"You bet," I say. "What’s your name?"

"Ed. Edward," he says. "My mother said she named me that, because no one named Edward had ever hurt her." He has thinning brown hair and smells like rum. "Then she dated an Edward who said she had fat wrists. And an Edward who ran over her dog. It was an accident, but still. Another Edward stole money out of her purse every day and spent it on wine coolers. When I was twelve she married an Edward who kicked her in the shins whenever she said the word 'pistachio.'" He sniffs. "An Edward once broke into our house, stole all our forks, and relieved himself in her piano. Needless to say, my mother can’t bear to look at me now. She thinks I’m one of them."

I’ve heard this story a million times. The world is full of people named after cities or movie characters or vegetables. People with names that are also euphemisms or that rhyme with funny words. No one should have to hate his own name. I reach into my jar of rice, take my brush and write "Edward." I put it in a charm shaped like a star and fill it with blue oil. When it’s finished, I give it to him. "No charge," I say.

He holds it up, letting it gleam in the sun. "It’s not such a bad name," he says.

"No," I say. "It’s a great name."

Illustration for "The Hoax Artist..."

2008-03-03T18:11:00.001-05:00

Tag?

2008-02-27T09:11:00.000-05:00

Claire tagged me in a meme. Here are the rules:

THE RULES

Once you are tagged, link back to the person who tagged you.
Post THE RULES on your blog.
Post 7 weird or random facts about yourself on your blog.
Tag 7 people and link them.
Comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged.

Seven things:
1. My only natural enemy is the goose.
2. I have recurring nightmares in which Bob Novak is sitting outside my window. Just sitting.
3. I laugh like a middle schooler pretty much whenever anyone says the word "sausage."
4. I'm a compulsive liar.
5. No, I made that up.
6. I never learned how to count past six. They didn't teach us in art school.

I'm going to let those of you who want to be tagged tag yourselves, because I'm that lazy.

New Short-Short in Progress

2008-02-27T09:04:00.001-05:00

The Hoax Artist Attends Career Day

How we did the moon landing was this. We used a blue and white marble to look like the Earth from far away. We made lunar dust out of powdered concrete. The shuttle was mostly a high-grade cardboard. We spent a couple of weeks practicing walking weird, like we were in space. That was about it—I mean, everything was all dark and grainy anyway, so it didn’t have to be super realistic. And there’s just not that much to see on the moon anyway, which is why there was no point in ever going there for real. The photographs were airbrushed, and some film footage had to be edited, to get rid of things like that Coke bottle I accidentally dropped. Some people think Hollywood was involved, but that’s ridiculous. NASA did approach this one director, sure, but he wanted to make it all artsy, with cave people and a talking computer that becomes evil and I don’t know what. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing, making people feel good about the future. I wanted to make them believe we were just as strong as the Russians. I wanted schoolchildren to stop having to hide under their desks. I wasn’t thinking about how I’d feel after.

Like right now, as I’m standing in front of my son’s high school class, listing my so-called accomplishments. I look out at their young faces, and my kid, he’s like a young me, and he’s so proud to have his dad here today. I pass out moon rocks, plenty for everyone. They’re only plastic; I make them in my basement. The other dads look constipated with envy. If they only knew how I’d love to be a real mortician or truck driver or librarian, instead of a stupid fake astronaut. My son’s teacher leans toward me as I talk, licking her frosted pink lips. “This is a special tool we used for gathering mineral samples,” I say, holding up a pair of salad tongs that I spray painted silver last night. The kids pass it around, clearly impressed.

I want to rip that American flag right out of the wall.

Tonight, as usual, I will wait until my wife and children are all asleep, and I will go outside. I will sit in my yard with a bottle of whiskey, and I will look up at the moon. That big empty rock that’s been lording it over us all this time, screwing with our tides and our gravity and our werewolves. And I will pick up whatever’s handy—bricks, stones, broken glass—and hurl it at that smug bastard, until I knock it out of the sky.

Salon des Refusés

2008-01-29T11:21:00.000-05:00

Here's a story recently rejected by a short-short contest I entered. Laura thinks I should write more sweet things like this. I probably won't.

Lookalike

His girlfriend, Angelica, couldn’t tell men apart. Any men. Ever. At night they would sometimes lie in bed and watch movies, and she would ask, "Now is he the one who dreams of becoming an astronaut?"

And he would correct her: "No, he just kidnapped the astronaut."

"I thought that was the redhead."

"No, that’s someone completely different."

"Oh. So who was that who just killed himself?"

And so on. He might find her at parties, biting some other guy’s nose (it was her thing), but she only giggled and called it an honest mistake. "He has your haircut," she might say. Or "You both have blue sweaters." Or "You’re both Scorpios." How was she supposed to know the difference?

It didn’t matter what kind of men—tall, short, fat, thin, Caucasian, Latino, Pacific Islander. In airports, restaurants, crowded theaters, she often wandered away from him, following someone who—she would swear!—had his same walk. Once at the mall, he looked away for just one second, only to catch her about to go home with a confused (but ecstatic) twelve-year-old boy scout. "How funny!" she later laughed. "He could have been your twin!"

Women posed no problem—in fact, his occasional mistakes left her flabbergasted. "But that’s ridiculous, Hon," she’d say. "My sister Robena looks nothing like my sister Camille. Camille’s fingers are much stubbier."

He tried dying his hair orange and green. He tried wearing a T-shirt that said, "I AM YOUR BOYFRIEND," not minding the stares he attracted. He only wanted her to recognize him, for once, on the very first try.

Finally, he got his name tattooed on his right palm. This worked for a while; whenever she seemed lost or confused, he waved, and that did the trick. One winter morning, though, he shuffled outside to get the paper. It was cold, and he wore gloves. When he came back, she screamed, thinking he was a burglar, and whacked him with his own umbrella. He waved and waved, but she saw his gloved hand and screamed louder.

