Road Trip 3: Colorado/Wyoming

The best restaurant in Denver, Casa Bonita.

After leaving New Mexico on Sunday, August 3rd, I drove North into Colorado, and got to hang out with some friends from the Glen. I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to see the mythical restaurant, Casa Bonita, which I had originally seen depicted on South Park. When I first watch the episode, I couldn't believe that Casa Bonita was a real place, but now having been there, I can say that the episode is completely (and sadly) true to life.

Essentially, CB is a former department store that has been changed into the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants. Except the part that I assume most people like most about Disneyland, or any amusement park, (the rides), is missing. BUT, like Disneyland, Casa Bonita does have terrible, overpriced food, overdone decor, and vendors who will draw your caricature or sell you a glow in the dark bracelet. On the plus side, the food is all-you-can-eat—all that you have to do is raise the little Mexican flag at your table to the "up" position, and the server will appear immediately to inquire what you would like. After about two plates I just couldn't take any more enchiladas, but I did have a couple of sopaipillas.

CB is also known for its cliff divers, who do real dives off of a fake, 20-foot cliff. The funniest part, though, is that the cliff divers also double as Black Bart and The Sheriff and triple as Chiquita, the Incredible Gorilla, and Animal Trainer in the shows. This allows them to save money, since they only have to pay one set of performers. The writing of the shows could learn something from "B" movie scripts. Still, though, this place was PACKED, and I can only surmise that every child in Colorado has had at least one birthday at CB. It has incredible campy value.

A testament to the quality of the establishment, here is an image of the cliff divers, taken from the CB website. It looks like their pictures came out about like mine did.

Chiquita, the trained gorilla, likes Bermuda shorts and, (not pictured), Nikes. Image taken from CB website.


The fearful caves of CB.

On my way up to Denver, I stopped in San Luis, CO, which, I found out, it the oldest city in the state. The town is tiny, but there is a cool little Catholic church built at the top of a hill, and while ascending the hill, there is a stations of the cross shrine in bronze sculptures. It made for a good way to break up the driving.

The chapel in San Luis, CO.

One of the statues.

On Monday, I continued my drive North, going through Wyoming. I stopped at cool little cafe in Cheyenne, but ultimately I didn't get to do much there.

This is what Wyoming looked like to me. Because it wasn't that interesting, I'll leave you with the Casa Bonita clip from South Park. I guarantee everything in the clip is real. Except maybe Cartman.

Road Trip 2: New Mexico (Part 3)

An almost aerial view of St. John's college, site of the Glen Workshops.


This year's Glen Workshop was very enriching, even though I didn't take an actual workshop. I felt it deserved it's own entry, even though I'm going to cheat and include an art show review at the end. I didn't even make to all of the presentations this year, but the keynote address by Bret Lott, author of, among other books, Jewel, and the newly released, Ancient Highway, which recently received a positive review in the LA Times, dealt admirably with the conference's theme of "the artist in the city."

Since fiction is kind of my obsession, I also very much enjoyed the reading by Valerie Sayers, director of the creative writing program at Notre Dame, who read a short story published in Image. I thought the story gained a certain lyricism and humor that I might not have noticed had someone else read it.
Of course, the Over the Rhine concert was incredible. They played a full show at Christ Church, Santa Fe, which is a new building that provided an ideal backdrop. Although it's not really evident in the picture below, there is a giant window behind them, fronted by a large glass cross. It was especially cool, when, during one song, a bolt of lightning appeared momentarily in the window behind them. Seriously, if you have never heard OtR, give their album, The Trumpet Child, a demo, or check them out on tour. I wish them only success (and their song, "Nothing Is Innocent," was playing in the Knoxville Starbucks today).

Karin and Linford light up the stage at Christ Church, Santa Fe.


Another convergence at this year's conference was the Santa Fe Biennial, an international art exhibition held at Site Santa Fe every two years. The basic premise for the show was to invite artists from all over the world (typically one per country) to participate. They all came to New Mexico to observe the landscape and culture, and their pieces were supposed to be responses to New Mexico. Each artist was limited to $7,500 to construct his/her work, and after the show, all of the materials will be recycled.

