Please come to a reading and lecture at the University of Chicago this week by:

*************** William Fuller ****************



Thursday, October 30, 5:30 p.m. (Classics 10): Poetry reading

Friday, October 31, 1:00 p.m. (Classics 10): "Restatement of Trysts"

A reception will follow the reading on Thursday.

********************

Drawing equally on Buddhist sutras and country blues, William Fuller's latest book, Sadly (Flood, 2003) derives compassion from its ironic vision. Quick and sometimes elusive, his poems observe fluctuations in economic markets, the weather, and human consciousness. In the Chicago Tribune, Maureen McClane has described Fuller's "dense, elliptical mediations," writing that his "luminous images…consistently marry the cerebral and the sensual." Fuller lives and works in Chicago.

Two bleary-eyed blogless days filled with job apps. I don't recommend that 4:55 p.m. sprint to the post office when you haven't eaten anything all day, or the frantic run to Office Depot (around the corner, thank god) ten minutes before closing time to rub paper samples looking for the right one to match the stuff you've already got. What was scary was that I was not the only one there rubbing paper--there was another similarly bleary-eyed guy picking up all the paper I'd put down.

Choke poetry seems to have gagged its last. It was a good run. Thanks to all who coughed something up.

Hey bloggers: go academic...

Panel on Weblogs
Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association Conference
at San Antonio, April 7-10, 2004

This panel seeks papers from bloggers either analyzing some aspect of the culture of blogging or presenting critical and informative personal narratives about blogging. Presenters need not be academics, and graduate students are welcome.

Please email jchaney@iusb.edu a short abstract (one paragraph) and brief biographical note by November 10, 2003.

Joseph R. Chaney, Chair
Computer Culture Area
SW/Texas PCA/ACA

Department of English
Indiana University South Bend
(574) 237-4870
fax: (574) 237-4538

Gary Sullivan answers my question about flarf and Googlism:

There was a brief period on the flarflist when everyone found Googlism and threw in funny searches, like "bad poetry" or "great poetry." The one I remember best, of course, is:

Googlism for: flarf

flarf is come festival in florida
flarf is officially over for this year
flarf is the faery cast
flarf is held at quiet waters park
flarf is over
flarf is come festival in florida flarf is officially over for this year flarf is the faery cast flarf is held at quiet waters park flarf is over
flarf is come festival in florida
flarf is officially over for this year
flarf is come festival in florida flarf is officially over for this year flarf is the faery cast flarf is held at quiet waters park flarf is over posted by
flarf is appealing
flarf is the faery cast
flarf is the oversized fleece/flanal blue striped/plaid shirt jacket thing that jessie stole for me from thrift junction yesterday
flarf is over

... although, the last time I saw it done there were fewer lines.

Mostly, I like to edit Googlisms, when used. So the above would be more like:

flarf is come festival in florida
flarf is officially over for this year
flarf is the faery cast
flarf is held at quiet waters park
flarf is the oversized fleece/flanal blue striped/plaid shirt jacket thing that jessie stole for me from thrift junction yesterday
flarf is over

Which makes me wonder: how do flarfers feel about Googlism? It seems like there's something of the same thing going on there, like a tech-geek version--the results, at least, often don't look that different from my own pale attempts at the genre. Of course, I presume Googlism is the result of some kind of automated process, which flarf flirts with but doesn't completely embrace...I guess.

Both The Wily Filipino and Gabriel Gudding pointed my attention to Googlism on "choke," part of which Gudding was kind enough to send to me:

