019: Come into My Parlor
A Newsletter in Five Parts
Prologue
COMPILATION
UPDATES
CONSUMPTION
PROMOTION
OUTRO
Prologue
"What does this monster have to mourn?" ~ Avengers: Infinity War
First, COMPILATION.
Back in the place with the things. Running updates.
I've had more poems published in Poetry in my lifetime than Jack Spicer did in his.
[Covid] Day 5. I do not wish to be awake. Not much change from yesterday, just, like, more of the same. I can't even imagine how bad this would be if I wasn't vaccinated and boosted.
Magic: The Gathering - Those Lands You Like Are Going To Come Back In Style
The zombie runner is the worst rule in baseball, bar none. Relatedly, I'd loooove it if the damn Twins could stop a single one of 'em from scoring ever.
"If you're feeling really silly you have my permission to make up an award and say I won it." ~ something I just put in a "work" email. I have a very strange job.
A while back we picked up a Korg A3 guitar processor, which is the basis of U2's '90s guitar sounds. Only thing was, the backlight for the LCD display was dead. $25 and a trip to ebay later and we got a new backlight strip (from Croatia!) and now we have a 100% functional effects box. The tone chasing is finally over. ...except my wee cinnamon roll just, like, handed us another pedal on the way through town and I GUESS we have to try it out...
Kiddo had a slight temporal malfunction today so I ended up having to drive them in to school. I'm so, so glad that's not an everyday occurrence, because boy howdy is it a mess around that campus. No wonder they don't want to get their driver's license--if that was my experience, I wouldn't either. Thank sane socialist thought for public transit. Jeepers.
Your reminder that Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" is the greatest evidence there is that literally anything can be an innuendo.
Because I have a constant need for dopamine, I am watching Idiots in Supercars videos, and I have determined that anyone who owns a Ferrari should just give it to me for safekeeping. At the very least I will not floor it with street tires, swerve into a curb, run a red light, or hit a parking bollard, which apparently any doofus with a car worth more than a house will do at some point.
Our job as parents is to do better than OUR parents, which is why kiddo is skipping school today to see their favorite band at Riot Fest. If we cannot enjoy the art in our lives, then what is the point of living?
Today has been, I hesitate to use the word, but... productive. Most of this week, in fact, except for a bit of the entirety of Wednesday night being lost to some sort of bodily doom void where everything hurt and nothing made sense. But I've worked on a number of creative projects, I've made parts acquisition progress on the Fiero, I've done some late-stage unpacking from the move, and I've done a fair amount of video gaming as well. I think 25-year-old me would be happy with Today me. Probably confused as to why I consider putting books away a good thing, but hey. My best life? Maybe not. But a darn good one. I'm so glad whatever bullshit block I had going on seems to have mostly moved on.
Dovetailing into the last post, I never thought I could love an apartment as much as I did the last one until I finally got this one mostly set. I always said I'd never move out of that one, but I think it's safe to say I'll never move out of this one. I can't wait til I have the art back up. My old therapist would be be horrified to learn how long it's taken me to get stuff up in here.
werk werk werk werk werk
Sorta tempted to email my publisher to ask them for my tiny royalty check a few months early so I can put it toward buying my own books on Amazon for half what it would cost with my author discount from the publisher.
Me: okay, no mouse work today, wristy no likey. Also me: *absolutely using the mouse a bunch*
Second, UPDATES.
Went back to the ol' stomping grounds of Fort Wayne (not the Stomping Grounds of Fort Wayne, which was the commons at IPFW) in order to have a reading at my favorite indie bookstore, Hyde Bros. It was both rad and sad. Rad, because I got to meet a bunch of new people, who seem to have liked what I read. I ended up reading what I have completed of THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT, which is my current serial poem writing project. If you're subbed to my Patreon, you've seen bits and pieces of it as I've been writing it. But these fine people got to hear/see it all together at once, and it was only the second time I've read the whole thing out loud. But I got a good chance to gauge how it would go, and it seems to have gone well. Luckily, the reader after me was a bit more uplifting than me. We both got laughs and sighs and gasps, but his were from the beautiful bits, and mine were from the gross bits. But I'm glad we could leave folks with a generally pleasant evening. And not to leave her out--the woman who went first also did quite well, and it was nice to have a fiction/prose writer tossed in with us poets.