The show was somewhat uneven, and I have to say that I probably didn't have enough time in the exhibit to really soak in each artist's full intention. Still, though, four pieces stood out to me. The first, "Telematch Suburb," by Egyptian artist Wael Shawky, was perhaps the most striking. It was a three part video installation, which really highlighted cultural disparities present in the fabric of New Mexico. For a kind of historical reference point to the wonderful religious and cultural diversity in New Mexico, I would recommend reading Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. In the novel, a French Catholic priest is assigned to a parish in New Mexico that includes Native Americans, Mexicans, Canadians, Spaniards, and other Europeans.

Shawky plays with this diverse cultural experience by picking up on similar themes present in Egypt. One huge video projection shows a westernized, Egyptian heavy metal band playing a concert to an audience at a very traditional village. The audience is rural and Muslim, and seem to not know quite how to respond to the music. On another wall, a teacher in Egypt instructs an English class, but his yelled instructions don't sound like English, and his teaching method seems very foreign and strange. On the third wall, a desert scene is playing, with children walking in and out of a structure that might look more at home in New Mexico than it does in Egypt. Somehow, the parade of children has a meditative effect that unifies the other two videos.

Image taken from Shawky's piece.


The second piece, "The Fourth Ladder," was also a video installation, and unlike anything I had ever seen before. Created by an Italian group called Studio Azzurro, the piece was comprised of a series of figures walking up a ramp. The unique bit, however, was that the piece is interactive. Whenever a figure was touched by a viewer, that figure would turn, face the viewer, and relate his or her favorite location in New Mexico, how to get there, and what he or she liked about it. This had a pretty powerful cumulative and experiential effect, especially since the installation was accompanied by another video that interviewed each figure that is walking up the ramp. It was almost as if you were talking to each of those people in an intimate setting.

Viewers interact with "The Fourth Ladder."


For sheer wit, my favorite piece was "Lucky," by Bulgarian artist Luchezar Boyadjiev. The entire piece consists of seventy-seven ten dollar bills, each taped to the wall. Above each bill is a person's name, each selected randomly from the Santa Fe phone book. Essentially, if a name is written on the wall, he or she can claim the ten dollars at any time the show is open—and underneath each bill a fortune is written for that person. Since the artist's English isn't perfect, some of the fortunes were excellent.

"Lucky."

Here is my favorite "fortune" that had been revealed so far. The artist must have a thing for Roksandras.


The last piece that I enjoyed was "Manifest Destiny," another interactive installation, from Italian artist, Piero Golia. Essentially, he rejected the whole "let's be inspired by New Mexico idea," saying that nothing there inspired him. So, instead, he made this kind of stunt-pad-jump installation that is best described by the following video. Before participating, I had to sign a long waiver that included the phrase "in spite of the TREMENDOUS risks involved..."

Road Trip 2: New Mexico (Part 2)

OK, so I know I've fallen a bit behind on updating the blog. I've been settling in Knoxville and internet access has been sparse. BUT, I'm going to try and catch up before my classes start on Wednesday.

So, we return to New Mexico. On the free day from the Glen Workshop, I went with my parents to Bandelier National Monument, which is about forty minutes outside Santa Fe. It is the site of Pueblo cliff dwellings and petroglyphs (pictures carved into rocks). The cliffs were formed from soft volcanic rock, which has lots of air pockets, that make it look sort of like swiss cheese. Still, though, all of the dwellings were carved by hand with stone tools, after which, the residents would smoke the ceilings of the dwellings to keep them from crumbling.

We hiked a trail for about a mile before ascending four ladders that allowed us to reach the alcove cliff dwelling. The image above is of the alcove cliff dwelling and kiva, or circular room used mainly for religious ceremonies. There was a ladder going down into the kiva, and inside the temperature was surprisingly cooler.

This was the only way up.

This is what the sky looked like from the alcove cliff dwelling.

Me, coming out of a smaller, carved-out dwelling. My guess is that the average cliff-dweller wasn't as big as I am.