How did they get together in the first place? How did she ever pick him out to start with, out of a sea of his doppelgängers?

The day she beat him with the umbrella, he asked, "What makes you stay with me?"
She kissed his bruises. "Where would I go, silly? You’re everywhere I look."

Sensitivity

2008-01-28T17:20:00.002-05:00

X-Ray

2008-01-28T17:20:00.001-05:00

Flying

2008-01-28T16:33:00.000-05:00

Fuck You, Aesop!

2007-03-29T17:59:00.000-04:00

B chose the topic of "Things That Piss Me Off."

"It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long the grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter, while the octopus mooched off of his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came and the grasshopper died, then the octopus ate all his acorns and also he got a race car." - Fry, Futurama episode "My Three Suns"

I hate fables. Hate them. They're boring, and they promote an overly simplistic worldview that isn't healthy. Real life can't be neatly summed up with a one-line moral.

I had never heard a fable until first grade, because my mom only read me interesting books. Then my teacher made us read "The Grasshopper and the Ant," and I don't think I've ever been more offended. Ok, the Grasshopper should have prepared more for the long winter ahead. So for that he deserves to starve to death? Our book had pictures of the Grasshopper playing a fiddle as well as singing, clearly sending the message that music isn't real work. Art is just playing around, not something you should get paid for. I think that right there is the reason people don't want to support the NEA.

I also hate Jean de la Fontaine's version, and I normally like reading anything in French. I'll sit around and read the French side of my shampoo bottle, mesmerized. But the Ant just turns into more of a bastard in that poem. He won't even give the Grasshopper a loan.

There are later versions where the Ant does agree to let the Grasshopper stay with him, but he's always really patronizing about it. Fucking self-righteous Ant. And so here's my own, improved version:

The Grasshopper and the Ant

In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing, rewriting a song until he felt it was perfect. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.

"Where are you off to with that heavy thing?" asked the Grasshopper.

Without stopping, the Ant replied, "To our ant hill. I'm putting away food for winter. Some of us have jobs, you know."

Actually, the Grasshopper had three jobs, none of which offered health insurance.

The Ant sighed. "I wish I could goof off all day like you. But I have real work to do."

"Um, yeah," the Grasshopper said. "I guess that corn isn't going to move itself."

"You bet it won't. But you, know, I've written a song or two in my time. I wanted to be a music major in college, but my parents wouldn't hear of it. They said I was going to study something practical, like corn moving, or else they were going to cut me off."

"Really? Let's hear one of your songs."

The Ant grinned and put down his ear of corn. He began to sing. He sang and sang, and at the end, he did an air guitar solo. It was the worst song the Grasshopper had ever heard.

"That was very energetic," the Grasshopper said.

"Yeah, it just comes to me naturally. Well, I've got to stop slacking off now." He picked up the corn and started walking away. "You have fun writing your little songs."

Suddenly, a mischievous little boy came along and held a magnifying glass over the Ant, who was burnt to a crisp.

The Grasshopper wrote a moving ballad about a young bug dead before his time. The song got picked up by some college radio stations, and before long the Grasshopper got a contract with a small indie record label. He eventually started making enough money to quit two of his jobs. He and his girlfriend moved in together, and they were reasonably happy.

Moral: Ants are gross, and it hurts like hell when they bite you.

Fowl Beast

2007-01-30T11:01:00.000-05:00

This week's topic, courtesy of Mya, is "fear."

I live in terror of geese.

Sure, go ahead and laugh. It may sound very silly to those sweet, silly, innocent souls who have never known the wrath of an angry goose. I was once such a person, untouched by avian rage. Then when I was around four or five, my family went camping. I was down by the lake, feeding the birds. I walked up to this seemingly sweet-looking goose and held out a cracker, and instead the motherfucker tried to bite off my whole hand. But that was just the beginning; you see, once geese get a taste of human blood, nothing else will satisfy them.

Years later, my mother and I were going for a walk, and we heard heavy footsteps coming up behind us. It was this enormous, wild-eyed goose running towards us. Panicked, we ran back to our car. It followed us the whole way, hissing menacingly (I swear I heard it say my name). We slammed the car doors shut, and it stood there, pecking at the tires. We barely escaped with our lives that day.

I have lots of phobias: social phobia, aviophobia, philophobia (look it up). But I can deal with all of those in healthy, rational ways. I can easily avoid people by hiding under my bed with the lights off, so that it appears no one is home. When I want to see my parents, I can take a pleasant, twelve-hour bus ride, which gives me the chance to catch up with all of my homeless friends. And if I see someone attractive, I simply don't talk to him or look directly at him, and if that doesn't work, I picture him covered in unsightly festering sores.

But geese. They're everywhere. What with global warming and all, they don't even necessarily go away for the winter. And they're crafty. The other night, I ordered Chinese food, and when I asked the delivery guy how much I owed him, he said something I couldn't understand. I said,"I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese. How much did you say?" And then he honked at me. That's when I realized that he was wearing a fake mustache. And that's not all--his skin had this distinctive feathery look. That's when I knew something was wrong.

"Hey," I said. "If you're really a delivery man, where are my spring rolls?"

He became furious and started squawking and flapping his wings. Because do you know what? He was really a goose!

The problem keeps getting worse and worse. They sneak into my office, my shower, my trunk of winter clothes. This morning a whole flock of them followed me to work, jeering. A little gosling called me up to ask if my refrigerator was running. It hung up without saying the punchline, though, the stupid punk.

I've tried leaving feather pillows and pâté de fois gras lying around,you know, sort of like a threat,but they see through my bluff. They know I'm weak. They know I'm scared. They're probably watching me right now.