crutches

I am reading Sam Pink's Yum Yum I Can't Wait To Die. I like it. Jaguar Uprising Press published it. It is either a really long poem with many sections or a many untitled short poems. I am reading it as if it were the second choice. It is written in first person. I like poetry when it is written in first person. It is easier to follow.

Sam Pink has joined the ranks of the poets who I like. There are not many:

Russell Edson and Charles Bukowski.

And Joe Wenderoth's book, Letters to Wendy's. Tao Lin's book, you are a little happier than i am, James Tate's last two books and a handful poems from his third to last one. Like this poem:

New Blood

A huge lizard was discovered drinking
out of the fountain today. It was not menacing
anyone, it was just very thirsty. A small crowd
gathered and whispered to one another, as though
the lizard would understand them if they spoke
in normal voices. The lizard seemed not even
a little perturbed by their gathering. It drank
and drank, its long forked tongue was like a red
river hypnotizing the people, keeping them in a
trance-like state. "It's like a different town,"
one of them whispered. "Change is good," the
other one whispered back.

I also like Michael McClure's poem, "Fuck Ode." And Gregory Corso's poem, "The Whole Mess...Almost," is probably my favorite poem ever:

I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
"Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!"
"Oh yeah? Well, I've nothing to hide ... OUT!"
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
"It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!" "OUT!"
Then Love, cooing bribes: "You'll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!"
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
"You always end up a bummer!"
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
"Without us you'll surely die!"
"With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!"

Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty --
As I led her to the window
I told her: "You I loved best in life
... but you're a killer; Beauty kills!"
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
"You saved me!" she cried
I put her down and told her: "Move on."

Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
"I'm not real!" It cried
"I'm just a rumor spread by life ..."
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left --
All I could do with Humor was to say:
"Out the window with the window!"

And I've liked the few poems that I've published in Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens. And let's not forget the Indonesian Ryan Manning's poems about girls. I enjoyed those.

I think most poems are too fragmented. I cannot understand them. A lot of them have nice sentences. But the sentences do not connect with each other. They feel like they are cut-ups. But instead of cutting up random words and phrases, the poet throws together random sentences. I do not get anything out of poetry like that. I do not feel. It seems like most poems that I stumble across these days are like that.

I like poems with discernible narratives. Poems that tell stories that would work better in the form of a poem than it would in a short story.

I Am A Dick

Andersen Prunty has opened submissions for the BRADLEY SANDS IS A DICK e-book anthology. It is still a mystery to me why he posted guidelines way back before the submissions were open. But they are open now. So get to it. He has also updated the guidelines a little.

http://www.andersenprunty.com/2008/07/bradley-sands-is-dick-update.html

kill me, i am not a vampire

I'm changing back to day shifts for the time being. It will suck, but my days off will be very nice. I hated my nights off. I never had any reason to leave my room.

There is nothing more boring than drinking by myself. I will never become an alcoholic.

I have not been productive this month with my writing. I have been lame and pathetic. I have only written one story this month and it is not so long, but too long to be read on the internet. At least I got a lot of reading done.

My broken laptop is probably the main reason for my lack of productivity. I stopped bringing it to work (which is probably a good thing) since it's in the possession of some computer repair people. I'm going through bureaucratic bullshit with them, so whether or not the repair is covered by my service plan is questionable and I will not find out until the end of the month.

I need to learn how to feel comfortable writing in free hand, but I don't want to write the rest of my novella in free hand because I'm afraid the protagonist's voice will end up being inconsistent with what I have already written.

Hopefully I will start working on the novella again around the beginning of next month.

At least I have gotten a lot of reading done this month. And worked on the edit for the next issue of my journal, even though it's not 100% filled yet.

I should be working afternoon shifts, but I'm going to try to wake up early in the morning every day because I will not feel like working on my novella after work. It will take discipline to go to sleep soon after I get home from work. I will feel the need to "wind down." I will probably allow myself an hour to chill before bedtime. It takes me around three hours to wake up completely though, although it will hopefully be less with the assistance of yerba mate tea, which contains caffeine that does not seem to cause me TMJ head pain. It still pretty weak though.

