trophy ex-wife

I saw a skunk last night on my way back from the corner store. I freaked out more than the skunk freaked out. I freaked out because I also had an encounter with a skunk a couple of weeks ago at night. At least I think it was a skunk. It was very dark outside. I saw a cute, furry animal. I advanced towards it to get a better look since it was cute and fury. It raised its leg. It made a sound like it was releasing air. I ran into my apartment building, thinking that I had just been sprayed. I smelled myself. I had not been sprayed. It did not smell skunk-like outside either.

I really like this video. Whoever made it is the Russel Edson of stupid internet videos makers.



Banksy is the Russel Edson of graffiti artists. I am going to try to think of some other Russel Edsons of various art forms. I am having trouble.

There's this PDF thing that contains an interview with me about editing and other stuff. It's here: http://www.colum.edu/Academics/Fiction_Writing/Publishing_Lab/PDF_Folder/Reports/Magazine%20Reports/Bust_down_the_doors.pdf

I wish I did more email interviews about my writing. It's usually about my editing. I like email interviews. I think I sound like an idiot if it's a recording of an interview that I have done over the phone. I think I am a little slow and I need written words to process my thoughts.

I found this PDF from doing a google search to try to figure out why Bust Down the Door received so many submissions yesterday. The stats report was not revealing. It only lists the top fifty referring sites. 155 of them are a mystery to me.

I finished James Tate's Ghost Soldiers. The title poem is about a ghost parade. During my writing program a couple of weeks ago, I told my new friend that I tried to write a one sentence story about a ghost parade for our assignment and failed. He told me that James Tate's new book is called The Ghost Soldiers. I don't know why he said this since he has not read it. Maybe he is a psychic. We also share the same birthday.

I am now reading the book that James Tate wrote before The Ghost Soldiers: return to the city of white donkeys. I don't know why the title is in all lowercase. I like this book even better than the other one. Because there is less dialog. I think I will be reading James Tate's books in the reverse order of which they were written. I checked his book of collected poems out from the library a while back and couldn't get into it. It came out before the two books that I have read/am reading. I think his newer stuff is less poetic. That's why I like it. I'm hesitant to call it poetry or prose poetry. It seems like it's just flash fiction with poetic touches. Maybe prose poem/flash fiction hybrids that lean towards fiction.

I would classify the poems in his book of collected poems as poetry. I guess he can do whatever he wants now and it will get published as "poetry" even if it's only a little like poetry. This reminds me of how science fiction mags would publish non-science fiction stories by Harlan Ellison after he made his name in the field of science fiction. Now journals that publish poetry will publish James Tate's wonderful non-poems because he's conquered the poetry field.

Maybe I am talking out of my ass.

I just reread Stephen King's On Writing. Even though I disagreed with a lot that he had to say, it's probably the best book on writing that I've read. This is weird because, besides this book, I've had a lot of contempt for the man until I started reading the Dark Tower series recently.

I've always had this thing where I thought a blank page was perfection and writing on it was tainting it, although I feel less strongly about this now. I used to fantasize about having a library of beautiful/expensive blank books and never writing in any of them.

I've also had a fantasy about spending the rest of my life writing one novel that would be thousands and thousands of pages long and be about a fictional person's life, from their birth to their (and my) death. I would like to grow old with this character.