Sean Blog: It All Relates 2 Writing

Museum of Vandals by Amish Trivedi

February 8, 2010 · 2 Comments

The walls are steel. Cold I mean. I went out to my mailbox at dawn, when the light is blue and the air cracks in your teeth and everything makes you think of bones, or bones failing, or the inevitability of bones failing. Dog turds in the snow and a tree branch on my roof like a severed arm. There was a chapbook in my mailbox. WTF? WTF makes a curly-Q, a question mark of exhalation in the air, if you were wondering. Every word in the world condensates in its own fashion, that’s just physics. Some asshole was cranking on a snow-blower at six in the morning. My head felt like a box of stuck-together photographs because I drank beer while watching the Superbowl. I went 42 inch 1080 HD last week, but that’s a different post. So. When did I order this chapbook? Sometimes I order books late at night when all the walls are bleeding and lonely and orange and this is what happens.

It was Museum of Vandals by Amish Trivedi. A thing folded in a thing, and this green paper clip. It was a spring-fastened binder clip, not the usual steel loop. Green is my favorite color.

I read the chapbook two times.

Kinetic pop slither pop movement. Somebody chooses the right word. Joins another right word. It’s like pretending to sleep, or getting ready to kick some ass. I mean crouched. Say, tar, snakes, noisemakers. For example.

I have

an imagination

of tar: something is alive

under here. Snakes are


jumping through screams

and the trees. We saw

cranes of noisemakers

and long division streets. Teal

is a legitimate surface, an

operation by which


to read. This is a design of comprehensive

time–a vigil of something traumatic.

Poetry to capture all that is falling away. Role of. Poetry to freeze-frame the jagged thinking. A mind as stained as a skillet. Gleaming with word-grease. What do I think? Show you:

So much soy lining. A parrot screams, laughing

at the


gas masks or wolves. I


laughed (just a

little).

I read. A pain rolled from my head to my spinal cavity to the backs of my knees. I think poetry cuts to the stumble. I think poetry walks the strut. I think this poetry of Amish Trivedi is like a moon framed tightly in the window. The window has a crack through the moon. You are seeing a rupture here (touch it) and on the moon, There. It is very tight and strange and makes your hollow chest feel hollow. How so?

Something is ordinary and very wrong. Something is religious and obscene. Image as a type of gun. You fire the thing. We are all celebrities now. And sad and fucked up, like celebrities. Even a feather can kill someone, easy. Silence will not save you. Fingers, fingers, fingers–what to do with them now?

About

the rain? I was the


one that buried

it in a wall.

Wow. Word. And I mean word. Rain in the wall.

That is all you need to know.

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2nd Serving of Eggs. Yassos. All that.

February 5, 2010 · 2 Comments

Wow, good newz. Feel like a Kentucky sunset. People like Eggs. Cool book-a-coming! Will be Sally. Like extra Sally. As Eggs will join other fiction collections, to be published in Spring 2011 by Rose Metal as one-fifth of a multi-author volume. This baby will feature Mary Miller (You haven’t read Big World? You are a clod of noses.) , Elizabeth Colen, John Jodzio, Tim Jones-Yelvington. And me.

Word.

I mean to post all the reviews of Eggs but cannot imagine the point. I might put them over there on the right, like some do. Anyone, the reviews have been many and strong and I want to give a big-ass thank you to all who took the time to read, write about the read. Wow.

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The story that will not die. More on Lish and Carver.

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Matt Bell interview very strong. Part one and two. This is sick, so much smart stuff. I read this and felt 1.) dumb (I feel this often), 2.) Now smarter, 3.) A helper in a glass-blowing demonstration. I felt keen. Glow of glass. I made something.

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YASSO X 8.