The sad part, though, is that the owner of the bookstore, and likely the person who was behind my being invited to read at all, Tasha Bushnell, died earlier this month. I was really looking forward to seeing her and hearing what she had to say about this piece. She was always a huge advocate for me and my work, and for the lit scene in Fort Wayne in general. (I mean, she bought the best bookstore in the world when it needed a new owner! She loved it!) So I felt I needed to say a few words during my time, and I've ended up including a line of hers as an epigraph to the poem, as well. I think it's what she would have liked.
The next thing, a bit of a Second, Part 2 section, is that I'm editing a podcast! I got offered the job and took it because I believe in the person making it and the goals of it: art practice and care, with a side of disability chat as well. We have the first season mapped out and have been working at as brisk a pace as we can manage to get launching on October 10th. It's called HOORF: Radical Care in a Late Capitalist Heckscape. Winkie, a Deaf dog, named it. You should be able to find it wherever you get your podcasts, and if not that way, go ahead and click on the link to give it a listen.
Third, CONSUMPTION.
- Went to the third day of Riot Fest a couple weeks ago now. We were there for a few reasons, the main ones being the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Nine Inch Nails. It was my first time seeing YYYs, and it turns out it was at just the right time as it was the live debut of some of their stuff that just came out today. The NIN show was easily the best of the three NIN gigs I've seen, and featured a bunch of songs I wasn't really expecting, both new and old. We also saw a band called KID SISTR and I seriously hope they blow up huge. Or at least medium, like Screaming Females or Tacocat. (They're probably most similar to the latter.)
- It's been too long since my last DnD campaign ended, so our GM has started up a new game, likely using the Index Card RPG system. I read through the quickstart and it seems like a pretty standard D20 game. I appreciate that it has several settings baked into it, as opposed to DnD, which will go out of its way to sell you a whole-ass book. (Don't get me wrong, those books are very nice and absolutely worth it for their creative input. But sometimes you just want to chuck some dice and not worry about whether or not the Ass-Whipper of Gortlick belongs on Scandorvia. (I am hoping I just made those up.))
- For some bizarre reason that I can't name other than Tidal recommending it to me, I listened to Slipknot's newest album and... man, they've gotten weird, huh? Like half of it was exactly what I was expecting, but the other half is... not. At all.
- Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, formerly of Buzzfeed Unsolved, started their own channel called Watcher, and they're finally getting back to the good shit they do, ghost hunting. Without being beholden to Buzzfeed, they're able to swear as much as you sort of assume they do, and it's fun to see Shane completely ruin Ryan's day over and over again. Ryan's gadgets are still hilariously unscientific and Shane still doesn't believe ghosts are real. It's a good ol' time. If I have one complaint, it's that the fan-submitted bits are actually a little distracting. I understand that the point is to create some community interaction, but it just feels... hammy. More amateurish than it needs to for something already teetering on the edge of too silly to work. But honestly? I believe in the Ghoul Boys.
Fourth, PROMOTION.
This is the part where I talk about my book, A Void and Cloudless Sky. The book is up for sale on Amazon and BN.com, as well as Bookshop.org! The best deal is with Mr. Bezos, but Bookshop actually lets you support your friendly local bookstore if you want.
Do you want a FREE Advanced Reader Copy? All I ask is that you review it on either/both of those sites and/or Goodreads. Let me know!
And as usual, if you'd like to support this whole endeavor more directly, you can check out my Patreon, where I post poetry, notes to poems, the occasional essay, and whatnot. At upper tiers I even write poems FOR YOU!
If you like what I do here and don't have the scratch or the inclination to do the above, please share this newsletter with you friends. I like making words wiggle people's brainjuices.
Finally, THE OUTRO.
Spooky Season is fully upon us. I'm adding cinnamon to my lattes. (The $15 espresso machine I got Goodwill continues to pay dividends.) I wore my Jack Skellington tee to the reading last night. There's just enough snap in the air to make me want to wear a hoodie. Soups and pies are all over the damn place. I can't wait for the neighborhood to turn orange and red.
Yeah, it's all cliche, but you know what? I don't care. Fall is the best, even if the days are shorter and the sun is colder. It's the best because of those things. All y'all can have your hot girl summer, I'm here for candles and herbs and witches fall.