I love being awake in the morning though. I didn't know this until I started doing overnights and sleeping in the afternoon and early evenings. I never knew what I was missing way back when I was sleeping through the mornings. I guess it's like how I never thought meat tasted good until I stopped being a vegetarian.

I'm not working today. I will probably write one of those autobiographical entries in "I Do Not Feel Like Myself Today" in order to not feel so badly about my low productivity. And take a walk to town. It doesn't look so nice outside, but it will be nice to be there in the afternoon since I'm usually asleep.

Tattoos look all cool on younger people, but look crappy and white trashy on older people unless the tattoos are awesome.

This entry isn't good enough for a title and probably won't show up on people's blog rolls.

It is a secret entry.

I'm doing a sleep deprivation thing today to normalize my sleep schedule. It will be no fun, unless I start seeing magical creatures like that one time in college. I couldn't sleep for like three days though. Insomnia. I think I prefer sleep deprivation.

protected entry

http://donotfeel.blogspot.com/2008/07/it-is-time-for-raise.html

perfect

The new Batman movie kind of sucks. It probably wouldn't kind of suck if Heath Ledger wasn't in it. His performance was so good that it overshadowed everything else in the movie and made it kind of suck. There has been talk of an Academy Award nomination, but I think that's just internet bullshit. Actors aren't known for getting Best Actor nominations for shitty superhero movies, or shitty movies in general unless the powers that be deem the shitty movie to be a good movie.

It would have been better if Crispin Glover was The Joker. This was a rumor way back. Crispin Glover wouldn't have overshadowed everything else. Crispin Glover would have played the role of Crispin Glover in Joker makeup. I like Crispin Glover. He is my favorite non-acting actor. I really want to see the remake of Hershel Gordon Lewis's Wizard of Gore. Crispin Glover plays the wizard of gore. It's the only movie that I can think of that deserves a remake since it would have been a really great movie if it wasn't so boring most of the time.

I have a few movies that I consider to be my favorite movies. I've seen most of them somewhat recently. I consider them all perfect, which really shouldn't happen because nothing is ever perfect. I found these movies to be emotionally resonating without being emotionally manipulative like most Hollywood movies. I hate the music in emotionally manipulative Hollywood movies. This is what makes them emotionally manipulative. Like if there's some action scene that isn't very exciting, they will pump some heavy metal to make it exciting and it usually works.

After watching these favorite movies of mine, I felt like I was experiencing a series of feelings that were alien to me. That I didn't know existed. That I am unable to describe. I like feeling this way.

All of these movies are sitting on my hard drive, but I'm afraid to watch them. I'm afraid the initial experience will be ruined for me like Donnie Darko. I used to feel this way about Donnie Darko, but I've seen it so many times and I don't really like it anymore. It kind of bugs me that it doesn't make sense. It should not bug me that it doesn't make sense.

Once Upon a Time in America is my favorite movie. It is directed by Sergio Leone. He did the spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood. It is almost four hours long. The studio hacked the original release down to two hours. I haven't seen it, but it was supposed to have been really terrible. One critic said it was the worst movie that year. The longer director's cut came out on DVD nine years later. The same critic who said it was the worst movie said it was the best movie that year.

Once Upon a Time in America is about Jewish gangsters. It stars Robert De Niro. James Woods plays his antagonist. There is an extremely long flashback to when they were young and friends.

I rented the movie from Blockbuster. It was comprised of two DVDs. It was a little jarring when the first DVD ended. I watched the movie by myself in my room on my laptop computer.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is another long one. I usually don't like long movies (or books), but maybe it needs to be long to be perfect.

I didn't have any interest in the subject matter. The movie made me be interested in the subject matter. Brad Pitt is in it. It is odd how he's an incredible actor and a Hollywood heartthrob at the same time. This should not be allowed. It will cause the destruction of the universe.

I rented this DVD out of a vending machine at the supermarket. I watched the first couple of hours or so at work. Jesse, my co-worker, watched it with me. I was "training" him. He has since quit. We turned the movie off during the last couple of hours of the shift because things started to get busier. I don't know if Jesse ever watched the rest of it.