Googlism for: choke

choke is offered in pressure
choke is on you
choke is the result of 13 years of continuous research and development
choke is on you last aired on
choke is a damn fine novel
choke is no exception
choke is the major
choke is also equipped with a set screw to lock the setting in place and avoid its movement due to vibration
choke is pulled open can be adjusted by bending the "u
choke is about taking the next step
choke is getting a mixed reaction from critics and fans alike
choke is what you might call a man's man
choke is the story of a young man named victor mancini
choke is pretty complete
choke is brilliant and extremely funny
choke is strangely familiar
choke is a documentary that follows three fighters as they prepare for the 1995 vale tudo fighting championship in tokyo
choke is considered modified with as small as
choke is to minimize the rf loss caused by the resistor
choke is a stab in the eye to anyone with
choke is very low
choke is one of the few worms to spread via instant messenger services
choke is usually late summer or early autumn
choke is quite high
choke is a replacement choke tube precision made of stainless steel
choke is a tru
choke is to reduce the air intake into the carburetor
choke is simply a tapered constriction of the gun's bore at the muzzle end
choke is no different
choke is a monthly magazine
choke is great for targets less than 20 yards
choke is a humane form of control that offers the advantages of a
choke is eminently memorable
choke is blued and designed to shoot either lead or steel shot
choke is ported
choke is an apologetic novel in which chuck palahniuk
choke is designed to close off the outlet spout of a bulk bag thereby allowing the partially emptied bag to be easily removed from the
choke is a constriction in the end
choke is placed subsea it has been designed to cope with all the conditions it is likely to encounter without
choke is a bilateral carotid choke
choke is
choke is equivalent to multiple turns of wire inside "their" choke
choke is king
choke is a difficult decision
choke is a
choke is glad to be back in canada
choke is a technique applied against the throat that cuts off or restricts the flow of air to the lungs
choke is an effective
choke is a critical
choke is situated at the pipeline inlet at the wells
choke is pcu divided by the square of the rated current
choke is called a "cylinder bore" and delivers the widest spread
choke is a worm which attempts to send itself through the msn messenger instant messaging program
choke is in open position
choke is leaking
choke is housed in a miniature surface
choke is constant and hence it is
choke is changed often without proper cleaning
choke is simple
choke is to pass
choke is food impaction within the esophagus
choke is perceived to be
choke is a terribly simple little thing
choke is very effective it can also be dangerous
choke is a caucasian male
choke is to build it directly into the fountain tube by compacting clay around a former known as a nipple
choke is up to the challenge of holding that pattern as tight as it should be at 40 yards
choke is in closed position
choke is watching with great interest to see if anadarko can finally realize the potential in the undervalued and underdeveloped upr strip
choke is to a shotgun
choke is very fast and very powerful
choke is made from 0
choke is very important to maximise your scores at the various disciplins
choke is on the chassis upperside
choke is the degree of constriction at the muzzle end of the barrel
choke is also a definite recommendation to all those not
choke is a fixed one or is it removeable? i use
choke is used
choke is a measure of the opening
choke is held too long
choke is 1k
choke is manufactured by shyam electronics
choke is the latest novel by stuart woods
choke is used when the engine is cold
choke is told from the point of view of a dropout medical student
choke is closed
choke is minimum
choke is like he throttle
choke is one that is often misunderstood

Kasey is with me on this whole "scansion is useless" thing, though Jeffrey Jullich begs to differ.

Mystery Choker Revealed...

I thought Michael Magee's fingerprints were all over this one, but now he's come clean.

From Sean Serrell, who says: "I hope the choke-wagon isn't so full it can't accommodate one more." Hey, there's plenty of room--jump on.

Choke Tubes/Chuck P.’s Choke/Kickin’ JC’s ‘nads

Until recently, everyone thought that by funneling a wad into a smaller stream under pressure, the spread could be concentrated at a distance onto a target. This cut-away illustrates the patterns produced by replacing the old "funnel choke" with a patented wad retarding system which stinks of either conspiracy or revolution, I can't tell which:

Go talk swearwords about God
You all will die, stupid humans.
Bye slut, go talk shit about me.
(Call me a 'psychophatt')

When people ask "What would Jesus not do?" I will have a clever response for them based on something I have done. What would Jesus NOT do? Disgusting Post Modernism, however I must point out that Jesus did in fact assault people. The most common hold is from the front with both the assailant’s hands around your throat. Since the two handed front hold is the most common, it will be the best to learn how to escape. Every man has had a sister, mother, wife or girlfriend that has mentioned "kicking a man where it hurts." The most important thing is to run away once you are free. Never stick around to see if your attacker is going to get up.

Three Chokes from Gary Sullivan

Did You Mean To Search For: Chokes?

