April 28, 2010

overheard

"I Wish Donuts Had Bones"

I want a bunch of glazed donuts with bones in them set out in the middle of the conference room table so I can watch people try to navigate "serious business conversation" while stacking their pastry bones on a communal paper plate. Donut bones.

April 22, 2010

The Rule

"Hold the reader's attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don't know who the reader is, so it's like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What ­fascinates A will bore the pants off B."


from Margaret Atwood (who of course I have never read, since I have never read anything, especially if it's fiction, which I suspect is what she writes)

also from c.t's blog , which includes 9 other, less important, but still entertaining rules.

April 21, 2010

Bears are 100%
illiterate but love
to curl up with
a good book and
just roar
at the pages for hours.






from Parallel Universe (Mark Leidner)

April 18, 2010

This Is Me Pretending To Know You

And what will you do when you come home to find your dog’s head on a pole in the front yard and a bonfire made of your bed? When you have to decide what shape your life will take next. You will not be able to decide. You will sit in your Jeep with your IPod on shuffle, wishing it would land on a good song so you could be distracted from making a decision as you dig through your purse for your phone, even though you wouldn’t beable to decide who to call. Your fingernail will click into something metallic — a quarter — and you’ll decide to let the quarter decide for you, then laugh hard and loud at the fact that you are about to flip a coin to decide what to do with your life, despite the shock and fear and sadness you are feeling, despite the fact that you hate the song that is playing right now.

April 16, 2010

I miss the days of three word band names

Remember the early to mid-nineties, when bands would have a clever name that was a pop culture reference or just a memorable phrase, and their music didn’t even matter? Remember Letters to Cleo? Remember Better Than Ezra? I would rather listen to a roomful of toddlers beat pots and pans with wooden spoons than Fall Out Boy, but at least they know how good band names work. Monosyllabic rhythm in triplicate AND a Simpsons reference. Well done, androgynous Ashley Simpson marry-er/impregnator.

Bonus: I once made the F.O.B. drummer a medium soy mocha. He was tiny and sweatshirted. He tipped me $5.

End of post.

April 13, 2010

Last Night I Got Shot In the Back By a Thin Man Who Resembled a TV Actor In A Vague Way

I was with an elderly couple who had adopted me. We were on a neighbor's farm, watching three men in black ski masks chase my brother into a cornfield. I was kneeling on the grass. The thin man who had stayed behind asked me my name. The elderly couple said "Mathias" in unison, and the thin man spat on the ground. When I turned towards the cornfield again I felt a warm pressure on the middle of my back. I heard gasps. I remember falling to the ground from my knees and looking up at the thin man, wondering why I hadn't heard anything. I remember being scared, and frustrated that I was about to die this way. I remember thinking of so many random names and faces, hating that I wasn't going to be able see those people or talk to them again. I remember that the thin man was wearing black, and that he had very short hair. I don't remember anything else.

April 10, 2010

Some things I have read recently


- If you think of a torso as a box, you can see
how someone might want to open it with his fingers.



-We listen to the accordion players kiss the backs of each other's necks on the radio... Brunibar unscrews his wooden foot, and I gently climb inside.


-When it gets lonely, I sit by the river & read. Correction. There is no river. Mostly, I read.


-Tonight the moths are beating the shit out of themselves against the screen door.


-In danger of being understood
Too well, they gathered up

Their orthodoxies and made
For the sugar hills. A nite

Of piecemeal anathema,
Backlit by bubbling overs.

April 02, 2010

Corrections for Thursday, March 25, 2010

•An obituary on Wednesday incorrectly referred to a 1964 Ford Mustang as a two-seater; it had a back seat.

The Tribune regrets the error.