Best Search Strings: March 2003

Most interesting search phrases people used to find my main site:

buxom goddess
chubby blonde wife

Buxom goddess was used in January as well. I'm alright with that. Not a bad thing to be associated with.

Girls Rool!

I'm reposting this poem from last week since Daniel Nester missed it the first time around (even though I chastised him over an e-mail -- it's OK, he wasn't feeling well and I'm a very understanding gal).

What I'm Working Into My Memorial Service

Slideshow devoted entirely to the Spandex years.
Guilt inducing tissue boxes, everywhere.
Obligatory Rilke elegy since
Germans grieve fevers past the British,
Czechs and those no Christmas card writing
Hungarians Jews (p.s. those
Passover rolls sucked).
Requiem: Ding dong the . . .
Hush, here comes the . . .
Hello Kitty casket,
Ahoy!

Competition is Brutal

So how is it that even though I sent Sam 264 e-mail messages in February I only managed to rank 7? God damn CMU nerds, get a life. You're making this too difficult.

For the live-in girlfriend who sent 430 messages: You LIVE with Sam. It's not even that big of a house. Why don't you guys just speak to each other? You know, move your lips, bring forth sounds from your mouth.

This is the problem with our civilization.

draft

On Getting Raped by Sonneteers
For Erica

Not as awful as you might think
if you think paradelles in English are erotic.

Not that rape is erotic but
occasionally sonnets are sexy,
unfortunately it wasn't the sonnets
that plied me with sparkling wine and
fourteen lines of this; and this;
but this; and moreover.

It was four professors emeriti and one of those
depraved new formalists. They cornered me,
drizzled iambic pentameter until I was dizzy,
caught me off guard with a viscous troche.

Names? Didn't catch any, but one kept
muttering, "Call me Kid Shakespeare"
while another whispered, "You're no
Elizabeth Bishop, toots,
you're not even a Sexton wannabe
from Words for Dr. Y."

Now even I'm questioning my own
recollection of these events.
Maybe the sonneteers never touched me.
Maybe they never even
acknowledged my presence.
Maybe it was just the way their
lips moved when they read
that brought me down a few meters,
filled me with so much self doubt.

Just Arrived

My contributor copies of LIT arrived today. I felt like a little kid who drank too much Kool Aid when I opened my mailbox and saw the package. Three poems in one issue. Giggle giggle. Only had time to flip through it so far but it looks super and I'm geeked to be in the same journal with so many spankin' poets.

Working on a rough draft of a poem inspired by an e-mail conversation with Tender Buttons. I'll post it later this evening. As my attorney she's been advising me to stay away from trouble. She has an eye for trouble.

As Kenny Kerr once said, "I got a little frog in my throat, but I'm not complaining. It's the first piece of meat that's been in there all week!"

Hiatus

I'll be away at AWP and won't be posting here until Sunday when I get back.

Jason, do you have any pictures of Evan where he isn't smiling or obviously thrilled to see you? It's your job as a parent to make your kid cry, especially babies. I'm very concerned that he won't have any material to use for his tell-all memoir.

I Was Alice Mallory, Extraordinaire

Who was the mock trial witness diva? You guessed it. I remembered my story, stuck to it and skull fucked the prosecution's map exhibit. Southwest, southeast, south on the median, I was using all that directional lingo like a pro. According to Tender Buttons, my look of sheepishness was flawless (when asked why I never reported what I saw to the police despite being the crossing guard on scene) and I was quite skillful at "throwing in highly prejudicial commentary."

I'm thinking about giving up poetry and jewelry design and becoming a professional witness.

TB was all professional and lawyer-like. Kind of scary to see your little sis acting all interrogatish. I wanted to jump up and yell, "Don't let her intimidate you! She sucked her two fingers until second grade!"

But seriously, she was an awesome defense attorney. She was like Mr. Clean moping up the courtroom with the plaintiffs.

AWP

Wednesday afternoon right after yoga, I'll be hopping on a plane and headed to Chicago. David McDonald promises to show me the wonders of the T (Is that what's it's called there or am I getting it confused with someplace else?). I'll be there until Sunday.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to meet some of the folks I've been corresponded with over e-mail. If you happen to be a reader and bump into me at the conference, by all means, please introduce yourself. You've seen pictures (new haircut and all), you know what I look like. But if you're one of those people who think casinos should be outlawed, just keep on walking, don't want to know you!