Bandelier only took up most of the morning, so I suggested heading over to the city of Los Alamos, which was only a few minutes away. While I was at USC, I took a class on 1950s American Lit. and Film, and one of the documentaries that we watch was Atomic Cafe, which, although disturbing, is a movie that I highly recommend.
Los Alamos was the secret site of the Manhattan Project, but today the town is still the center of much of the government's high-level research, nuclear and otherwise. The entrance to the town is still managed by a guard tower that requires visitors to stop (similar to a border crossing). It was clear, upon entering the city, that most of the people that live there are either employed by the US government or related to someone who is. One of the streets was named "Bikini Atoll," which was a Micronesian island used as a test site for multiple H-bombs, and is highlighted in Atomic Cafe. I thought this was creepy, and in poor taste, since the natives of the island were forced to move (debatably against their will) and exposed to unhealthy levels of radiation as "an experiment." A local store also sold t-shirts with a giant, red-and-orange mushroom cloud on them, which declares: Los Alamos, the Atomic City.

There are two main museums in Los Alamos, one operated by the US Department of Energy, and the other by the city historical society, and they choose to focus on very different vantage points. Predictably, the science museum depicts patriotism (everyone gladly gave up their land for the Manhattan Project), the necessity of developing the A-bomb, and stresses all of the scientific advances made in Los Alamos since then. The historical museum, on the other hand, shows the elite ranch school for toughening up rich boys (attended by Gore Vidal, among others), that was forced to close when the government bought the land. In those days, Los Alamos was a secret city, all mail was sent to a P.O. Box in Santa Fe, and new scientists and staff were not even given directions to the site until they arrived in Santa Fe, went to a particular phone booth, and called a mysterious number. It was all very cloak and dagger. No relatives, except for spouses and children, were allowed to live in Los Alamos.

A model of "Little Boy," the first A-bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, on display at the Los Alamos science museum.

Road Trip 2: New Mexico (part 1)

I decided I had to break up my week in Santa Fe into at least three blog entries, because there is just too much to tell. I arrived on Sunday afternoon, which quickly turned into a stunning sunset. Above is the view from St. John's College student center. Seriously, it looks like this every night.

While I'm attending The Glen Workshop, in conjunction with Image, I decided not to take a writing workshop this year, but rather just attend the readings/presentations and enjoy New Mexico. This allowed me to go to El Santuario on Tuesday, a Catholic church in Chimayo, NM. It has been called "the Lourdes of America," and is perhaps the only active pilgrimage site in the US. During Holy Week, people walk as far as 150 miles along the highway to visit Chimayo and El Santuario.
This is the view of the front of the church.

The dirt of Chimayo is blessed, and said to have healing properties (although the explanation inside the church ascribes any healing to God). Inside the side chapel are all kinds of crutches and walkers from people who have been healed. Sadly, no photos could be taken inside the church. It has this amazing bell tower, as well as a hutch for pigeons. When you go inside, you can hear the pigeons cooing, and it really has an incredible calming and meditative effect.

The pigeons of El Santuario.

Outside the church, along the path leading up to it, pilgrims and penitents have placed all kinds of homemade crosses and petitions against the fence. This was probably my favorite image at Chimayo. The best part though, was a discarded "wheelchair accessible" sign, that had been removed because of some new construction in the compound. Sitting on the ground next to the crosses, it just struck me as a good image of healing.



My favorite homemade cross was constructed out of barbed wire.

Road Trip 1: Joshua Tree

Let's kick off this road trip blogging! Even though I've been in Santa Fe, NM for a few days now, I'm just now getting around to the first update. I'll post on New Mexico soon, but let's start at the beginning. Last Saturday, my roommates and I headed out to Joshua Tree National Park for some bouldering and a perfect start to my two week road trip. We spent about two hours climbing around on boulders, and considering that we had no equipment, I thought we got fairly high on the ridge. It was hot, and I drank lots of water.

Yes, that's me on a boulder.

After a couple of hours of driving through the park and taking more pictures in front of Joshua trees (U2 style), I said goodbye to my roommates and drove through the rest of the park toward Arizona. It had always been a dream of mine to drive through the park listening to U2, and I am happy to say that I did it. It also gave me time to consider why U2 was so drawn to a National Park in the US. It occurred to me that U2 really is an ideal desert band. I'm sure I read this somewhere else—but U2's music seems to mesh really well with a desert landscape. The Joshua Tree, too, seems like a tremendous image of U2's music as well as a microcosm of life. Many of U2's songs seem desolate, but with a pervading melodious hope seeping through the somber lyrics and pace. "Running to Stand Still," "One Tree Hill," "Mothers of the Disappeared," and "Red Hill Mining Town," all stand out on Joshua Tree, but I know that many other songs from the immense U2 catalog also fit this description.