I was wary of seeing Inland Empire. I had heard it was artsy, nonsensical, and long. I thought it was going to be boring. It was all of these things, but not boring. When a movie is all of these things but not boring, it is a very good movie.

I saw it by myself at the Pleasant Street Theatre in Northampton. It was the last showing, so I got out pretty late. I walked home after and felt really strange. The world looked different. It was like the movie was a psychedelic drug.

Blue Velvet used to be my favorite movie, but I have seen it too many times. The experience has been ruined. I once saw it at an art cinema near where I grew up. They show a "midnight movie" once a week, although it is shown at 11pm rather than midnight.

I also saw Brick at Pleasant Street. I also went by myself. It was the director's first movie and not crazy long like the rest of the movies that I'm mentioning here. It was very artificial. I like very artificial. It had a modern day setting, but all the characters talked like they were characters in pulp noir books from the nineteen forties. They were all high school students. I like pulp noir books, especially those written by Raymond Chandler. The following issue of Bust will probably have a hardboiled theme.

I like stylized dialog. I like artificialness. Brick left me feeling like I could accomplish anything creative-oriented. The movie was not perfect though. Sometimes the dialog was muffled, as if the guy who was holding the boom mic was too far away. This was unfortunate.

I bought the movie on DVD. That was a mistake. I watched it once or twice. It wasn't as good. Although I liked watching it with the subtitles turned on.

I like the medium of television a lot, but I don't think a television show can be perfect. I think a television show is inherently flawed because the content is so dependent on pleasing the viewer and ultimately the sponsors. Most television shows that were close to perfect in the beginning fail because they are not permitted to succeed. The shows get canceled and the creators are either forced to produce a shitty finale that rushes everything to bring it to a conclusion or we don't even get that finale. Or a show is so popular that it goes on and on, outliving its lifespan, plodding on like a flesh eating zombie.

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.

Your Weekly Assignments

Blake Butler: Write a story that begins with the sentence, "Hitler tells me that I look beautiful."

Eric Blair: Write a story that isn't about yourself (must be awesome!).

Gina Ranalli: Write a story about a miniature golf competition.

Jason Jordan: Write a story about a ghost parade.

Josh Maday: Write a story about a very young precocious protagonist who is a writer. It must use the words "precocious," "cacophony," "denizens," and "etc."

kek-w: Write a story about a time-traveling elephant.

Mike Young: Write a poem about a monster truck driver who marries his monster truck and attempts to sue Russell Edson for copyright infringing his life.

Micah Hacim: Write a story about how you're a jerk from the point of view of the bodyguard who used to beat you up during Rory Gilmore's years at Chilton Academy.

Ryan Call: Write a story about MFA candidates using thermonuclear weapons to compete for teaching assistanceships.

I go to bakeries all day long. There's a lack of sweetness in my life

I've felt all emo-y recently. I'm beginning to think of my life realistically. Beginning to think that a lot of the things that I had predicted for my future probably won't happen.

I'm obsessed with a song by the Modern Lovers: Hospital



This is a much more depressing than the studio version. And it's even more depressing because the stage is in the distance and so very small. And then the song cuts off.

Before I found this, I found a skydiving video that was accompanied by the studio version of the song. It was a really odd juxtaposition.

"When you get out of the hospital, let me back into your life" would be a good opening for a short story.

I'm happy for Jonathan Richman for writing happy songs after the first Modern Lovers album, but I do not like these songs.

I feel like I'm becoming very random blog-wise. I want to write a couple of essays. One on serial fiction (mostly TV shows) and the other on bad film, but I lack the motivation. I don't think I have the attention span right now to devote many words to the same subject.

I think someone should start up a web journal called something like the Web Journal Review and it should write mini reviews of the stories that the staff thinks are the best recent stories on the web. I probably wouldn't read it, because I don't like reading stories online, but I think a lot of people would. If the journal's staff had good taste. This would be useful since there are so many stories on the Internet. Or maybe someone already does something like this?