Prologue
COMPILATION
UPDATES
CONSUMPTION
PROMOTION
OUTRO
Prologue
"What does this monster have to mourn?" ~ Avengers: Infinity War
First, COMPILATION.
Back in the place with the things. Running updates.
I've had more poems published in Poetry in my lifetime than Jack Spicer did in his.
[Covid] Day 5. I do not wish to be awake. Not much change from yesterday, just, like, more of the same. I can't even imagine how bad this would be if I wasn't vaccinated and boosted.
Magic: The Gathering - Those Lands You Like Are Going To Come Back In Style
The zombie runner is the worst rule in baseball, bar none. Relatedly, I'd loooove it if the damn Twins could stop a single one of 'em from scoring ever.
"If you're feeling really silly you have my permission to make up an award and say I won it." ~ something I just put in a "work" email. I have a very strange job.
A while back we picked up a Korg A3 guitar processor, which is the basis of U2's '90s guitar sounds. Only thing was, the backlight for the LCD display was dead. $25 and a trip to ebay later and we got a new backlight strip (from Croatia!) and now we have a 100% functional effects box. The tone chasing is finally over. ...except my wee cinnamon roll just, like, handed us another pedal on the way through town and I GUESS we have to try it out...
Kiddo had a slight temporal malfunction today so I ended up having to drive them in to school. I'm so, so glad that's not an everyday occurrence, because boy howdy is it a mess around that campus. No wonder they don't want to get their driver's license--if that was my experience, I wouldn't either. Thank sane socialist thought for public transit. Jeepers.
Your reminder that Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" is the greatest evidence there is that literally anything can be an innuendo.
Because I have a constant need for dopamine, I am watching Idiots in Supercars videos, and I have determined that anyone who owns a Ferrari should just give it to me for safekeeping. At the very least I will not floor it with street tires, swerve into a curb, run a red light, or hit a parking bollard, which apparently any doofus with a car worth more than a house will do at some point.
Our job as parents is to do better than OUR parents, which is why kiddo is skipping school today to see their favorite band at Riot Fest. If we cannot enjoy the art in our lives, then what is the point of living?
Today has been, I hesitate to use the word, but... productive. Most of this week, in fact, except for a bit of the entirety of Wednesday night being lost to some sort of bodily doom void where everything hurt and nothing made sense. But I've worked on a number of creative projects, I've made parts acquisition progress on the Fiero, I've done some late-stage unpacking from the move, and I've done a fair amount of video gaming as well. I think 25-year-old me would be happy with Today me. Probably confused as to why I consider putting books away a good thing, but hey. My best life? Maybe not. But a darn good one. I'm so glad whatever bullshit block I had going on seems to have mostly moved on.
Dovetailing into the last post, I never thought I could love an apartment as much as I did the last one until I finally got this one mostly set. I always said I'd never move out of that one, but I think it's safe to say I'll never move out of this one. I can't wait til I have the art back up. My old therapist would be be horrified to learn how long it's taken me to get stuff up in here.
werk werk werk werk werk
Sorta tempted to email my publisher to ask them for my tiny royalty check a few months early so I can put it toward buying my own books on Amazon for half what it would cost with my author discount from the publisher.
Me: okay, no mouse work today, wristy no likey. Also me: *absolutely using the mouse a bunch*
Second, UPDATES.
Went back to the ol' stomping grounds of Fort Wayne (not the Stomping Grounds of Fort Wayne, which was the commons at IPFW) in order to have a reading at my favorite indie bookstore, Hyde Bros. It was both rad and sad. Rad, because I got to meet a bunch of new people, who seem to have liked what I read. I ended up reading what I have completed of THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT, which is my current serial poem writing project. If you're subbed to my Patreon, you've seen bits and pieces of it as I've been writing it. But these fine people got to hear/see it all together at once, and it was only the second time I've read the whole thing out loud. But I got a good chance to gauge how it would go, and it seems to have gone well. Luckily, the reader after me was a bit more uplifting than me. We both got laughs and sighs and gasps, but his were from the beautiful bits, and mine were from the gross bits. But I'm glad we could leave folks with a generally pleasant evening. And not to leave her out--the woman who went first also did quite well, and it was nice to have a fiction/prose writer tossed in with us poets.
