Jason Jordan worships Satan and burns down marshmallow churches

Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate. Not Ray Mabus. Crisis averted. Now 2012 will herald a massive change in human consciousness rather than the end of the world. Thanks, Obama. Well, unless you're the anti-christ.

I finally found a place to stay next month. I will be living with a four hundred pound poet who once had James Tate in his cab. He seems awesome.

September is the worst time to look for a place to live around here, unless you are a student (preferably a grad student), a female, or gay. It is probably very very easy to find a room if you are all three. There are a lot of rooms available in September because I live in an area with lots of colleges and that's when most leases end and the semester begins, but most places are looking for those three things that I mentioned and a zillion people are looking for places to stay.

I wanted to move to Northampton, but that is the home of Smith College, an all-female school. Most women who put up ads on Craig's List don't want to live with males. There is a large gay/lesbian population around here. No ads ever specify "homosexuals only," but many of them say, "Must be queer-friendly." And although I am queer-friendly, they are always going to choose a gay person over me.

My house is a little far away. I need to buy a car.

There's a new guy at work. I found out he was the one responsible for allegedly dropping his cell phone into a toilet, giving me the peace of mind of thinking that I had a place to live. This lasted for about two hours until the guy who owned the house called to tell me about the toilet incident. But the toilet incident didn't happen. He dropped his cell phone when he was riding his motorcycle.

I'm not sure if the last paragraph that I wrote will make any sense to people who did not read a certain blog entry from a while ago or don't have decent memories.

The new guy at work went to high school with the owner of the house. He says the owner of the house is kind of schizophrenic. He says he knew what he was getting himself into, but the other tenants have a harder time dealing with the owner of the house.

I'm glad he's living there and not me.

Coincidences abound.

My second big disappointment with my room search was when I went to check out an apartment and really hit it off with the young couple that lived there. We liked some of the same obscure authors. It felt like we were hanging out. I had a good time. They were fun. I felt like I had made two friends really quickly. They said they would make there decision in a few days. I thought, "I will be surprised if they don't choose me." They surprised me. I called back and the guy said, "We gave the room to someone else."

I thought maybe they gave it to a friend who was unsure about whether or not he was going to move in, but they did not say this. That seems like the only rational explanation to me. But maybe they get along really well with everybody rather than just me.

More on coincidences:

Mike Young and I are co-editing an e-anthology called Dragons with Cancer. I googled "dragons with cancer" today. I came across a bad myspace poem called Dragons with Cancer. It was posted the exact same day that I first mentioned the title on my blog (and I sent Mike the name in the email a couple of weeks before that).

I think it's a zeitgeist thing because I doubt the author of that poem reads my blog. But maybe he does. Once someone on myspace stole a Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens cover for the background of his myspace page. He used the file directly from my website. If I had wanted to, I could have turned his background into bestiality porn or something. He seemed like a really stupid teen. I was intrigued. I sent a message saying, "Nice background picture." He did not respond. I think he might have changed the background picture after that.

During my writing program this summer, I spent a lot of time hanging out with a college undergrad student. He was in my workshop. We had an assignment to write either a six word story or a story that was one sentence long. I tried to write about a ghost parade (I think I am obsessed with ghost parades). I failed. I told him so. He said something like, "The name of James Tate's new book is The Ghost Soldiers." I don't know why he said that. I'm not sure if he knows either. When I read the title story in the book later, I found out it was actually about a ghost parade.

I'll quote part of his response since I like it and it seemed like he put effort into writing it and it seems harmless to quote it without his permission:

"Amherst seemed to be ridden with a disproportionate amount of coincidences when I was there--recurring themes that stand out in my mind were tomatoes and grasshoppers. My roommates and I noticed it, but our recognition of the situation didn't seem to stop it. Coincidences were a daily occurrence. Then I had the same birthday as you. Clearly, it was not simply a result of like-minded people in the same place being more likely to produce similar situations and ideas, because you are still experiencing the phenomenon. Therefore, I must conclude that the Amherst area is in a time-space sinkhole, matrix glitch, or whatever you want to call it, but I'd get the hell out of Dodge if I were you to avoid being irretrievably stuck in some kind of repetitious loop, with a finite number of experiences permanently fixed for you to experience over and over. On the other hand, that could also be a kind of twisted immortality, so sticking around to find out might not necessarily result in your premature death."

His name is George Fitting. He told me that when I get older I can tell my grandchildren that I was in a writing program with the famous author, George Fitting (at least something like that). It seemed like he was only half joking.

And yes, we had the same birthday. Except I think I'm eight or nine years older than him.

He sent me a first edition of Steve Erickson's Days Between Stations.

Noy Holland was our professor. She keeps appearing in my dreams.