I just started taking two hundred times the daily required value of vitamin B-12. It says 20,000% on the label and looks really crazy. It's supposed to eventually make me more calm and give me more energy. It's always nice when those two things go together. Somebody on the Bizarro Central forum recommended it. He said he didn't notice the difference until a month after he started taking it. I haven't noticed the difference yet and it has been about three or four days.

I'm thinking about working for The Prince of Candy's mother. She works in a halfway house for the mentally ill. I am considering doing the overnight shift.

The pedophile that was supposed to have taken Augustin Burroughs' virginity a long time ago worked for The Prince of Candy's mother. She did not like him., but was not able to fire him until he got arrested for having kiddie porn or something. The Prince of Candy told me about him before I read the book, but he didn't tell me it was the same guy until a few days ago. His friends used to go over to the guy's house to star in jerk off videos in exchange for drugs. The Prince of Candy denies doing this.

I just finished the fifth book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I still like it. I'm going to remember this summer as the summer that I spent reading the Dark Tower series. I like remembering summers like this. Summer 2001 was spent reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Summer 2002 was spent reading Terry Pratchett's Diskworld series during the downtime at my mail room job at Nikon. I can't remember any other summers like this. The November that I participated in NaNoWriMo was also spent listening to the audio versions of the Series of Unfortunate Events books. Tim Curry did most of the reading (who was awesome), while Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler read a few (he was not awesome).

I wish I had two grand to blow. I would take a class in Transcendental Meditation. I would gladly throw the cost on my credit card if it was guaranteed to do what David Lynch claims it does, but I don't know if I believe David Lynch. He might be crazy. He makes statements about how there will be no crime in Scotland if 500 Scotsman learned Transcendental Mediation. I am skeptical. I think maybe there's a chance that there would be no crime in Scotland if 75% of the population learned Trancendental Mediation.

I wish Transcendental Meditation had a money back guarantee. I would definitely pay two grand if it had a money back guarantee.

David Lynch says that you cannot learn it from a book, because everybody is taught it differently based on their personality, I guess. Books cannot teach everybody different things based on their personality, unless it is a Choose Your Own Personality book maybe.

David Lynch makes Transcendental Meditation sound awesome. It is supposed to eliminate stress, get its practitioner in touch with their imagination, and eliminate distraction. All of these things would be useful to me, especially the eliminating stress thing because I don't like to wear rubbery things in my mouth when I sleep and wake up occasionally with horrible head pain. The other stuff would just be a huge bonus.

David Lynch has a foundation where he gives away grants for high school and college students to learn Transcendental Meditation. This is nice of him, but I am not a high school or college student. I wish I could write an essay that started with the words, "Listen, David Lynch. This is why I deserve a grant more than most people on the planet," and he would give me a grant.

The beardy guy who started the Transcendental Meditation movement died this year. He was old, but not that old. Transcendental Meditation is supposed to slow down the aging process.

Practitioners of Transcendental Meditation used to claim that they could levitate. This is the thing that makes me the most skeptical.

My nights off are really lonely. I wish the sun was out during my nights off and not out during my work nights. This would probably result in Armageddon, but I am ok with this if you are.

SMART Failure Predicted on HARD DISK 2. Warning: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure my be imminent.

The title of this blog is most of what it said when I booted up my laptop last night. I thought it would be fun and exciting to write this blog entry while my hard drive was dying, but I'm not doing that because I am not fun and exciting. I wish I was fun and exciting because blogger seems to save the draft automatically every minute or so.

I bought a three year service plan on my laptop a while back, thank god. The Prince of Candy is driving me to drop it off in the morning. I am not using the laptop because of some delusional belief that the computer specialists might be able to repair the hard drive if I bring it in before it crashes. I think they're just going to replace it and I will start anew.

I would be very stressed out right now if I didn't buy that service plan and if I didn't have a desktop computer. I am surprised my hard drive on my desktop computer hasn't annihilated itself yet. It's six or seven years old.

I hiked up a mountain with Seth Schultz yesterday. It was nice. It was a pretty short hike. There were only a few really steep parts. I hate really steep parts because I am out of shape. There's an observation tower at the top with a nice view. I got some sort of weird cramp while I was walking down the tower's steps, but it didn't last for long.