This is the fourth AWP conference I'll have attended. The first one, which ended up being a blast, started off a truly agonizing experience. A while before the conference I was working on a website with someone whom I grew to consider an unstable and not-too-smart person (but this person considered himself quite the expert -- very laughable if you looked at his "award-winning" site). Prior to our falling out over the design of the new site we were trying to launch (never happened, after I left and he never did anything with it), he asked me to put together a panel for the conference (for some reason AWP used to have this person to handle part of the conference). He was impressed with my "connections" and ease of putting together the panel with editors from presses. It clearly was the best panel his part of the conference had to offer, so when we ended our "collaboration" he said, "No hard feelings, this has nothing to do with the panel, I hope you'll still do it." Of course, I'd still do it, I told him. I registered for the conference, bought my ticket, reserved my room, put together the panel and responded to every e-mail he sent to me that required a response. Two weeks before the conference when he was sure I finished all the work and it was too late to change things, he sent me an e-mail informing me I was off the panel and I was not to have any more contact with the panelists. He then badmouthed me to all of the panelists telling them I was unreliable, had it in for him and I was basically a nutjob (I know this because some of them told me what he had said).

I sent in a formal letter of complaint and got a very sweet telephone call from the then-director of the conference. She apologized and said this was the first complaint she ever received about this person. Later I found out that wasn't true. A number of editors from journals who felt left-out from this section of the conference got together and complained of the exclusion. Also, this person was an ass and accumulated numerous enemies. I'm guessing there were lots of complaints.

Of course, I felt much better after I attended the panel (in the backrow, sunglasses, hah hah). This person decided that he would moderate the panel. He didn't know any of the presses URLs and had to ask them during the panel (the whole point of the panel was to talk about small presses utilizing the web), didn't bother to cache any of their sites so it took years over the modem line for each page to load and he referred BOA Editions, Ltd. simply as B-O-A. Oh yeah, and he didn't lead the discussion anywhere. It was pretty much talk amongst yourself to the panelists while he tried to get their sites to load.

That's when I decided these panels are for the birds. The real reason to attend AWP is to meet up with friends and meet new people, party and buy a few books and journals. I still attend panels, but they're not what I get excited about.

My Biggest Role Yet

Not since my role as "dancer" in the Mifflin Elementary production of Cinderella have I had such a big role. Tomorrow, I will appear in TB's mock trial as "Alice Mallory", a 47 year old crossing guard and witness to a fatal car accident. It's my most complex role to date. Complex because I will have to make markings on a MAP -- that's right, you heard me, a MAP. I'm going to have to learn street names and north, south, west AND east. I can barely find the grocery store from my house. How am I going to convince jurors I can read a map?

Can't let Tender Buttons down, can't let Tenders Buttons down.

What I'm Working Into My Memorial Service

Slideshow devoted entirely to the Spandex years.
Guilt inducing tissue boxes, everywhere.
Obligatory Rilke elegy since
Germans grieve fevers past the British,
Czechs and those no Christmas card writing
Hungarians Jews (p.s. those
Passover rolls sucked).
Requiem: Ding dong the . . .
Hush, here comes the . . .
Hello Kitty casket,
Ahoy!

For Brent, Feeling Down

Do not wish for that terminal
disease, stop plotting your
demise to open cruel editors' eyes.
You must get up, escape her rank jaws
and write away – your greatest poems
float and shimmer in that hyena's groin
and she's not done gurgling you flesh
just yet. You think she's laughing –
No, she's slurping, choking in delight
three gulps from your soul.
God made you allergic for a
reason, he warns warns warns,
he wants you to survive.
We all chant for your survival.
It's not about prestige and impressive
alumni notes, it's not about securing
an adjunct position that pays less
than folding sweaters at the Gap.
It's about going on,
conquering, not being snuffed by
something that licks her own ass.
It's about prancing on that ugly dog's corpse,
sticking her head on a stick and ride
ride ride her to that temp job, give her a little
pat and collate collate collate.
Smirk smirk smirk see
your wounds closing,
you're feeling like a man again.
Bring her back to your apartment and
skull fuck skull fuck skull fuck.

I Wanna Join a Zombie Army!

My husband battles zombie armies, what does yours do?

Today in NERD NEWS:

"Attacks used to be largely assigned to an individual host. These days, the attacks are very large coming from multiple points on the Internet and are targeted at a network," he says. Arbor is seeing zombie armies, which are compromised host machines, with as many as 50,000 hosts attacking one network, Morville says. . .