I went 6:00 mile pace for the first 2 800s, then went 5:56 X 2, 5:52 X 2, 5:49 X 2. I think it is important to increase speed/intensity as you near the end of a workout. To actually grind harder as you fatigue. This is what will prepare you for the marathon. Once you get into flow, take advantage of the flow. Use the flow to hammer, to get into the crucible. You know what I mean? You have to be in shape first, but once you get fit, the world is your workout, the workout your world. And it’s such a creative act. Every run is this castle of sweat and time and speed and something intangible–runners know the Place–and you craft and curve and shape this thing, this workout, this glowing castle, and it is corporeal and incorporeal, I mean it lasts for those minutes but then all the glow after, the muscles response after, the blood and hurt of the lungs, the growing, the day you toe the line, the day you cross the line, the day you finish one thing, start another. It is a castle big as you then big as the universe of running. Maybe castle isn’t the correct term, the image, but maybe a castle of shimmering air, of movement, of blur.

Felt good. Sort of sick of people wondering if these workouts are for real. Some debate whether Yasso can predict race time. Do them. Build up to 10 or more. They are for real. Have run many marathons and race times built on believing this workout. I think it real.

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John Madera reviews Jospeh Young’s Easter Rabbit here. I’d like to see more micro-fictions in the realm, more image based, floating in words.

Examples here.

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I had tofu refried beans nachos last night. I need Dave’s Insanity Sauce.

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I told you good newz.

Dzanc Best of the Web 2010 will include my Casablanca ode.

Word.

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I miss fishing. I wish I was fishing. I hate the cold.

happy.

→ 2 CommentsCategories: Flash Fiction · Running · Writing News
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February

February 1, 2010 · 3 Comments

I hate February.

(It means mud-month [Solmonath])

I live in a little, plastic kettle, February.

I saw a colorful sign today: MOLDY ICE.

Hello, ice-cream face.

Leave me alone.

Hello, great pale ugly thing lying on its back.

Lions, tigers, wolves, foxes, and shit of various kinds–February.

(It means cabbage [Kale-monath])

There is huge flashing sign in front of the funeral home and it flashes DRIVE CAREFUL!! and it pisses me off, February.

Hi February. I am going to pencil in these eyebrows, then punch you in the face.

(Ronald Reagan was born in February. Same day as Axl Rose. Zsa Zsa Gabor. You get the idea. Fuck Reagan.)

The dog turd in the snow on the parking lot glinted.

None of the rules of February are made or could be made by me–and that is frustrating.

I would like to take a chauffeur-driven jeep and drive it right into the kneecaps of February, like mash February into a bus, or a low bus step, or a childbirth of low bus steps. I would like to see February out job-hunting, that type of misery.

There are the budget cuts.

Cuts?

You are now sharing an office with February.

A low mournful hoot.

My Subaru tumbles over and is wriggling its tires.

The snowplowed mountain of shit.

The palace where there is more abundance of shit than in Antarctica.

My debut upon the world’s stage occurred on February 26, 1845, in the State of Iowa.

Buffalo Bill (fuck him)

The pleasure that contains feathered shit, beasts of shit, herbal shits and flowered shits, all wrought in shit–February.

I have to sit here while February squeezes my left breast. This is demeaning.

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Pumas and whatnot and Denver

January 26, 2010 · 3 Comments

I ran 13 miles yesterday, good flow, fast finish. Now my left foot feels like a brick or a potable couch, but like a brick or potable couch I handed to you and you were like, Look, I’m going to pour rotgut vodka on this brick or potable couch and set it on fire, and then you handed it back to me only I wasn’t looking at you directly (bad habit) and took this flaming brick or potable couch from your hand and reattached it to my ankle because the F-brick or F-potable couch is actually my left foot, see, and now I hobble a bit down the hallways but hide my hobbling because I don’t want anyone to talk to me about my foot.

“Hey, why are you shuffling like that?”

“I’m not shuffling, I’m hobbling. Leave me alone. Let me be, like cold coffee.”

“Is coffee a drug? Don’t do drugs. Does coffee make you feel important?”

“Shut-up! Go buy an overcoat or something! Let me be!”