Try listening to the beginning of "Where the Streets Have No Name," and picture yourself in a desert with no signs of life. Just when Edge's guitar picks up, you come around a bend in Joshua Tree National Park, and see the dead land come alive with Joshua Trees and other plant life. U2's songs, like the hearty plants in Joshua Tree, flourish despite a harsh environment. Both provide just the right amount of hope in surroundings that seem anything but favorable. The Joshua Tree, itself, with many tangled branches, often looks as if it might topple over at any moment. Like life (and U2's music), it is complex, tangled, and somehow beautiful. I can only ascribe these thoughts to being physically present in the National Park and simultaneously listening to the songs. As I left the park and headed for Arizona, I passed huge rock piles, which somehow reminded me of piles of bones draped in shadow. Not a great way to exit the park, but still a good reminder of my mortality.

These rock piles looked like bones to me.

Anything Special About Short Stories?

Once again I guest posted over at BookFox, this time with a sort of exploration about whether or not short stories are different from novels in any way other than length. If you have any thoughts on the subject, I'd love to hear them.

A Tennessee Adventure

As of a few weeks ago, I have accepted the offer at the University of Tennessee. This means that I will once again be a student. It also means that I will be moving across the country in August, something I've never done before.

My plan is simple: load up my Corolla with whatever will fit in it (mostly clothes and books) and drive. I won't be taking anything else with me. I plan to stop at several National Parks, including Joshua Tree and Great Smoky Mountains. I'll also be able to document the trip with my new digital camera, and I'll post updates from time to time. The trip will split up nicely into two parts, with a weeklong break in New Mexico for the Glen Workshop, hosted by Image.

In my mind, this is a minor equivalent of several road trip adventures, which seem to have surrounded me lately. A few of my former students from APU are riding across the country on bicycles to raise support for Project Rwanda. I also recently watched Into the Wild, a film based on the true story of a recent college graduate who essentially went on a two-year road trip that ended in the Alaskan wilderness. Then there's the slower, more laid back approach: 10 MPH, a documentary about a group of disillusioned techies who travel from Seattle to Boston on a Segway. Their top speed? 10 mph.

Somehow, it seems like I've wanted to do this my entire life.

Take Me to Another Place

Here's a video (anyone remember Arrested Development?)that could be descriptive of my life next fall. I was accepted by the University of Tennessee, but only for another MA (in literature). It is funded, but not exactly with enough money to live comfortably on.




I'm still waiting to hear from four other schools. If I get into Missouri or Nebraska it might be hard to find a theme song. I'll do my best.

Music Video and Literary Journal 2.0

I know, I know. This blog has been dead for a while. I did survive into the new year, and even managed to send off seven PhD applications. I'm hoping one of them comes through. I promise not to turn off the blog again for so long without notifying you, oh faithful reader.

In the meantime, I have become fascinated with interactive internet content—both musical and literary. For an awesome online literature experience, that turns poems and short stories into interactive art projects, check out Born Magazine. Poets and fiction writers are matched up with artists who work with flash animation, so that what emerges is sometimes much more than just the written word. I really can't explain it, but take a look at "What Afterlife" and "Five Kinds of Weather Roll Across Texas," to see some of the rich variety that the magazine offers. I'm excited because this is, I think, what the internet should be doing for literature. Other than making it more accessible (which is huge), the internet hasn't really added much to literature as a form. Born is starting to push the boundaries of literary art and interaction. I have recently been studying methods of literary interpretation, and this seems to me to have all sorts of implications that I won't really get into, except to say that the idea of a piece of literature as fluid might gain credence by more extreme means of user interaction.

The title screen of "What Afterlife" from Born Magazine.

But this interaction is not limited to literary works. Bands have started in with interactive music videos. The Arcade Fire, long a favorite of mine, have released a video for Black Mirror, a song from their latest album, Neon Bible. What's unique about this one, though, is that users can change the actual music of the video by toggling off and on (at will) individual tracks like drums, bass, guitar, lead vocals, backup vocals and etc. This is surprisingly intriguing, because it lets the user create custom videos.

The protagonist of "Black Mirror" stares into a Dante-like abyss. Notice the numbered triangles at the bottom of the screen. Each triangle indicates that the track is on.