. . . While MCI says it's been doing in-house traffic analysis, it has not deployed network-wide anomaly detection gear because the tools haven't been mature enough and there have been network scalability issues, says Christopher Morrow, manager of network router security at MCI.

In the meantime the service provider recently has put a couple of projects in place to better deal with the slew of attacks.

Morrow says that in the past it was difficult to find the correct person to notify at another ISP when an attack was originating from its network. Now many of the large ISPs are part of an e-mail and voice-over-IP mailing list of sorts. Network administrators communicate regularly over this informal system in an effort to stop an attack quickly. . .

. . . "In most attacks we can blackhole traffic within two to three minutes," Morrow says. While the ability to react quickly is helpful to customers, the ISPs and users agree it's essential to be proactive instead of reactive when dealing with distributed DoS.

-----

And that's why everyone calls Chris the "Two to Three Minute Man." What did you think they were talking about?

Live Through This

From page 21 of Betsy Prioleau's Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love:

Summarizing the current campaign for sexual empowerment, pop diva Courtney Love concludes that "its like any frontier, there's going to be all kinds of doors to kick down and sorts of people to kick in the head." Men, however, can't be brought around by "tantrums" and blows to the skull. For this one we need charm, cunning and an operating manual that works.

You hear that, Courtney? No, she probably doesn't. I can't believe I thought she was cool in the early-mid 90's. How embarassing and pathetic. A few weeks ago Chris and I were driving and listening to the radio, a new song was being played and he asked if it was Love. My response was "Oh Geez, it's just a really terrible imitation of her." Turns out it was her new single. But I stand by my original impression, she's a terrible caricature of earlier herself. Whatever interesting was once about her is long long gone.

Conspiracy

I'm almost positive the Washington Post article said the Benjamin Weissman reading was Weds (why would I make it up?), but when I got I to the bookstore they told me it was tomorrow. When I got home I checked the WP and the reading was listed for Thursday. So what the fuck? Did WP change the information after Sunday? Or do I need another round of electric shock treatments? What a downer. I doubt I'll be able to make it tomorrow.

It wasn't a total wash, I found a book to help me with my lesbian relationship research for my essay (no Al, not the gratuitous showering kind). Oh, and I finally got to meet the elusive Zachary. Tender Button's pal from the Niagara Falls region.

Taxes and Brands

This past weekend we met with our accountant to handle our taxes. He reminded me that I only had 6-8 years to start making money as a writer -- else the government would brand me a "hobbyist" and I would no longer be able to write stuff off, like conferences, contest fees, postage, vodka, etc. I'm not sure how many years I have left to make some dough -- I think around three or so.

Apparently there's no place on IRS tax forms to report contributor copies and free books.

In the spirit of capitalism (for which I'm quite the cheerleader!), over the next few days I'm going to implement Google AdSense advertisements to my blog and main web page. It's just going to to be text and links, no additional banners or anything obnoxious like that. If you're feeling supportive, click on an ad and help out a suffering poet. If you're not feeling supportive, well, you're not and I can't change that so that's going to have to be OK too. Not like I'm going to have any idea who clicks on what -- or will I? Spooky computer magic. According to my contract with AdSense I'm not allowed to click on the ads myself or generate clicking-bots or anything sneaky like that. Legit is the only way to be, right?

If it turns out to be annoying or an eyesore or if nobody ever clicks on the links, I'll remove them.

Ravish the World

For all the ladies out there having a tough time snagging the kind of men they want, may I suggest reading Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love by Betsy Prioleau (Viking).

Can't Hide From Me

In addition to stalking people on the Internet, I also enjoy stalking books. One way to do that is by tracking its sales rank on Amazon via JungleScan.

For instance, I've been stalking Stalking the Divine for 217 days.

Shoutouts to Fellow Bennington 2001 Grad's Upcoming Books

Here's a review of John May's upcoming historical novel, Poe & Fanny (Algonquin). Based on fact, John's novel explores the romance between Edgar Allen Poe and Fanny Osgood in 1845.

Amy Gerstler's Ghost Girl (Penguin) comes out on April 6 (my 8 year wedding anniversary).