Seth Schultz and I are going to try to hike up the same mountain three days a week. I guess until it's too cold to do it. He is the only person who is cool with hanging out in the morning.

After, Seth Schultz took me to the Yankee Candle Company. I have never been inside it. Seth Schultz says that everyone who lives around here needs to go there at least once. He says it is a surreal place where it is Christmas all the time. He says it is the Disney World of candle stores. Yankee Candle wasn't open when we got there. We were a half an hour early. Seth Schultz didn't want to wait a half an hour. We left. We went grocery shopping.

I read a couple of the Jaguar Uprising Press books. I liked them a lot. Although there were a lot of formatting/editing issues. I wonder if I would be so anal retentive about things like that if I wasn't an editor. Probably not, but I think I would still be a little anal retentive. I don't think I would notice it when paragraphs have indents that start in different places if I wasn't an editor. I don't think I would notice a lack of consistency if I wasn't an editor.

Andrew Boye wrote one of the books. He's at my gas station now, covering my night off. He's a really good writer. Maybe a little too "literary" for my tastes. His novelette starts out slowly. I had to push my way through at first even though it was still good. That's because there really wasn't a plot/conflict. Later when there's a plot/conflict, I couldn't stop turning the pages.

Joe Lindsay's book is also a good read. It meshes non-fiction with things that are fictionalized. It is about Chris Benoit. It is very interesting.

The books are online at Bore Parade:

http://holesatelliteshovel.blogspot.com (think this one is really hard to read due to the white text on a brown background and lack of spaces between paragraphs, but it usually hurts me eyes to read fiction online anyway. sometimes I think I'm way too critical)

http://deathofcrippler.blogspot.com

I'm also reading James Tate's Ghost Soldiers, which I like. All of his prose poems are one paragraph long and most of them have conversation between two people. I wish he broke down the conversations into paragraphs because they are a little annoying to read in one paragraph.

I went to a James Tate reading a couple of weeks ago. He's not a very good reader, but I liked what he was reading a lot. I like it when people "perform" at readings. It would make even more sense to do this with poetry than prose. James Tate is pretty monotone-y.

I went to a question and answer session with him the following morning. I was late. I missed the bus because I forgot it was a Saturday and the bus comes at a different time on a Saturday. I walked all the way there. It took an hour. It sucked. It was very humid. I was all sticky. I was told later that I made a spectacle of myself when I came into the room late. I do not remember making a spectacle of myself. James Tate is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

I enjoyed the portion of the Q & A session that I didn't miss. I like James Tate as a person. He's exactly the kind of person who I would like to sit next to on a park bench and talk to. He is endearingly eccentric. I wish he was my kooky grandfather. My grandfathers are dead. James Tate is alive.

I did a phone interview a couple of days ago with a recruiting agency for ESL jobs in South Korea. I was interviewed a couple of hours before my bedtime. I bombed the interview. I am horrible at doing interviews. I am bad at coming up with things on the spot.

A day before the interview, I remembered that I needed to write a cover letter. I wrote a cover letter the night after the interview. It was basically a coherent version of the answers that I gave during the interview.

The recruitment agency emailed me the day after the interview. They did not want me. This made me really depressed. I felt like I had a lot riding on this. I thought it would be a sure thing considering I have an English degree and no criminal record. I wouldn't have felt bad if I didn't think it was a sure thing. I would have been surprised if they had hired me because of how badly the interview went.

I talked to The Prince of Candy about this because he has taught in Korea before. He said that getting turned down by a recruiting agency was typical. This made me feel better about myself.

He said it was a sure thing if I apply to many, many recruitment agencies.

But I don't want to do this because I don't want to end up at a shitty school.

My friend in Korea is going to ask his friends in Korea for recommendations for other recruitment agencies.

I wrote this in an email this morning:

"I am trying to decide if I am ok with working things like a shit/awesome overnight gas station job for the rest of my life while I continue to do the writing and editing thing since it gives me a shitload of free time. As long as it's in a nice area where I'm not likely to get murdered. I think I might be ok with this. I just wish I knew more people who were into hanging out in the morning. It's pretty ego crushing though. I think I'd rather give Korea a try, but I might be ok if that doesn't work out. I don't know. I am torn."