But that’s all normal. I broke my heel almost ten years ago and this has been my left foot area ever since, a brick or a potable couch, in flames. The doctor said I would never run again. Ha, ha, and ha!

He had this look like I was supposed to hand him a vase. I hate that look.

Many marathons later…

Fucking doctors. Their mystique doesn’t work on me–I used to be a nurse. I know about the little man behind the curtains, folks. I know about the fishing boats with the tiny engines, the billing and the phone cards and the blue glow of stretched cotton. Etc.

Anyway, ice and ibuprofen, then I got me a good tempo run I’ll do 2morrow. I want pain. I will curl pain into a pot like a fucking cobra. Hiiiisssssssssssssssssssssss

Mount Lemmon is known for mountain lions. I mean pumas. I mean cougars. Whatever, big-ass cats. They are like Carver stories–they get 8 names or some shit.

(Here is one of the first news articles I have seen on the race–more coming as the race nears!)

You should use three exclamation marks your whole life, ass. God, I look at my writing sometimes and I want to kick a little heartbeat into Wendy. Just grapple in the decade, you know?

I have decided to call the October race The Purge Of Knees, a phrase I like and recently incorporated into a micro-fiction/prose poem series.

The very road…

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I am going to AWP! First, I thought I wasn’t, but now I am. Will be doing a Rose Metal Eggs signing on Saturday, and the remainder of the time some BSU work. Lots of stuff going on, but mostly looking forward to buying a ton of sweet books. Last year I got true gems. I hope HTML does something rad, like a polka or something. Maybe place a potted plant on the roof of a car wash, some stunt like that.

beer

beer like preadolescent catalogues

like rage of an age, some tumbling knuckle

In AWP’s honor I dropped three prose poems at Denver Syntax:

Meaning of Life # 14

Meaning of Like # 36

Meaning of Life # 20

Well, isn’t that dandy as cod people think is haddock.

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I just had an urge to play roulette but the nearest roulette table is electronic roulette and who in the fuck would play electronic roulette? Idiot. OK, I’m over it now, the urge to play roulette.

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I am doing a serial reading thing, you know, where you read two, three books consecutively. I am reading Factory Made, an Andy Warhol book, and one I read years ago. The HTML folks have been on an Andy Warhol jag and it made me think about the Warhol books I own and then to leaf through a few and next thing I need to re-read this book. So I am. Also reading Aaron Burch’s chapbook, winner of the PANK contest. Then the Murakami running book.

Oh Andy you are so ironic to take the photo of the photographer taking your photo of you taking a photo of…

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Holy fuck I won the Irish lottery again!!

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I would like to meet Morrissey at a bar and have him tell me to place my hands flat on the bar and then he nails my hands to the bar. And I have this evidence. Greatest crooner ever, folks. See the blood?

S

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Eggs and Bush and Red Lobster.

January 19, 2010 · 1 Comment

Look what I got in the mail today! Can you say ken baumann, shane jones, jimmy chen, brandi wells, blake butler, nick antosca, sam pink, james chapman, colin bassett, michael kimball, jac jemc, kim chinquee, kim parko, norman lock, randall brown, brian evenson, michael stewart, peter markus, ken sparling, aaron burch, david ohle, matthew savoca, p. h. madore, johannes göransson, charles lennox, ryan call, elizabeth ellen, molly gaudry, kevin wilson, mary hamilton, craig davis, kendra grant malone, lavie tidhar, lily hoang, mark baumer, ben tanzer, krammer abrahams, joshua cohen, eugene lim, c. l. bledsoe, joanna ruocco, josh maday, & michael martone?

I feel like Rod Stewart or Cher back when she had orange hair and that crazy spandex and the battleship.

This has been out a while and I then forgot and now it arrives and I am about to read until I swoon.

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Cynthia Reezer at NewPages does a sweet review of Eggs.

“Lovelace weaves scenes that flow organically (or maybe “morph” is a better word) into the next thing happening by the writerly imagination.”

