My friend Marc Keinath is in a band called the Revilators

I read Robert J. Baumann's Man About Town earlier

I am excited about writing again.

Winter Break Reading List

I'm taking these books back with me to Dayton:

Euonia, Christian Bok
Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems, Noelle Kocot
Shoplifting from American Apparel, Tao Lin
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
Paper Lion, George Plimpton

I never read Kurt Vonnegut in high school. He seemed reserved for 6'0, 160 pound boys who play guitar and have minds for math. Bukowski was more the speed for 6'4, 275 pound boys who watch Nicolas Ray and Sam Peckinpah films. Robin had a lot of Vonnegut. Last Christmas, she lent me Jailbird to read on the plane--she thought the way Vonnegut connected all of his ideas neatly together could be a good resource for my work. I liked it, and finished it quickly. As a 6'4, 236 pound man, I feel better about reading Vonnegut. I like his imagination and I like the ginger smell and the feel of the greened archive paper of Del paperbacks--they help his sentences. An hour ago, I bought the Del paperback of Breakfast of Champions over the hardcover version at Half Price Books in Westport.

If I get anywhere with my own stuff, I want my first book, at least the cover, to look like a Kurt Vonnegut Del Paperback from 1979--san-serif font, with a lot of reds, oranges, and yellows. A smooth painted drawing of a green skinned Don Quixote riding a donkey with no eyes and mouth.

Vonnegut supposedly always wanted to be a poet, but didn't feel up to snuff. I think, if he was around now, he could be considered an above-average prose poet simply based on his ideas and their general strangeness. Cats Cradle's chapters short chapters remind me of prose poems I see around the internet, or in small journals--inventive titles, short scenes. "The Girl Pool" (33-34) and "Vice President in Charge of Volcanoes" (23) come to mind.

I tried to teach Ball Four in my composition class--it did not go well. I've always wanted to read George Plimpton's Paper Lion, and I found a copy for $4.48 at Half Price Books.

I feel unhip in cheap bookstores.

I think I can read all of these this break.

Expect poems about the death of psychocars by plastic bats

Instead of working on PhD applications and prose from the perspective of Pete Rose, I have played Earthbound Zero, or Mother, most nights.



For those unfamiliar with NES era RPGs, you can change the default names of your heroes to anything you want. For instance, in Earthbound Zero, the main character is named Ninten. I have renamed him Phil. His friends Loid, Ana, and Teddy have become Lewis, Robin, and Jason--my friends. Two nights ago, Lewis and I explored Duncan's rocket factory before an Old Robot murdered him.

The landscapes in Nintendo games appear so clean. No one leaves crushed Bud Light Lime cans in the grass or fuck in the street. The closest place in reality must be Singapore.