(a "B" side for Tim)

SiStAh! WhEaH yOoH bEeN!
hAcVeNt TaLkEd ToOh YoOH InNaH cHoKeSs
LoOoOoNnNNgGgGg TyME!

cowerkers are kewlness...gotsta love them...when i came home
lenlen asked me if i wanted to go dolly's house
so yeah we went there...had chokess ppls...

i hAvE sHoRt HaiR nOw, LiKe uP tO mAh sHoULdErS

plus, since there was chokess amounts of people
the noise level must've been pretty loud

iTs LaYeReD LiKE tHaT
ShOOtS..DiD yOOH EvEr FiNd OUt aBoUt DaT jOb ThInG? ...

HoW yOOH bEeN?


CHOCKINGG (Outtakes)

Chockingg, chockinng, chockiing, chockking, choccking, choocking, chhocking, cchocking, chockerr, chockeer, chockker, choccker, choocker, chhocker, cchocker, chockinf, chockinh, chockibg, chockimg, chockung, chockong, chocjing, chocling, choxking, chovking, chicking, chpcking, cgocking, cjocking, xhocking, vhocking, chockign, chocknig, chocikng, chokcing, chcoking, cohcking, hcocking, chockigg, chocknng, chociing, chokking, chccking, coocking, hhocking, khocking, chockee, chocket, chockwr, chockrr, chocjer, chocler, choxker, chovker, chpcker, cgocker, cjocker, xhocker, vhocker, chockre, chocekr, chokcer, chcoker, cohcker, hcocker, choceer, chokker, chccker, coocker, hhocker, khocker, chockin, chockig, chockng, chocing, chcking, chockk, chocck, choock, chhock, cchock, chocke, chockr, chocer, chcker, chocj, chocl, choxk, chovk, chpck, cgock, cjock, xhock, vhock, chokc, chcok, cohck, hcock, chokk, chcck, coock, hhock, khock, chck. chockingg, chockinng, chockiing, chockking, choccking, choocking, chhocking, cchocking, chockerr, chockeer, chockker, choccker, choocker, chhocker, cchocker, chockinf, chockinh, chockibg, chockimg, chockung, chockong, chocjing, chocling, choxking, chovking, chicking, chpcking, cgocking, cjocking, xhocking, vhocking, chockign, chocknig, chocikng, chokcing, chcoking, cohcking, hcocking, chockigg, chocknng, chociing, chokking, chccking, coocking, hhocking, khocking, chockee, chocket, chockwr, chockrr, chocjer, chocler, choxker, chovker, chpcker, cgocker, cjocker, xhocker, vhocker, chockre, chocekr, chokcer, chcoker, cohcker, hcocker, choceer, chokker, chccker, coocker, hhocker, khocker, chockin, chockig, chockng, chocing, chcking, chockk, chocck, choock, chhock, cchock, chocke, chockr, chocer, chcker, chocj, chocl, choxk, chovk, chpck, cgock, cjock, xhock, vhock, chokc, chcok, cohck, hcock, chokk, chcck, coock, hhock, khock, chck.


lesbiana named ledbians cuoking lesbias lesians lesbiaans esbians
chojing lesibans girk lesnians chokking lesbianz lesbianx

blowmob pofn mvoies moviees pifture mocies pi cture chokiny ipcture
womann blowjlb rree fr e pidture blowiob blpwjob bolwjob blowjobb

ow joh low chokung bllow chokiing lbow ob blpw cchoking
c oking c hoking cnoking blow jbo chpking glow jon chokiny

dohor blo w mo vie jovie chokiing eperm joh blpw bblow mpvie
jo b perm hcoking jjob choking chokung chokjng choknig aperm

movoes c oking pictur e pictuure chokimg m ovies
jobw moviss chking mov es b ow pictu re moviws

v deo yays jkb vi eo ree ideo frer gwys videoo vixeo gaye
vid eo npeg video agys asuan as an cideo chokking gasy asiaan

iny chokimg phhotos ojbs choikng jogs bblow pen is peniss mpeg
chokong chkoing chking hotos pyotos jbs pjotos tniy choknig bllow

bl ack pictu es back cboking pivtures bliw lictures choiing blwck
chiking bllack blpw pixtures pussy chokingg pi tures pictu res

nuses aadults nudees adu ts job moviees blo w adultts sdults movues
adjlts blos chhoking movjes cgoking chokin g nhdes nud s aults chokking

