old school ramble

Thanksgiving? If you have some kind of day job, which I do, you most likely have a three-day week. Which means you'll work for two days because on Wednesday no one will be doing anything. People will talk about how many people they are having over for dinner, what they are cooking, where they are going, and will try and leave early.

The holidays are officially kicking off. I got my first "happy holidays" last week and said "isn't it a little early?" The person said "no, thanksgiving is next week."

I feel like this blog lacks energy lately. Just look at this post which I started by talking about Thanksgiving.

I wonder how many days/months/years this blog has left in it.

I might get a membership to the YMCA around the corner and start swimming again. I was a swimmer in high school. My time for the 50 freestyle was 27sec. 100 breast stroke was one minute and 16sec. Both of these times are considered only okay. Like a C+ on a paper.

I gave a homeless man 50 cents last night. He wanted a dollar. I said I only had the 50 cents. He said "im gonna get that other fifty!" I said "I bet you will" and wished him good luck. I was coming out of a wine store where I had charged a 12 bottle of wine.

By my day-job standards, my beard is out of control. Wonder how many days/months/years I have left there.

From out of nowhere told my wife the other day "we lose everything we love." Then we had some fried fish.

Watching the Buffalo Bills blow it in the fourth quarter. Classic. (update: they just lost)

Sometimes I think I can predict things. Maybe just paranoid? I currently imagine a giant shit-storm blowing everything away. Nothing to do but eat shit sandwiches afterwards.

Blog post has taken a pretty dark turn from the start by talking about Thanksgiving.

Let's lighten it up. Happy Holidays:

RECENTLY

*Felt like a long week. Had to stay late for work on Monday (10 hour day) and I think it infected the rest of the week.

*Started reading Pale Fire. I like it so far. I keep thinking "master prose stylist" while reading it. I've never read a word by Nabokov. There are other writers I've never read and feel guilty about doing so.

*Watched the movie Days of Heaven. I really loved this movie. Some of the images are burned into my head. Malick pieces the film together in a really interesting and beautiful way. There's very little dialog. Malick spent years editing this film, pissing people off, just exhausting himself to complete it. He took a 20 year break from making movies after finally finishing it. Intense.

*I don't know.

*I'm not sure what's going on this video, but it looks like the German publisher Eichborn has some pretty rad ideas on how to promote their publishing house. Here they are at the Frankfurt Book Festival where they tied promotional tags to insects and had them fly around the book fair. David Foster Wallace also makes an appearance:

geegaaaaaa+++

Two weeks left to enter the Failure Six essay contest. So come on people. I'll add a bonus copy of The Failure Six and if I have them in time, a copy of the chapbook Cannibal Books is currently printing. Funnnnn.

Almost finished with Gravity's Rainbow. Don't really know what to say about it other than it's amazing and i'm kind of in awe at the skill Pynchon has. Also reading Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. Started Cloud Atlas and almost threw the book across the room after the first five pages.

Snap:

AUTHOR COPIES CAME IN THE MAIL TODAY AWWHAHA.

Order copies direct from FUGUE STATE PRESS.

Read an early review from blogger Darby Larson here who says "one of my favorite books of the year" and "In some ways I like The Failure Six more than Light Boxes."

Read "spotlight" on the book at HTMLGIANT here.

Excerpts in the next issue of New York Tyrant and Dark Sky Magazine (both out at the end of this month) and upcoming reviews in Interview Magazine (Dec/Jan Issue) and American Book Review

GERMANY

Just got this scan for the cover of the German edition of LIGHT BOXES. I like it. The balloon wraps around to the back cover. The translation is done (LIGHT BOXES doesn't really translate well, so they changed the title), and things like a website, book trailer, and a "big promotional campaign" all start next month.

Also, possible late afternoon coffee in the works.

+++++Random

+Watching baseball. Not sure I even like baseball. I want to like baseball.

+Don Dellilo is making a rare public appearance at SUNY Albany this Friday. I have no idea why. It has something to do with showing an old movie and then he's going to talk about it and so is Russell Banks. I think I'm going to go.

+When I worked for Borders I had to sell Russell Banks books at a reading he did. I thought I had all his books on the table but forgot two. Russell Banks came up to the table and said "Hi...you're missing two of my books" and walked away.

+I have the deep desire to just sit and listen to music and have been doing a lot of that lately.

+I really love the quote that HTMLGIANT posted the other day by Salvador Dali: "I don't do drugs. I am drugs." Part of me doesn't want to admit liking that quote because it's Dali who gets a lot of shit and it's a drug related line. But there's something really strong and sad about that quote. I like it a lot.

+I want a pair of reading glasses.

+Eating more fruit lately.

+Made a post about how MFA programs were created by writers who didn't want to work shitty day jobs so they sold the idea that writing needed to be taught at colleges and then hired their friends and then deleted the post.

+Currently wearing plaid sweatpants, some kind of gray long sleeved shirt.

Today

Today I had a fruit shake for breakfast and some kind of salad for lunch. I'm currently obsessed with "boston lettuce."

Today I read ten pages in Gravity's Rainbow.

Today I checked statcounter and noticed an increase in blog hits yesterday and today, including more hits on the west coast (LA specifically) and random and strange hits from NY places like Madison Square Garden (sure, I'll read there), literary agent house Willey Agency, and an increase in Brooklyn. Hi everybody.

Today I went food shopping.

Today I bought a small bag of cat food.

Today I got gas in the car.

I think that's about it. It's really sunny outside but it's been dark all morning.

I'm going to go read more. Possible nap.

VOLLMANNN

INTERVIEWER:
I've heard that you bought a ten-year-old prostitute out of servitude.


VOLLMANN:
Oh, I did that in Thailand. That Afghanistan book is all about how I tried to help people and failed. Even the book itself was a failure—not a perfect book and it sold terribly. Everything has been totally consistent about it.


INTERVIEWER:
It's a masterpiece in its own way.


VOLLMANN:
A masterpiece of failure.

CHAPBOOK TALK

Chapbooks are an odd little thing. I go back and forth between love and hate and I think mostly this is because I've held some truly terrible chapbooks (just thrown together poems, crudely stapled spines, black and white faded covers, etc) and also some of the best writing and best looking little books ever (Greying Ghost Press immediately pops into my head). Sure, it's not a perfect bound book. There's something different about chapbooks and it can be exciting or you can cringe knowing the author has published roughly 19 chapbooks in his life-time, all out of print. THE CHAPBOOK REVIEW recently published their November issue and it got me excited. There's a really cool and interesting "roundtable discussion" with a bunch of publishers and editors of chapbooks. It pretty much answers any questions people have about chapbooks and it makes it feel important that people are publishing them.