Mania

Tomorrow I'm seeing one of my favorite bands of all-time, the Pixies. It'll be the second time I've seen them, but there will never be enough times seeing them. I never thought I'd get to see them live, since they had a pretty strong hatred for each other when they broke up. When they did their first reunion tour five or six years ago I was stoked to see them, and now it's time to do it again! I think my Pixies mania may be starting to annoy people on facebook, but what the hell, that's never stopped me before.

When I worked in the arctic and drove/operated a truck called a Mud Dog, I got in the habit of putting on the Pixies' song, "Caribou," whenever we saw herds of caribou out on the tundra. I'm pretty sure this got annoying to my Mud Dog partner. For old time's sake, here's "Caribou":




For more of my Pixies mania check out my post on cover songs @ BIG OTHER

Checking In

I received 8 rejections between Thursday and Sunday. It's that season again. I've been waiting for another one to show up all day, but none have yet. To keep things balanced (sort of) I had two poems accepted by Oranges & Sardines, which I am excited about. I wrote an "introspective" about one of the poems for them, and fretted over which picture of myself to send since they wanted one of those, too. I shaved my head on Saturday. I was going to send in a picture with the new hairdo (or don't), but my wife said I looked like I wanted to hurt someone because I wasn't smiling, which is my tendency when my picture is being taken. I either go with the straight face or a goofy look. Yeah...

In five days I'm seeing (for the second time) one of my all-time favorite bands, the Pixies. I have a story about a man and his roommate (who happens to be a polar bear) who drive from Alaska to Oregon to kidnap the singer of the Pixies, Frank Black. I don't know why no one has wanted to publish it.

the Pixies were on Conan on Friday, enjoy:

Fourthly

First off: It looks like I'm going to AWP in April, which is awesome. I'm looking to rep big time for the press, and Ken's book which will have been out for a few months by then. It'll be good publicity for the first issue of Sententia, too. That said, we're looking to share a table with another small press or journal. If your press/journal is making the trip to AWP and want to share a table with Artistically Declined Press, or already have a table booked but can give up a bit of space in order to save some money, give me a shout at artisticallydeclined@gmail.com


Secondly: READ ABOUT MY MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2010


Thirdly: I had a poem accepted over the weekend at WORK, which is a cool new online journal. And the other day I got one for a text image that is a part of an experimental novel I'm slowly working on. That one will appear in the next issue of LIES/ISLE. The novel has two narratives one that (if I can convince a publisher to print it this way) will go from the front of the book while the other goes from the back with them meeting in the middle. The front section is called A Home of Architects and Loss and the back section is Floodproof. AHoAaL contains weird text images that come between the actual narrative, kind of like strange messages. Fproof contains letters from one character to another, which break up the narrative of that section. It's quite possibly this novel may never get finished.

I Think This One's Important

READ

Blip.

I review "Parts" by Molly Gaudry in the new issue of The Chapbook Review. This MLP chap is an excerpt from her upcoming and highly anticipated novella, We Take Me Apart. Read my review HERE and preorder the novella HERE. How immature does it make me that I thought it would've been funny to phrase that first sentence thusly, "I review Molly Gaudry's "Parts"..."?

Also, yesterday the new issue of Emprise Review went up. It contains a staggering amount of greatness, including stories by my ADP partner in crime, Paula Bomer, as well as Heather Fowler, Greg Gerke, Brad Green, Ethel Rohan, and many more. And it also includes my story, "Soft Drugs." Read it HERE.

Two-fer

Today Artistically Declined Press revealed the cover and a short preview for Ken Sparling's Hush Up And Listen Stinky Poo Face. I'm really proud of the cover I designed. Check it out HERE.

I forgot that yesterday The Northville Review's Poetry for Poetry Haters mini-issue went live. It includes my poem, "The Family Dog," which was written as a writing exercise with a friend during my last MFA residency back in June. We picked five words starting in succession alphabetically, e.g. ABCDE then picking one word that starts with each letter. I think I picked the batch of words for this poem. I don't think my friend liked them. I often wonder with these types of poems if people can tell what the words were. Read the poem HERE.

Bad Blogger

I'm a bad blogger. In fact I've become a bad blog reader, too. I feel bad when I start neglecting all the blogs I love to read. I'm sure it's not noticed when I don't read them or leave smart ass comments, but I still feel guilty.

Life is busy. And when you're not having rejection letters show up on a regular basis it's hard to find something to come blog about. Even more so when you're contributing thoughts to another site.

Ahem. BIG OTHER. Ahem.

Seriously though.

I'm thinking of you. Each and everyone of you.