Rolling Stone recommends turning off the drums (track 2) for an amazing and unique version of the song, but I think what fits the video best, and its stark and surprising images, is turning off tracks 1-4, which leaves track 5 (backup vocals) and track 6 (background classical score). This transforms the video into an eerie silent film, with occasional moments of clarity. I love the entire aesthetic sensibility of The Arcade Fire, which comes through in their website design and videos.

Mr. TV-head stares at the viewer while my track preference is displayed.

Taking their cue from no one, an up-and-coming band from Brooklyn, MGMT, has created a downloadable interactive video of their song "Electric Feel," from their new, aptly named album Oracular Spectacular. Checking in at over 400mbs, it lets users edit the images that show while the song is playing. The bottom of the video player in Quicktime is a set of multi-colored rectangles and circles, each of which alters any given frame of the video. Some change the background images, others the video footage, while some superimpose other images or textures over the video. It's pretty crazy and hard to describe. You really have to experience it for yourself. I have literally watched it eight times, and keep finding new images. Watch out for the walrus, he scares me every time I accidentally click on the far right circle at about 50 seconds in.

One of the MGMT guys stabbing what appears to be a pig pinata with what appears to be a spear, while what appears to be a military helicopter flies by in the background.

I also recommend watching the video, not interactive, but just as psychedelic, for their song "Time to Pretend." This overwhelming stream of images and colors somehow fits the uninhibited, melodic and electronic style of their music. For my first entry of 2008, I leave you with what appears to be three dancing Andy Warhols superimposed over a stylized portrait of the other MGMT guy. Who says drugs never helped art?

Spring Classes and More Grad. Apps.

In the Spring I will be teaching:

1) At APU: English 111: Intro to Literature. This will be fun, although the class will be too large to have ideal discussions. I may try more mini-lectures.

2) At BU: Two sections of English 110B: Critical Thinking and Writing II. Writing with literature. Also fun, but with more essays.

I decided to take fewer classes so that I could write more and try and publish things on a regular basis. These sorts of things are important. I am buried right now in grading and more PhD applications. This year, I am doing more homework, so I hope it helps.

Review Posted at BookFox

Per request of my former classmate, the always clever BookFox, currently vacationing in South America, I have posted a review of Miranda July's first collection of short stories, No one belongs here more than you over at his website. Somehow, I also managed to reveal embarrassing details about my childhood in the process. The website for the book is interactive and pretty cool, you should check it out. Here is a picture of Miranda July.


Next week I will try and blog from New Mexico, where I will once again be attending the Glen Workshop.

The Physics of Driving II

Unknown Love in Los Angeles

Perhaps we fashion untruths daily,
our memories become remarks at a funeral—
never mentioning the bad particulars
to honor our idealism.

The most beautiful woman that I can remember
I saw slantwise from the window of a speeding car.
In this glimpse, her body stretched into vectors,
curved hips melding into curved freeway,

breath rhythm lengthening into skyline pulse,
laugh crinkles clouding into dancing city lights.
It was over quickly, but for me
these memories are the most spacious.

You see, I never met her.
In a city always moving love is trackless—
without paths leading in or footprint remainders.
Just pray for rest. Pray for more
than the screech marks of smoldered rubber.

If you see me on the freeway, wave.
I will be the man that drives while
rubbing a disposable razor along my chin—
again and again even though
there is no more hair.

Final Teaching Load (Fall '07)

After a few weeks of working on lining up teaching gigs, many phone calls, seven mailed resumes and NINE interviews, here is my fall lineup.

Two classes at BU: 1) ENGL 100 (remedial freshmen writing). 2) ENGL 110B the second required writing class that includes some literature—probably mostly sophomores.

One class at VU: 3) ENGL 120: Persuasive Writing. A freshmen writing course that is followed up by research writing.

One class at APU 4) ENGL 110: Freshmen Writing Seminar. This class is organized around a theme, which I am still playing with. My first choice right now is Modern Myth. Aimee Bender, I can sell some of your books this way!

Cold War Kids to Open for The White Stripes and Muse

I follow the career of Cold War Kids with great interest and enthusiasm. I am very pleased to say that they will be playing at Madison Square Garden with Muse (August 6th), and will be supporting The White Stripes on the second half of their North American tour (September/October). Say hi to Jack and Meg boys.

