voncookie | June 30, 2008
For starters, the Samba King is no longer here… at least temporarily. He’s been detained in Mexico by some personal business, and his 4-day trip has now turned into a month-long epic journey. ¿Quién sabe? The BarChicas have changed the music overhead to reflect their youth. Thank God. Indochine and the Samba King always seem [...]
voncookie | June 29, 2008
I have a habit of running away when my anxiety gets to be too much; this is a habit that began early in my graduate career at Big U. I think the first time I ran off was during my second semester. I was walking to class, feeling excessively tense, the loud noises of Humanities [...]
voncookie | June 25, 2008
It is so smoky here in Liberal Paradise that the sky has nearly turned yellow with it. The authorities said it would be a bad Fire Season, and man, they were not kidding. Meanwhile, I’m holed up in a hotel about 20 miles from home, working on Ch1. I’ve come to a hotel not because [...]
voncookie | June 24, 2008
Sometimes I’m just too damn sensitive. Yesterday was really, really weird. I’ve gone underground. More when I’m able.
voncookie | June 21, 2008
In order to escape the present heat wave in Liberal Paradise, let me suggest the following, instead of stressing the power grid by turning on your own fan or other climate control system of choice: 1. Go to your local community library. It will definitely be nice and cool inside, and chances are it won’t [...]
voncookie | June 21, 2008
Listening to NPR this morning (Weekend Edition), an interview with a Persian-born, American-raised writer who went to Big U for college: “I thought life at Big U would be smart kids sitting around talking about exciting intellectual concepts; as it turned out, it was a lot of smart kids sitting around drinking.” Ummm… yeah. That’s [...]
voncookie | June 20, 2008
…it’s our SECOND actual Heat Wave here in Liberal Paradise before the start of summer… Albeit, summer starts tomorrow, but still. STILL! Al Gore, you prophet, you!!! I’ve been taking advantage of the oven outside by turning on the ceiling fan and being super-productive as a way of ignoring the faint dizziness that I feel [...]
voncookie | June 19, 2008
Whenever I’m in the library, here at the bottom of the pit, I feel a strange melancholy. Lately the melancholy seems to revolve around the solitude that I feel as I work on the next chapter of my dissertation, making me want to reach out to anyone and everyone—uncharacteristic to say the least. I sit [...]
voncookie | June 18, 2008
“Cityscape” 18 August 1992 Someday I’ll have an apartment in the city. It will be sleek and chic, filled with sex and religion. God will hang out there and read books of erotic poetry while my lover walks from the kitchen to the bedroom in his underwear. I will tuck my feet up under my [...]
voncookie | June 18, 2008
Sometime in the late ’70s-early ’80s, sometime when Blondie had a hit on the radio, I learned, at the ripe age of 4 or 5, that oil was a limited resource and that one day—probably in my lifetime—we would run out of it. At that point, as I remember, no one had a proposal as [...]
voncookie | June 16, 2008
…And it’s a Honda! RAWK! In the interest of greening the planet, I’ll be posting some “Green News” features that I find on the Internets that I think are of import and/or helpful for those of you who are interested in reducing your carbon footprint and greening the planet in general. Here’s the link: http://green.yahoo.com/news/ap/20080616/ap_on_bi_ge/japan_honda.html
voncookie | June 15, 2008
From the Dusty Treasure Trove: I found a handout—type-written—from my 11th grade AP English teacher, Ms. Betzler, that was supposed to serve as our guide to poetry. It was meant to shape our written responses, which in turn would train us to look at poetry not with critical eyes, but with appreciative eyes. When I [...]
voncookie | June 14, 2008
It’s been hard for me to blog lately, because I’ve been under the spell of a weird illness. I’m dizzy a lot of the time, and/or nauseated, making it very hard for me to concentrate long enough to blog (or write in general, making my dissertation take a real hit). I’ve found that if I [...]
voncookie | June 11, 2008
I just wrote this long entry about poetry and reacting to poetry based on the reading journals from Hometown High that I now have in my possession. And my blogging software deleted half the entry, the part that you need to understand the second half of the entry. Suffice it to say that in the [...]
voncookie | June 10, 2008
Well, I guess I’m bringing a slow end to my hiatus, with a few posts trickling out here and there. There have been a few reasons for this, and I will name them below: 1st Sucky Thing: Random dizziness that caused me to get seriously ill the third week of May and only recently has [...]
