Reedin' and Punkin'

Lessee. . . . I'm currently slowly working my way through the 700-page Pushcart Prize anthology from last year - it's an annual compilation of the best stuff printed by small presses (fiction, non-fiction, and poetry). Well worth the time; some of it is crud, but there's a lot of good stuff, as well as some pretentious "I'm in a writer's workshop and so surely everyone wants to read about my sexual frustrations" sorts of pieces. Overall quality level is very high, though, and pretension quotient is very low. I'm also starting Matt Rohrer's new book of poetry (whose name escapes me right now) - Matt is a good friend of mine from high school and was the best man in our wedding. I tried reading "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves (a fictionalized "autobiography" of the stuttering Roman emperor) earlier in the summer, but sort of got bogged down. I think that may be more of a depth-of-winter project rather than a lazy-hazy-crazy-days-of-summer project. Lisa and I are still working our way through an out-loud--before-bedtime-reading of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Finally, I'm working my way through Eric Schlosser's (who also wrote "Fast Food Nation", which I highly recommend) "Reefer Madness", which explores the underground economy - illegal migrant farmworkers, the drug trade, and I can't remember what else. That's my sitting-in-the-tub-and-back-of-toilet reading. If I actually focused on a single book, I might actually finish one of them some day.

In other news, Ninja-master Rumsfeld can be found here.


If we ever do actually form our capitalist punk band, we could do a remake of the Sex Pistol's song, entitled "Oligarchy in the USA." I'm still working out the lyrics, but if anybody has some suggestions for verses that could fit into the song structure of "Anarchy in the UK", let's hear 'em.

IIIIIIIIII.....wanna beeeeeeeee....oligarchyyyy...get rich, destroy! Ahhahahaha!!!!

Finally, I'll leave you with this story, since I don't know what to make of it....