Word.

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holy shit

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I have decided I have a cooler beer glass than most.


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Doom on the Mountain

January 11, 2010 · 8 Comments

I registered for the Mount Lemmon Marathon today. 9000 foot hill, Arizona desert. Fuck.

From the website:

“The Marathon Course is one of the toughest and most scenic courses in the world. The uphill course starts at 3100ft and finishes at 9147ft – from the cacti and desert landscape of the Sonoran Desert to the pine trees of the Catalina Mountains.”

“The Toughest Road Marathon in the World. The Only Uphill Marathon in the US. 6000+ ft Elevation Gain.”

Here is chart of the elevation:

That chart sort of sucks. The point is we (Ander Monson and 1248 others [The cap for the race] running) are going uphill the whole way, at elevation, in a fucking desert. I feel dread. How? I feel like a sack of dogs throw in a taffy machine . Oh, ragged life! My heart is a landlord with receding hair and a Hummer. There’s a mummy inside his pants. I am not unconcerned. I got a cloud over my head in the shape of a ruptured spleen. The spleen is bleeding red beetles. Their wings make a sound of razor blades being sharpened on one another. Time is involved here, so I am not immortal by definition. My thighs just called my calves a goddamn whore. My calves just called Lily Tomlin up and asked her out for Halloween, or a few days before Halloween. Doom. Doom like acid snow. Like the wings of tiny birds torn away and all fluttering to the earth as the wing-less bird bodies splat. I just broke my chromosome. I wish they wouldn’t close traffic, then I could be hit by…My teeth are grinding, grinding out organs and monkeys doing cartwheels. I have a bluish pile of skin sitting on my forehead, asking, “What exactly the fuck?” My arm just peeled away its own blanketing, then its vessels, then its bones, and I am holding here a tangled scrawl of raw, thin metal. Vomit on my desk–how? What did I eat? It’s all U.S. Post Office, I mean my stomach one of those ratchety machines in Cincinnati that shred and eat all the literary magazines. Where did the good go? I am sweating. Odd. My sweat tastes like sitting in a bed while everyone younger than me gathers around and whispers and stares. Sort of rabbit coat meets highway shoulder meets sickly orange punk girl hair, that taste. Oh, heavy, flat Sprite. My lungs are pissed. My lungs just said no more searching for keys. No more over-tipping. “It’s not fair,” my left lung lobe says. What pain? I will be dumb as a car. I will be dumb as very mountain, the individual boulders, the dust beneath the boulders once a boulder itself. My thoughts rush now like a true lover of beauty, as in death. I am scared, my friends. I am scared to climb the escarpment dumb. OK?

Who said anything about walking?

S

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Blizzard Ass

January 7, 2010 · 4 Comments

How is it going? Oh, fine, just dandy. I am a pink boom box of icecream truck muzak, caught in a loop. I need an axe and a bathroom door, etc. This is what my disc basket in the backyard looks like…

I understand winter like I understand death. I am a southerner at heart. Where are the bocce balls and the V & Ts? I must move my legs and heart, the gristly muscle. If I don’t move I will tumble into profound sad. My head will go knuckles gripping a wheelchair wheel. Resigned. So luckily I have a treadmill. Put in a nice tempo run today. I am training for the Nashville marathon in April, then I am officially running a race so difficult the conditions are repeated nowhere else in the planet we call Earth. Seriously. More details later.

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I was thinking I might have the Seinfeld large wallet thing (script here) going on…but see I don’t want leather because of the cow thing and those hemp wallets are for stoners and they fall apart in 14 days and so I had to go with Kavu, a real company, an outdoors way, I mean not as flaky, a rugged thing. But it feels like I am carrying an unabridged thesaurus in my back pocket. It hurts my ass sometimes. Well, we all must sacrifice.