I also wanted to run off to Korea after the summer because I was worried about finding a new place to live. But now I might have found a place, so I feel a little better. I talked to a customer at work. He always brings his dog into the store. His dog got loose. It walked behind the counter. I wondered if my manager would look at the recording of the video surveillance and think, What the fuck is a dog doing behind the counter? I picked up the dog's leash and led him back to the customer. He was a little drunk. Later, the dog got loose again and walked to the aisles. This might have been the second time I have seen the customer and his dog. Both times, he has promised me that the dog does not urinate indoors. This time, he rapped.

He also told me that he was looking for roommates. His house is a two minute walk from my work. It is a sweet deal. It has a pool, which may or may not be indoors. I won't have to sign a lease, so I can go to Korea if I find a replacement for myself. If I was to stay in my current apartment, it would be hard to get out of the lease because my building is owned by a real estate agency that owns a shitload of stuff around here and the wouldn't let me get out of it unless my replacement meets their dumb qualifications.

The customer seemed to like me, but he was a little drunk. He gave me his phone number. He asked me for mine. I gave it to him.

I called him this morning about taking a look at the place, but he has not called back yet.

I am a little worried about something though. He told me that the house is the second or third oldest building in Hadley (I think he said Hadley).

Seth Schultz used to live in a house in Hadley that was nicknamed The Schoolhouse because it used to be a schoolhouse. It was shithole. He says it was the oldest building in Hadley. It was two minutes away from my work. So it might be the same house.

He says someone bought the house after he moved out and might have done a lot of work to it. But he warned me about something: When he was living there, there were holes in the floor next to the windows in the bedroom. Not big enough to fall through, but he could here everything that was going on downstairs. Once he was washing dishes and couldn't help hearing his roommate having loud sex with his girlfriend.

There are holes in the floor because the second floor was added on later to the first floor and the windows are too big. So the second floor and the first floor share the same windows. This only makes a small amount of sense to me. I can't really get my head around it. I guess the house is really poorly constructed.

If this house that I might live in is the same house. I hope the new owner did something about the holes in the floor. If not, I wouldn't be able to live their unless my room is over and under an area where people do not frequent.

My last house was bad enough. There was no heat on the second floor and there were crappy vents in the floor upstairs where the heat was supposed to rise through. This didn't work properly, but I could here everything that was going on downstairs. I hated it. I moved into a smaller room without a crappy vent. When I had a crappy vent, I would hear one sided conversations all the time between my roommate's girlfriend and him. Except I didn't hear him. Only her. I guess her side of the bed was directly under the vent. And she was a very loud talker. It sounded like she was in my room all the time. They broke up after he moved out.

Back to The Schoolhouse, Seth Schultz says that he heard the new owner is crazy. This is based solely on the fact that he/she carpeted the kitchen.

Exciting

I'm going to abandon the story that I started the other night.

I am going to start a new story tonight.

I have already outlined it.

I have realized something. There is no reason to write a story or a novel if I don't feel excited about it. I did not feel excited about the story that I started the other night. I feel excited about the story that I'm going to start tonight.

From now on, all writers are banned from working on stories that they are not excited about. Readers do not want to read stories that the author is not excited about. Editors do not want to consider stories that the author is not excited about. I don't want to receive any stories in Bust Down the Door's submissions email account that the author is not excited about. They will receive an automatic rejection.

Writers should not feel the need to write a certain amount of words every day if they are between pieces. This causes stories that they lack excitement for. They are should wait until inspiration hits them before they start working on something new. Once the new piece is started, they are free to force themselves to write every day until they finish it even if they lack the inspiration/motivation. They are permitted to become less excited about a piece as they continue to work on it. A small portion of the excitement will always remain behind.

If the writers feel a need to write every day between pieces but inspiration has not yet hit, they shall be obligated to write blog entries instead. Thus is my decree. I am the dictator.