The sad part, though, is that the owner of the bookstore, and likely the person who was behind my being invited to read at all, Tasha Bushnell, died earlier this month. I was really looking forward to seeing her and hearing what she had to say about this piece. She was always a huge advocate for me and my work, and for the lit scene in Fort Wayne in general. (I mean, she bought the best bookstore in the world when it needed a new owner! She loved it!) So I felt I needed to say a few words during my time, and I've ended up including a line of hers as an epigraph to the poem, as well. I think it's what she would have liked.
The next thing, a bit of a Second, Part 2 section, is that I'm editing a podcast! I got offered the job and took it because I believe in the person making it and the goals of it: art practice and care, with a side of disability chat as well. We have the first season mapped out and have been working at as brisk a pace as we can manage to get launching on October 10th. It's called HOORF: Radical Care in a Late Capitalist Heckscape. Winkie, a Deaf dog, named it. You should be able to find it wherever you get your podcasts, and if not that way, go ahead and click on the link to give it a listen.
Third, CONSUMPTION.
- Went to the third day of Riot Fest a couple weeks ago now. We were there for a few reasons, the main ones being the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Nine Inch Nails. It was my first time seeing YYYs, and it turns out it was at just the right time as it was the live debut of some of their stuff that just came out today. The NIN show was easily the best of the three NIN gigs I've seen, and featured a bunch of songs I wasn't really expecting, both new and old. We also saw a band called KID SISTR and I seriously hope they blow up huge. Or at least medium, like Screaming Females or Tacocat. (They're probably most similar to the latter.)
- It's been too long since my last DnD campaign ended, so our GM has started up a new game, likely using the Index Card RPG system. I read through the quickstart and it seems like a pretty standard D20 game. I appreciate that it has several settings baked into it, as opposed to DnD, which will go out of its way to sell you a whole-ass book. (Don't get me wrong, those books are very nice and absolutely worth it for their creative input. But sometimes you just want to chuck some dice and not worry about whether or not the Ass-Whipper of Gortlick belongs on Scandorvia. (I am hoping I just made those up.))
- For some bizarre reason that I can't name other than Tidal recommending it to me, I listened to Slipknot's newest album and... man, they've gotten weird, huh? Like half of it was exactly what I was expecting, but the other half is... not. At all.
- Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, formerly of Buzzfeed Unsolved, started their own channel called Watcher, and they're finally getting back to the good shit they do, ghost hunting. Without being beholden to Buzzfeed, they're able to swear as much as you sort of assume they do, and it's fun to see Shane completely ruin Ryan's day over and over again. Ryan's gadgets are still hilariously unscientific and Shane still doesn't believe ghosts are real. It's a good ol' time. If I have one complaint, it's that the fan-submitted bits are actually a little distracting. I understand that the point is to create some community interaction, but it just feels... hammy. More amateurish than it needs to for something already teetering on the edge of too silly to work. But honestly? I believe in the Ghoul Boys.
Fourth, PROMOTION.
This is the part where I talk about my book, A Void and Cloudless Sky. The book is up for sale on Amazon and BN.com, as well as Bookshop.org! The best deal is with Mr. Bezos, but Bookshop actually lets you support your friendly local bookstore if you want.
Do you want a FREE Advanced Reader Copy? All I ask is that you review it on either/both of those sites and/or Goodreads. Let me know!
And as usual, if you'd like to support this whole endeavor more directly, you can check out my Patreon, where I post poetry, notes to poems, the occasional essay, and whatnot. At upper tiers I even write poems FOR YOU!
If you like what I do here and don't have the scratch or the inclination to do the above, please share this newsletter with you friends. I like making words wiggle people's brainjuices.
Finally, THE OUTRO.
Spooky Season is fully upon us. I'm adding cinnamon to my lattes. (The $15 espresso machine I got Goodwill continues to pay dividends.) I wore my Jack Skellington tee to the reading last night. There's just enough snap in the air to make me want to wear a hoodie. Soups and pies are all over the damn place. I can't wait for the neighborhood to turn orange and red.
Yeah, it's all cliche, but you know what? I don't care. Fall is the best, even if the days are shorter and the sun is colder. It's the best because of those things. All y'all can have your hot girl summer, I'm here for candles and herbs and witches fall.
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