(quarter used for reference to size)

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I had some wriitng stuff to talk about but think I put it all recently on HTML Giant. So go there, I guess. I told some people I know to go there recently and they said, “I am scared of that site!” I mean it intimidates them, the comments especially. I get that. Some people who comment on that site are scholars and way-readers and seriously know their shit. They are pretty aggressive at times, but I kind of enjoy the play. I certainly enjoy their minds. But you got to just wade in, is how I feel. I’m no scholar, not in the real sense, a funny thing to say for a prof, no? But I try. I’m a scholar of pedagogy more than writing, I suppose. I mean I want to be the best teacher I can be, that is serious. The writing is so mysterious. I learn every day. That is the good thing. I hope I can say that forever.

(Update: The more I think about this, the more I think I am wrong, about scholarship. Years of teaching CW, of reading CW texts, of watching others, this is a form of scholarship in a discipline. I suppose I mean a literary scholar, a true critic. Then again, I am not a literature prof, and remember that my undergraduate training was in nursing–I am also an RN. So. I suppose I mean I view a text from its basement, not from above. I try to see its wiring and whatnot, its craft, maybe to carry into the classroom. I am certainly one of those who have trouble just “reading” a book, because I’ve been teaching too long. I stop and take apart. I have heard movie people (in whatever job in the industry) do the same things with movies. They are watching the film, but one part of their mind if already predicting the structure, labeling the shot, etc.

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Hey, William Carlos Williams–shove it!

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Have been reading a ton. Now onto Lucy Corin book. Very good stuff, and Flash mixed in, what I like. Report later…

glad to be on a reading jag.

blizzard!

Makes me feel like a rolled down stocking. Or a cheekful of claw.

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JMWW all Fnaut all Marathon all

January 4, 2010 · 4 Comments

(Lawrence Weschler)

New JMWW is out, with a “real-time interview” with Joseph Young, Mary Miller, Adam Robinson.

I see the words Mary Miller and interview, and I read.

I am seeing more and more of these “interviews” in chat form, or IM, or iwhatever technology, and it interests me, the flow, back-n-forth, the built hotels of word-bricks, of winter icicles popping, the way green doors open (and close?), same and differ than a more traditional interview form. Voice and tone is certainly changed, and it’s a bit more organic, as in tentacles to cups. I’ll be interested to see how the genre evolves. Already we have chat entering fiction (Tao Lin, taken directly from the author’s own life) and essay (Wendy Rawlings and emails). We shall see.

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Fictionaut has my “nacho” essay as “Faved,” a new feature. That text sure has had some run, so I am thankful.

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Speaking of run, I almost have my 2010 plans hashed out. I think I want to do three marathons, beginning with the Music City Marathon in Nashville. I would like to go sub 3 hours here. They play country music is the only big concern. When I hear country music my retinas detach, so I plan on running blind.

I might be running a truly insane Oct marathon, but we will see. It will be one of those “This is the only marathon like this in the world” efforts, but some things have to fall in place. If I do run this race, it will most likely kill me, but that’s cool. I mean I’m OK with that result.

The third I need a summer one…we’ll see. Still looking.

Today I started my training for the April 24 Nash-vegas one. Three miles. Wow, that isn’t much, but that’s what the plan called for, folks, and I am following the plan. It is by Hal Higdon. It is here.

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“I’ve talked a lot about writing. But I don’t know what it is.”

Duras

→ 4 CommentsCategories: Literary Magazines · Nachos · Writing News
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Happy New Year and All of That Crap.

December 31, 2009 · 3 Comments

Today a red fox loped across my backyard. It paused and ate some brown thing. The brown thing looked like a sock, I mean kidney. I took a photo because in 2009 if you don’t record a thing it did not actually happen. The fox looked up at me, at my back window, looking at it, and it gave me this You Wish look, like a Ted Hughes grin, and coolly loped off. My head did a Tyra Banks falling off a cliff.

Not sure what this is a sign of? What do I know about foxes? I know they like to dance. They will ruin a roe deer population. I know they are cousin to the bear. They like dark suits. They have heart problems. They fear the Subaru. Hmm. Well, I don’t know what it means on New Years Eve to receive a visitation from a fox. We’ll see.

