"The weather outside was frightful."

Shya Scanlon's online novel serialization project is so cool. He explains it on the FORECAST 42 PROJECT site, but the basic idea is that twice a week he publishes a chapter from his novel Forecast on a different literary journal or blog, and we follow the links and read the chapters and thus his novel, for free, all over the place. What's the word I'm thinking of, that this is? Brave? Hip? Maybe. Yes. That and other things. Newfangled.

Is Forecast good? I think so. But honestly I haven't read it yet. I want to read the whole thing at once, so I might wait for most of the chapters to go live before I start--which is probably disrupting the point of the whole thing. Someone is disappointed in me. Sorry. I still think it's a great idea!

I don't know if other people feel this way or if I'm just an odd duck, but I don't really like skipping around and switching between writers' voices when I'm reading. I would feel weird reading Shya Scanlon's book every now and then and not continuously. Coming back to it every few weeks, I would always be like, Who is this again? What do they want? What's going on?

In fact, I don't particularly enjoy reading literary journals for this same reason. Wait wait wait I will explain. I do read them. I love them. I was editor of one in college. I've been in them. I borrow them and carry them around in my bag and trade them and shelve them nicely. They are awesome, but I also like being with one good writer for awhile, even if it's a 100 stories that are only 10 words each and it takes 20 minutes, I want to pause and eat a snack before I move on. Skipping around between writers quickly kind of feels like going to a buffet, and a buffet--let's face it--is no one's friend once it's said and done. It's like, I want to eat this gazpacho and please let me be until it's gone, get those chicken wings out of here. I want to understand it's gazpacho-ness and learn from it and love it and then hate it a little then make some judgment and come to terms with the gazpacho, then go onto something else--poached cod perhaps. I think I learn more from a writer when I'm with them for awhile at once. Oh man, I feel like I just confessed to something incriminating. Is anyone else like this?

temporary; lucky

1. is dedicated to rachel
2. is when you numbered things in that one post
3. is how i liked scrolling up and down to see the story then the title then the story again. My brain responds well to categorization, kind of the same feeling as opening a box of crayons, or eating corn on the cob. Did you do that on purpose for me?

things i wandered my mind to a lot at work today:

--which was day three of three nine-hour days packaging and mailing over 1,000 signed pre-ordered copies of ryan adam's second book called "_____" (that's one word and i noted this because when i was shuffling the early stages of this book around on a computer for the editors a few months ago it was two words, but when the books came to the office in boxes, it had become one word and I thought, I wonder what changes like that do to a person). I was going to say the title of the book but I think ryan fans are freaking out on blogs with joy and anticipation and such and I don't want to draw attention here or be included in that, you know? That might not make sense. I might be half-asleep and paranoid--

sober-living house
bad skin
kiwi vs. kiwis (do you like kiwi? do you like kiwis?)
the state of my bed
the state of my spine, current and long term
pum-pum, hood, and big batty: words I learned in a book
korea

Rachel, it is so late and I miss my trip and all the people on it. The ceiling is falling out in chunks like the beginning of the prologue to the end of the city and I am so tired in all this dust and my fingers are sore--I will barely brush off my feet.

I'm too tired to delete this post.

two, no wait, three

1. Reading this evening at Innertown Pub in delightful Wicker Park, Chicago, 7:30, part of Quickies! Chicago flash fiction series. I am being taken by friends to pick apart deep fried whole fish after, my favorite culinary pass time.

2. I was using a free internet cafe, sponsored awkwardly by ING Direct, this week in Chicago since my sister is morally against having internet access in her apartment, and I was denied access to my own blog, restricted by ING Direct. Is my blog dirty? I thought I was just talking about books and stuff. I don't even really say 'fuck' that much any more. However, Barnes and Noble's free wireless nook doesn't think I'm too naughty for public viewing. Good to know.

3. I was accepted into NYU's MFA in creative writing program. And I'm going! In three weeks! Graduate school! Maybe I should do laundry so I have clean clothes or something.

I'm in Omaha, Nebraska

There should be a question mark or something after that but I guess a period is more 'correct.' Omaha, Nebraska reminds me of absolutely nothing, more because it's kind of nondescript, not because it's distinctive. I saw a "Maggie Moo's" ice cream parlour for the first time since I left Nebraska, and it was kind of heartwarming, until I realized I've never been inside one. If my parents let me eat ice cream it was at the university dairy store because they sold cinnamon honey sticks and I could roller-skate around outside on these smooth loops and there were lilies. The dairy workers made cheese in that dairy store. It spilled from steel bath tub-like vats onto the floor and men in white and boots waded around, pushing at it. Sometimes they would wave. I saw the Mutual of Omaha building when we got into Omaha and it has the most gigantic tiger on the side.

But before that we went into this bar because the street was lined with scooters and motorcycles, and inside they were playing the film Quadrophenia: The Who's rock opera involving scooter gang war between mods and rockers. There were helmets in the bar dotting a slightly unsettling combo of hipsters and bearded biker dudes, all eating free Cheez-Its. Did you know Sting is in Quadrophenia? I had no idea.


Now, I just want to go to the zoo, The Henry Doorly one:

rain forest, aquarium, penguin hill, the nursery, the cat house, the monkey house, the DESERT DOME--largest in the world. I remember being pooped on at this zoo maybe three times in my youth, the birds and monkeys scurry that close. They have a new Butterfly and Insect Pavillion I really want to see.

Let's go to the Henry Doorly Zoo already! Too bad it's snug up the rear of Omaha. I was in Kansas for a week and that was great--especially the parts where I was on a bicycle or eating or stumbling upon good shows like El Ten Eleven and Ad Astra Per Aspera and Fag Cop, which happens a lot in Lawrence. I sold my desk my ex-boyfriend had been using for a year. I also let go of the philodendron plant I had been making people babysit: Sasha you can't get it to New York. I left it on my friend Whitney's stoop with a bottle of Miracle-Gro and I also returned her bicycle and fed her cat Bill and drank most of the Pom juice in the fridge.

I also read Arkansas by John Brandon and it was the most straight joy and titillation I've found in a hardback since like, winter.