Frank Miller and Quentin Tarantino View the World through a Smashed Windshield

Yesterday I watched Frank Miller's Sin City, and I have to admit that stylistically, it's one of the most impressive films that I've ever seen. The sparse use of color (mostly on attractive women and blood), the silhouettes, the incredible action sequences, and the lack of light all stress the source material of the film—Miller's graphic novels.

This slick quality is brilliant and often fantastic. In an early sequence, Marv (Mickey Rourke) intentionally crashes through the windshield of a car, each of his legs knocking a cop unconscious, before Marv throws them from the car, while driving off after his next victim. In both Sin City and 300, Miller's latest project, violence has become a captivating and exciting art form. Of course, this elevation of stylistic gore was brought to our attention by Quentin Tarantino in films like Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill.

It doesn't seem quite fair to call Miller a Tarantino protégé, since his graphic novels are essentially contemporaries of Pulp Fiction, but certainly the other director of Sin City, (Miller is the first), Robert Rodriguez, uses Tarantino as his starting point. Tarantino and Rodriguez recently teamed on the Grindhouse double feature, which was a bit of a box office bust.

Despite the exhilarating action, I find that I can't watch these films more than once. By the end, I am disgusted with the world, the emptiness of any deed—and more than anything—the complete depravity of human nature. Why live? is the question that keeps popping into my head. In Sin City, everyone, "heroes" and villains, males and females—even children—seem to relish torture, including, but certainly not limited to, dismemberment. In Pulp Fiction the hitman and his target fall into a random pawn shop while fighting, only to find out that the owner is far more sadistic than either of them.

It's not the mere presence of extreme and intense violence that bothers me. It's the lack of any purpose behind the violence. Marv in Sin City tortures and kills dozens of people to revenge the death of Goldie, a prostitute whom he just met the night before. He never stops to ask who Goldie is or why she was killed. In Tarantino films, violence and torture are just the ways in which the world operates. In 300 there is a vague sense of the king of Sparta's honor being offended, but beyond that reference, little is made of Persia's invasion of Greece and the repercussions of paying tribute to Xerxes.

Little or nothing seems needed by Miller to justify inflicting the most extreme kinds of agony. The smallest personal problem is grounds for murder. There is no real right and wrong or good and evil—there is only personal preference. Instead of The Matrix, or any WWII movie, from Miller we get no sense that there is any greater story or rationalization other than the immediate violence itself and the immediate journey of this particular character. While I enjoyed 300, I found it hard to be inspired by the film—in the same way that Braveheart or similar fare is inspiring—because of a lack of a clear sense of meaning and purpose behind the (admittedly) awesome and courageous stand.

Part of this justification of violence appears to stem from a problem with authority and organizations. In Sin City the two super villains are a Cardinal of the Catholic church and a Senator, respectively. In 300, the most disturbing characters are the sexually abusive, disfigured priests, and the power-hungry senator of Sparta who tries to prevent re-enforcements from being sent to the small army's aid. If the world and its institutions are so corrupt, why not just fight the system and the man? Why not?

To be fair, Sin City does admit that once in a while a decent cop will come along, and 300 does show more level-headed senators defeating the traitor (too late to save anyone from the original force). However, what is implicit is not just that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but that corruption seems to be the inevitable result of almost any position of authority. If these are the starting assumptions, it is not surprising to see violence and torture surface as the common currency of interaction.

What, then, is the difference between depravity as presented by Miller and Tarantino, and someone like Flannery O'Connor? Certainly, O'Connor (one of my favorite authors) depicts senseless killing in "A Good Man is Hard to Find," and complete deception and betrayal in "Good Country People." I haven't yet put my finger on it, but I think it has to do with O'Connor's multi-leveled approach. The Misfit has good manners, the traveling Bible salesman presents himself as genuine. This irony of a good veneer peeling away to reveal the true, evil nature underneath seems much more true-to-life and spiritually interesting.

While it may be implied that the Cardinal and Senator (brothers named Rourke) in Sin City present themselves differently in public, there is no evidence provided of this—and indeed—everyone seems to know already that they are completely corrupt, whether or not they are responsible for the specific instances of evil that drive the action in the movie. Moreover, O'Connor seems to be focusing on the inexplicableness of intense evil as events out of the ordinary (and hence, worthy of being the subject of a story), while Miller and Tarantino seem to imply that intense evil occurs as a regular pattern. It's the difference between saying: "there is evil and I can't explain it," and saying "evil is all there is." I guess I would agree that senseless evil does happen all the time, but why would I want to return, over and over again, to that fictional world that they have created?