panites choing witb pamties gkrl iob gidl choking moive whits jjob
chokijg pantie s blo chhoking pahties movi e mov ie w ith chooking wbite

anateur nyde moviw amateu kobs amageur choki g pictire amteur pictue
plst po t poat picturs jbos mo ie picyure picgure mobie mofie chokking nide

galleriew gallerues bw ga lleries chok ing hardcorw hardcoe gall ries fere galleris
chokihg feee falleries chokinng chokung h ardcore chokking choing gqlleries

f ree frde pissung chokung p ic chokint pizsing bow ppissing pi c ic gay piv gsy
fere pising hob pisskng pc jpb pjssing pidsing pissinb bllow chokking blpw oic

Choke Lit USA

Choke lit modern romance fiction
Choke lit search word spy
Choke lit married man
Choke lit dispatched within 24 hours
Choke lit hates me because I’m cute
Choke lit sex-soaked candy-colored indiscreet romp
Choke lit personal trainer hug
Choke lit so you’d like to…
Choke lit read by 579 people
Choke lit stop rubbishing "hairy-legged" female
Choke lit irrepressible (and unavoidable)
Choke lit musi c. mischie f. ar t
Choke lit pink lit?
Choke lit of a fat bride
Choke lit behaving like adults
Choke lit black authors getting in
Choke lit puts her finger on
Choke lit collapse this category
Choke lit between doing your hair and make-up
Choke lit espresso stories
Choke lit fashion and beauty articles and lifestyl…
Choke lit "fragrant literature"
Choke lit deals more with the realities of dating
Choke lit looked down their noses
Choke lit just a lot of froth
Choke lit push-up bra G-string chastity belt
Choke lit aimed at the modern gal
Choke lit traditional romance fiction

[choking moments in Ohio from "rhode island notebook 3.7.03"]
Gabriel Gudding

I-270 N 342 M 12:50 PM EST
sun out Wham! As I bounce over
the Olentangy State Scenic River
356 m fr. BL & Northwest of Columbus
2 Canada Geese traverse hwy
50 ft Above car. They do not honk.
It occurs to me I should have
honked at them
On rt, in bright sun N of Columbus,
375 m fr. BL, I see, in a muddy,
furry oval of hay, a press of
horned Kine in tumid Anoraks
feeding & lazing in sun booms:
I notice in shock they are bison.
Small hawk kites over median,
southward, yawing
STOP TO EAT, GAS, PEE 1:30 exit 151
10.1122 g 390 m = 38.57 mpg very low mpg
1:40 A fish sandwich
at McDonalds, I bite it in parking lot, choke
on the bite of hot cod puck. My sinuses ache
me.

1:52 pm EST back on road
and so Laura Bush picked up her
husband's hawky-pointy flared nostril
nose, smelled it, sniffed hard at it,
cried about it and put it safely
in her bosom brassiere. There in
turn it snuffled in little
fooms her bosom smells
76 east 2:44 pm 450.7 m fr BL.
Long steep downward slope near
Wadsworth OH, never noticed before
Traveling perpendicular to me on
an underpass beneath
the freeway, I spy a large clear white
Ford pickup w/ an immense American flag
on a 6 ft pole flickering Above its
hitch-bulb and I am once again shocked
at the ghastly, kitschy, tacky, tasteless
and disturbingly hick-like & white
non-urban, gun-bearing & ignorant

nationalism, which is. Nationalism is.
490 M 3:20 pm near Mt. Union
College, am very tired.
3:33 PM I sneeze explosively.
And, simultaneously, the loosened nose
of G W Bush sneezes between
Laura Bush's easy breasts w/ a puffing bang
rocketing the wedge of flesh
up the Valley of her cleavage
slopping her firmly under the chin
and slipping back w/ a snotty swash into her
silk and smelly valley.
Meander Reservoir 510 M 3:39 pm
80 e 3:41 pm 513 m I sneeze again
and again the loosened nose of G
W Bush burstles upward slapping
past the lip-gates of Laura Bush's mouth-lips
lodging under her Uvula. She glottal chokes
ejecting the nose, plosive phlegm-noise
follows the nose's arc outward: the nose splats in the
party's heels. A startled pause.
In the social air a bloom
of pallid phlegm unfurls. "For the
first time in my life I have
had to confess I am ashamed of my
country." -- Richard Olney, 1903, re:
Roosevelt's seizing of the Panama Canal
Pennsylvania Welcomes You 527 M
STOP TO PEE 3:53 -- 3:57

In Western Pennsylvania near
Clintonville, A bright but long-
shadowed March afternoon as the Alleghanies
begin, smattering of snows remain in
the woods and the large
meadows/small fields, but in the
median, a shallow-v in cross-section
the tan dead grass slicked-down by snow melt.
Am very achey.

