I go through brief-ish moments of weird emotional vulnerability sometimes. No shit, that google ad during the super bowl overwhelmed me a litte. Drew Brees and his kid, too. I am a little embarrassed about this, as I guess I should be...and, speaking from a purely logical point of view, this is a bad thing. I should not feel any emotional attachment to a search engine company nor a group of athletes arbitrarily assigned a location for the sake of decision-making. But come on. It feels good to feel.

What I'm saying is that I would kill to be one of those people who gets choked up during "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" and shit. For all of the "truth" it brings, cynical is still a lonely way to be.

I'm going to try something new, I think. I'm going to post little tidbits of old things I know are bad and I'm going to see if I can garner enough of a crowd to get useful input on "why they are bad," see if maybe they can be worked into things that are good. If it doesn't go well--and I don't know that I really expect it to--I'll stop. I'll start tomorrow, maybe.

"i think everyone should be like neil young/when he played sweet home alabama"

During my monthly ritual of "beating myself up for not keeping up-to-date with online literary magazines and then reading some of those magazines" today, I came across this poem (Christ) by Sally Ashton and this poem (This Lonesome) by Sally Ashton and thought you might like them. I did, anyway. She has another poem up there at Fail Better and--per usual--they have a lot of other terrific stuff in this issue, but those are the two I was most excited about.

I saw Eileen Myles, who is my poetry professor this semester, read at a bar last night as a part of the Second Wind Reading series at UM and told myself I was going to go home and write poetry responses to a particular line, but then a lot of people came over and so maybe I should do that now. Anyway, I don't think there are any Missoulians who read this (if so, SAY HI, ASS!), but this is my obligatory plug for Second Wind. It happens 6:30 on Sundays at the Palace bar downtown and involves good people reading, including 1 grad student from UM and 1 author "of note" every week, I think.

I am going to be better about editing and submitting and maybe come to some degree of acceptance regarding the noticeable drop in my actual writing output. I am, after all, taking many interesting classes which are not related to writing this semester. I feel that I am in danger of being a "one-trick-pony" (both appalled and excited that this is the first time I've ever used that phrase), but I have some other sort of exciting things bloating my head and I feel that they should be given equal time. Don't worry, I'll tell you about them...

Oh. I haven't done the music thing in a while. Here's some killer news: Cleveland's Exit Stencil Records is giving away 20 albums (practically its entire catalog) for free here for a limited time. Bands include Hot Cha Cha, This Moment in Black History, The New Lou Reeds, roué, The Dreadful Yawns and some others.

"I should have bruises there like butterflies, their brown shadow wings spreading from my sternum."

Ben Segal has a sexy new story up at Slingshot. Excuse the delay. Ya can't put something out if you don't git nothin in. My mom used to say 'garbage in, garbage out' in reference to me listening to linkin park. That doesn't have anything to do with anything, I just thought you'd like to know.

School soon, you pumped?

I am in Ohio. Call me if you live here. Or email me your phone number.