Recently released: Ricco Villanueva Siasoco has a piece in the anthology Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images (Coffee House Press). Kristin Olson's Stalking the Divine: Contemplating Faith With the Poor Clares (Hyperion) came out this summer to many positive reviews -- even one by Rush Limbaugh, much to Kristin's left-leaning chagrin. Misha Angrist's dope short story "So Much the Better" appears in Best New American Voices 2004 (Harvest).

Wednesday's Itinerary

7 P.M. Dennis Cooper and Benjamin Weissman read from and sign their novels My Loose Thread and Headless, respectively, at Lambda Rising, 1625 Connecticut Ave. NW, 202-462-6969.

If anyone wants to go, let me know.

Personal Essay Advice

I'm in the middle of writing a personal essay regarding my great-grandmother's lesbian wedding (prior to marrying my great-grandfather). I have pictures from the event too. If anyone has any suggestions of places to submit the essay once it's completed, feel free to share them with me either in the comment box or e-mail. I don't know much about the "personal essay" market since I normally don't write them.

The gay marriage issue has been on the news non-stop so I think about Clara often.

Learn Something New Every Day

Rogering: British slang term for buttfucking.

Chris is proud of this one. (Adobe Reader needed)

Apparently "fisting" will slip past the poster censor too. Anyhow, I think you get the point. Thank you Chris for sharing your creative side.

Poster Slogan Challenge

This is kind of fun, saw it on Wonkette today. Make up your own Bush/Cheney campaign slogan on their site. You're going to have to be creative. It won't accept slogans with the following words: Dumb, Stupid, Queer, Faggot, Fascism, Evil, Lying, Scum, Terrorists, Sodomy, Rape, Pillage, Fart, Fistfucking, Blowing, Pedophile and Iraq.

This is a true opportunity for poets everywhere. Chris has been trying his hand at it for the past half hour. Enjoying himself immensely.

Live Free or Die a Carnie with an MFA

It occurs to me
as your excuses pile up like dander
beneath the headboard

that you have never waxed
anything other than mustaches
and into the afternoon I

drool micro-lakes of CNN
POP POP (big black cloud)
APPLAUSE/ROLLERSKATES you have the

pickles not to have cable. Your
Primetime sitcoms and dramas
limp softer than their Emmys.

DON'T FOLLOW THEM INTO THAT DARK SPINCTER!
Friend, it's not your eyes it's
your heart convulsing for sun

and sugar and jalapeño sauce.
Forget BOURGEOIS/WORKING CLASS/
GENERATIONS/RACE/BLUE BLOODED

LAW FIRMS/PRO BONO INDIGNANTS.
It's America, mother fucker.
Join the club.
------------
For David, who hassled me for months to do a poetry project with him and then did nothing.

Because I'm Virtuous

From Be Drunk by Charles Baudelaire (translated by Louis Simpson):

"It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

Drinking Like an Asshole

Recipe for Gnarly Hangover:

2 Mojitos
1 Margarita (made with Cuervo 1800) on the rocks
3.5 glasses of champagne

----

Ok, fine. I'm a light weight.

Thanks for driving us home, Tender Buttons! Lucky for you my hair is short enough I didn't need you to hold it back.

Roadtrip

I'll be back Monday evening. Tender Buttons and I have some business to attend. Thanks to that punk ass mother nature!

Next Project

I'm working on my screenplay, The Passion of Martha Stewart. Mel Gibson will direct.

The Hairdo

Poet as a Redhead


Poet to the Side

Poem (O Solo Mio)

Frank O'Hara

O solo mio, hot diggety, nix "I wather think I can"
come to see Go into Your Dance on TV -
HELEN MORGAN? GLENDA FARRELL? 1935!?
it reminds me of my first haircut,
or an elm tree or something!
or did I fall off my bicycle when my grandmother came back from Florida?

you see I have always wanted things to be beautiful
and now, for a change, they are!

Thou May Publish, But Not Edit

I meant to link to this a few days ago, but forgot.

From Democracy Now:

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control recently declared that American publishers cannot edit works authored in nations under trade embargoes which include Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Cuba. [includes transcript]

Although publishing the articles is legal, editing is a "service" and the treasury department says it is illegal to perform services for embargoed nations. It can be punishable by fines of up to a half-million dollars or jail terms as long as 10 years.

----

So if you want to get all protesty and translate your favorite Sadi poem, send it to Rebel Edit.

There Are Few Angels That Sing

From BBC News: "News that the grave of the great Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca is soon to be exhumed is causing considerable controversy"

They're going to dig up Lorca?!?