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Been reading a lot. This has made me a little crazy, with a thin skim of depression. Sometimes my mind does that with reading. It’s why I don’t play much chess anymore. I used to enter into a chess cave for hours and I would emerge all cloudy in the head and coughing in the skull and then the world would feel unreal and I would feel alone or maybe floating. Harvested or something. Sometimes reading does the same, but I am working my way forward, book to book, and things are good while bad, which is the best way with reading. I will read my way home.

Last week or so:

Fifth Inning by E. Ethelbert Miller. (OK, could have went deeper)

We Did Porn by Zak Smith (Holy smart. And tons of fucking. And tons of insight on American hypocrisy about fucking and other issues, but mostly fucking)

Stoner by John Williams. (Wow. Best university-related novel I have read. An affirmation. If you teach or want to, read this, seriously.)

New issue of Gulf Coast Magazine. New issue of Hayden’s Ferry Review. (strong, per usual, for these two–will post more later on GCM)

Some of the mud luscious chaps. (I have many, all unique, bouncing off one another)

Here is a photo I took for my HTML post on Jac Jemc. I’m pretty much into 99% never having content here and HTML, but this time fuck it. I like the photo.

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Speaking of, been posting and reading a lot of HTML Giant lately. It’s been fun and interesting, especially the other posts and the comments. I’m learning a lot. I used to read HTML and Big Other and some other sites about once every 3 days. Now I do HTML daily, and it’s been a head-spin, and also costly. How can you not buy some of these books and magazines? It’s been a great kindling (re?) about really fresh writing, and welcome during the mid-semester lull. I’ve even thought about film a bit, and I don’t care much for film. I am thinking of buying some Herzog. My own posting about publishing, submitting, writing has been something, too, to think about issues, ideas. I’ve been posting pretty regular. This will fall off some once the semester cranks up, especially this semester, with classes, committees, The Broken Plate, and so on. But I don’t think my reading will. HTML (and other sites) started me reading more, and I feel good momentum, then a possible crackup.

My next book will be the new Sherman Alexie poetry book, Face. Really looking forward to.

Then a ton of flash. I am teaching a way-heavy flash class this year in advanced fiction. God, will we do flash fiction.

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Happy New year to all. My routine is to walk into my backyard at midnight and empty my Browning Buckmark .22 into the ground. This should work well here at my house, though apartment living always caused a little friction.

[Tuscaloosa, AL, typical grad apt, size of a sigh. Walk out into front yard, people milling about...)

Person: “Is that a gun?”

Me: “No, it’s fireworks.”

(empty gun into ground)

“See?”

(Walk back into apt. Close door)

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I ate the “good luck” meal you are supposed to eat for good luck on new years. I am traditional that way.

fire away, 2010

S

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Punch Yourself in the Face

December 24, 2009 · 1 Comment

“I went out and told the woman what a rum punch was and how to make it. In a few minutes a girl brought a stone pitcher, steaming, into the room. Bill came over from the piano and we drank the hot punch and listened to the wind.

“There isn’t too much rum in that.”

I went over to the cupboard and brought the rum bottle and poured a half-tumblerful into the pitcher.

“Direct action,” said Bill. “It beats legislation.”

The Sun Also Rises

  1. Get a big-ass crock pot.
  2. Pour in some apple cider.
  3. Add three cinnamon sticks. Break them up. It’s fun, sort of like knocking a battery off a man’s shoulder.
  4. Shove some cloves into orange. Think about sex with Martha Stewart.
  5. Cut up the orange and fling it in.
  6. Add some lime juice and some pineapple juice.
  7. Heat it all up to make your house smell happy.
  8. Pour two big-ass dollops of rum into Ball jars or that beer glass you stole from Applebees because you are so crazy.
  9. Pour the mix over.
  10. Call your mom.

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