Coleslaw and Gin and Big Other and HTML Giant and Coleslaw.

These young ladies are coleslaw wrestling at a biker rally, I shit you not. I use the image in my Big Other contest, called Will You Please Help a Lazy Poet or something.

Idea is you help me write a poem. I will then flow the poem off for publication. It will be a group poem but I will try to keep all the credit and the group will anger and sue me for royalties on VH1 or something, maybe we wreck our fast car into the forehead of our aging later on in Daytona? Maybe we paunch. Maybe we select headgear to cricket our youth into a roll of Maybes.

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I got something in Best of Metazen, and a process note. I included Ambien reference in the process note as a nod to TW. TW having a rough (fun with puns!) time and I know he enjoys online literary magazines, so maybe he will glow this and feel less existentially alone.

TW just needs an intellectual whore, really.

I love Jason Whitlock, BTW. He has been fired so many times for being honest. His take on TW.

That’s enough TW, but I am not immune to tawdry.

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I was at a university breakfast with our president and we were talking about flash fiction and I said in passing “Less words equals more meaning” and she said, “You mean fewer words.”

You get it?

The president of my university corrected my English. I am an English professor at the university.

That was embarrassing, folks.

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I went two days without nachos and I feel sad.

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It is time for 2009 “top” book lists. They are all over the internet.

Zak Smith has this and Justin Taylor this at HTML GIANT.

BIG OTHER with Alec Niedenthal’s choices and also some music choices by Christopher Higgs.

I read BIG OTHER and HTML GIANT pretty much daily and have noticed this:

1.) I buy many more books now. So many vervey words! This is a good thing, but getting costly. Then again, would I rather spend my money on books or beer? Wait…

2.) I blog less. It just seems these two sites have all the fascinating stuff you need in a part of this Indie writing scene thing. I go there and read it all, the content and crisp onion shards and so on, and to blog along similar lines seems redundant or dumb or something. Plus, who cares if I blog less or more? Really. So, I don’t mind this development and it makes me take my blog to somewhere new, I’m sure. We’ll see.

3.) There is no number three.

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All of my writer friends LOVE music. I don’t. The last time I thought about music was two weeks ago I emailed Ander Monson and asked if he would send me Mountain Goats. A week later five MG CD’s arrived in the mail. I play them over and over and I’m fine. I mean I’ll be OK for a year, easy, just driving to work and back and playing those CDs over and over. I have no idea the titles of the songs. Fine with me.

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Speaking of PANK, here is a bio of Roxanne Gay I found on Big Other. Other editor bios here.

Roxane Gay moved to Tree Hill and became a student at Tree Hill High the beginning of her senior year, and initially appeared to be a promiscuous and manipulative rich girl. She joined the cheerleading squad and became a fast rival to Brooke Davis. Their rivalry culminated in a violent physical altercation. Roxane’s sensitive side surfaced when she admitted she suffered from low self esteem and resorted to plastic surgery to attain her ideal body. Lying about her age, she entered a relationship with the significantly older Cooper Lee. Cooper ended the relationship when he discovered Roxane’s deceit. Later, while alone in a limo after a mutual acquaintance’s wedding, Roxane told Cooper she was pregnant – another lie – before drunkenly driving the limo off a bridge. Roxane and Cooper survived the accident, but Cooper once again abandoned Roxane after learning she’d faked her pregnancy. After graduating high school, Roxane’s addiction to drugs destroyed her burgeoning modeling career. While working as a stripper, Roxane met and later married ex-convict and convicted murderer Dan Scott. She convinced Scott to publish his memoir and launch a television talk show about his personal quest for redemption. Both projects proved incredibly successful, and the couple accumulated significant wealth.

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I am just finishing this book by E. Ethelbert Miller.

It is about a fear of getting old and irrelevant, and then, you know dying. So far, Ethelbert:

* Is paranoid about people misspelling his name.

* Says black people cannot Xerox well.

* Keeps comparing baseball to life. This works OK, but I wish we could see the author show us his passion/interest in baseball more clearly. I’d like to see the core of his metaphor–it would provide the entire structure of the book a more solid underpinning.

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The new Breadcrumb Scabs is out and I’m in there. You can download pdf for free or buy a print copy. Of all lit mags, the words Breadcrumb Scabs might be the most visceral. Just saying the title makes me shudder.

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Yesterday a magazine took a poem of mine and gave me $40. What? Money for poetry? It must be Christmas…Oh, I feel stupid today. Probably because I am stupid.

S