The Weeping
Federico García Lorca, translated by Rolfe Humphries

I have shut my windows.
I do not want to hear the weeping.
But from behind the grey walls.
Nothing is heard but the weeping.

There are few angels that sing.
There are few dogs that bark.
A thousand violins fit in the palm of the hand.
But the weeping is an immense angel.
The weeping is an immense dog.
The weeping is an immense violin.
Tears strangle the wind.
Nothing is heard but the weeping.

Pip Pip

Just call me Mrs. Nerd. From Web Hosting Industry News:

"MCI's security team, which operates on a 24/7 basis, works in tandem with its customers to determine and implement solutions for mitigating security threats as promptly as possible, incorporating technology developed by a variety of third party security vendors such as Checkpoint Technologies, RSA Security and Cisco. Generally, once the problem is identified, MCI is able to resolve most problems in five to ten minutes, says Chris Morrow, network security engineer at MCI. However, this time may vary based on the nature of the attack"

Ok, that didn't sound very interesting. Basically it means more fools now know to call up my husband during dinner and at 4 a.m. with their problems.

In "It's About God Damn Time" News from the Washington Post:

"Former WorldCom Inc. chief executive Bernard J. Ebbers was indicted on securities fraud charges unsealed Tuesday in the highlight of the federal investigation of the massive accounting fraud that pushed the company into bankruptcy two years ago."

Ex-boyfriends Worse Than Fabio

If your new girlfriend confides that she used to date Fabio, take it in stride. It could be a lot worse. Much worse. It could have been one of the following celebrities:

1. Colin Farrell, aka the Lusty Leprechaun. Dating him indicates your new girlfriend most likely has several strains of the herp.
2. Rick Solomon, aka the guy in the Paris video. If she dated him, there's video tape which would probably hit the Internet a week before your wedding. Is that a deal breaker for you?
3. Tommy Lee, aka Mr. Pamela Anderson. Dude, if she dated him, your penis *will* seem small. Really small. Can you handle that?
4. Ben Affleck, aka Bennifer. She's a dumb ass, has no taste and easily impressed. Maybe that is a good thing?
5. Michael Jackson, aka Jacko. Obviously there was no sex, but this implies a plethora of issues, poor judgement, willingness to sell her children for a few million.
6. Bono, aka Satan's Toe Jam. See Michael Jackson -- replace "children" with "soul."
7. Ashton Kutcher, aka Demi's Boy Toy. No, you are not as hot as him. Yes, she is thinking of him when she's having sex with you. Don't kid yourself.
8. Jack Nicholson (post 1985). Ew, your girlfriend did it with a really old man.
9. Donald Trump (ever). Ew. Triple Ew. There are not enough billions of dollars in the world to make that right.
10. Post your nominations for this spot!

Oh, Come On

What beauty contestant hasn't banged Fabio? These shows are really getting ridiculous.

Emerge, God Damn It, Emerge

Obviously I haven't been paying too much attention because it appears that Ploughshares "Emerging Writer" issue has been out for some time now. I won't lie. I, along with a number of other hopefuls, contacted a former teacher (oh you know him, everybody knows him) for the required recommendation. You see, to be considered for inclusion in this issue your work has to be recommended and submitted by a writer who has at least one book published. Each "established" writer can recommend up to three "emerging" writers. After a month of silence, he responded to all of us (blind carbon copy) "thanking" us for bringing the upcomming issue to his attention and turning us all down. There was still time for me to contact another former teacher or ask a better published friend, but I decided to let the whole matter drop. I felt like a fool. It put me in the position of having to hassle people and the payout didn't seem worth it. If Ploughshares was really interested in finding the best emerging writers, they wouldn't have used the recommendation requirement. Surely this was done to control the outrageous number of submissions. They would have received thousands, no doubt. But still, they decided to let their editoral decisions be guided by others -- which if you think about it, is what Ploughshares is all about -- every issue, new guest editor.

I haven't seen the Ploughshares issue yet. I let my subscription expire because half the time they were sending me issues of all fiction. But there are at least two poets' work included whom I know and believe are good choices. I know Robert Bly has been a big fan of Jay Leeming's work for quite a while because years ago at Bennington he mentioned Jay in one of his lectures. The only student I can recall Bly ever mentioning to us. Clearly Jaime Clarke is a big Mark Conway fan -- he's the poetry editor for Post Road. So belated congratulations to them both and everyone else appearing in the issue.