In any case, I may not run out to see Miller's next project. I would like, however, in light of this criticism, to recommend another crass (but brilliant) film, Idiocracy, written by Mike Judge.

Writing Again...

Since turning in my thesis over a month ago, I haven't written much of anything. (The poem below being the one exception.) I thought maybe I was tired of it, but really I think I was just burned out. I realized today that I have an intense desire to write again. As a writer, I want to capture the perfect story. It's kind of an impossible quest that contains many bumper-to-bumper moments, U-turns and flaming crashes off of cliffs. I'm off to the library to read Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1887, by Edward Bellamy for inspiration. After Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur, this was one of the most popular books of the late 19th century in America. It's a socialist Utopian novel, which interests me for several reasons, which in the interests of my story, I won't reveal, other than to say that it takes a very different view of socialism than, say, The Brother's Karamazov.

The Physics of Driving 1 (A Poem)

A two-faced habit. I steal
glances at passing drivers on the freeway.
In blurry haste everyone is striking.
With twinges of relativity
everyone on the freeway is someone.

Just last week I saw Einstein,
driving home after a nice dinner at JPL
in rush hour on the 605 freeway—
fingers sifting dunes of electric hair.

Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
The world always moves, if however slowly.
Energy equals cars moving within a square.
Energy equals movement coalescing in a square.
The square is a city. The city is Los Angeles.

He has calculated how to weave through traffic
without touching anything.
A half-wide car fits between the lanes
of space and time.

This mask of self-importance
is forever needing a place to go.
Clutching my steering wheel
never changing lanes.

Drive faster.
If you reach the speed of light
everyone will want to know your name.
You just won't recognize yourself anymore.

My New Computer

Is a MacBook with a built in webcam....





Probably, it takes pictures of me when I'm sleeping and posts them on the internet.

Little Debbie, Sallie Mae and Wendy Play the Three Furies

This morning I woke up and ate a Little Debbie's choco-marshmellow dessert snack with my coffee. Since then, I have pretty much decided that it is the most unhealthy food ever. I don't even think it should properly be called food. Little Debbie is the most innocent-looking little girl since the Coppertone girl who perpetually gets her diaper ripped off by a dog. Does anyone remember that ad? What happens when something bites a diaper? No good can come from that. Who in the world thought that up, and why would it ever be considered a good idea?



But back to Little Debbie—she always has a snack for you. She wants you to be fat and die of scurvy (while consuming oatmeal pies).

Then, instead of eating lunch, I spent two hours sitting in an exit-loan workshop at USC, listening to how Sallie Mae owns me for at least ten years. TEN. For many students, it's TWENTY-FIVE. Favorite fun fact: only 7% of students make all of their payments on time over the first three years of a loan. Sallie Mae is worse than Little Debbie, so much so, that I could only find this picture:



Don't let the look take you in. She will garnish your wages and steal your income tax refund in a heartbeat. (Cliché alert.) I'm pretty sure she is the Irish mafia.

For dinner, I only wish I would have eaten at Wendy's. That little red-haired minx is just as devious. I heard they have replaced the buns with deep-fried choco-marshmellow paddies.



Instead, I had Mexican food.

Why MySpace Boosts My Self-Esteem

Yes, I admit it. I have a MySpace account. I'm not really ashamed of it, either. I really love the principle of networking centered around artistic communities like musicians and writers, and sharing your work via the network. It still is taken advantage of—because of the lack of an individual verification system like Facebook has. You can say or be anyone on MySpace, which I suppose is what makes the internet a vicarious and scary place. It's interesting, though, because many people take this to another level, where they are almost mocking the principle of "be anyone." How many profiles have you seen that are "99-year-old female" who makes "$250,000 or over?"

I get a lot of friend requests on MySpace—probably at least two a day. Yes, all of the porn stars and entrepreneurial stock broker and drug company types want to be my friend. I can only conclude from this that I am CEO material encaged in an übersexy body. The best friend request, though, was the following:





I have nothing else to say about that.