MY FAVORITE ENGINE
[I'm afraid I'm not sure who this is from...contributor, please identify...sorry...]

You let out of it.
I ran it like that
for a spell and it
cleared up.

I never knew
what caused it,
but sometime
later it did it

again and I
choked it.
The whole „if
you‚re Œanti press‚

why publish?‰ argument
immediately started
climbing up the
back of my throat ˆˆ

but I choked it
back down ˆˆ and was
shot in the bathroom,
made me cry.

When I got it
home I choked it
and pulled it once
and it fired right up!

They were the arms
of Elvis choking. I
fought them hard; I
could not cede.

„There is no Devil!‰
I choked it out,
„And I‚m in the arms
of Elvis, too!‰

From Chickee Chickston:

I'm choking right now
but I don't care!
I'm gonna sell this car

Sir, ack argh spew,
herk, herk, herk,
how do you like the nice leather interior?

(Note to self: no phlegm)
it's fast too!
gasp

black
then voices
then bright light
hospital!
Did I make the sale?

YES!
I'm the man!

From Stephen Vincent:

My mother choked
Constantly choked
Still chokes
Has not finally choked

That’s the truth
The sad terrible truth
I confess
I confess for her

Dinner - the father, the children
Macy's - the perfumes
David's - the blintzes
Nixon - the jowls
Nixon again - more jowls

Choke against the rage

She's done it - Reagan
She's doing it - Bush
O mother
Do it again
Harder, harder - Bush, Bush

Do it till you belch your guts out
Belch all over
Macys,
Davids,
Nixon
Reagan
Bush & again Bush

Whatever they did
And whoever did it before they did
Belch
Belch

When you break the sleeve of your body
Crack the air
Vowel by Holy Vowel
Sing unto us,
O Sing unto us
Around the table
Father, brother, brother and brother
We who were
Will not be - O Sing unto us -
Slender & bright as Crimson silk
Rolled into the sky
A ribbon under whatever God
Gentle unto that loving, endless night
Absolutely, forever may it be
The total song Unchoked.

While Choking
By Daniel Silliman

Gasp!
Gargle!
Hahhhhgg!

Must
have
Heimlich
maneuver

I choked and as I choked
it grew worse. “Water,” gasped.

that one damned bone
irony of strangulation
food cum death,
or is it qua?
food qua death
eating a good meal gone bad
that punk of a
grim reaper chicken
sickle of a bone in my throat.

From Stephanie Young:

On Choking: the use and abuse of pronouns in cases of self medication, a mystery strung together by commas, exactly the type of sentence that can cause a person to choke, a room with four walls, I choked on my latte, or choked with contempt, caught on her own words, being choked from behind, her own voice, all attempts to properly organize the father, "I saw how she touched you!", the line had a lot of static, your voice periodically sounds like a cell phone that has lost its connection, pieces of the email may break off, illegal jelly treats, "I am tiny!", choked up with emotion and stumbling over her own words, who is the misanthrope in the following sentence? My voice choked, and the words I could not speak to you quite choked my heart.

Keep on chokin'...

From Jack Kimball:

We were headed to Miami. Oh pure transcendence!
Oh Boston sings! Yo Chicago to the rear!
And all grew hushed. But in that Boston silence
NY singled, homered and changed everythin dear.

Quiet creatures gather from the Bronx,
unhurried forest out of New York, and nest;
and so now Miami must have their stealthiness
that was not born out of cunning or of funks,
but just from chocking. Chicago, first -- the roar
seemed tiny to Boston hearts. And where before
there barely stood a bat boy to take this in,

a wailing crowd hides within the deepest darkest Fens,
for Boston lost its entryway as beanpots trembled --
as NY builds for Marlins thus a sacrificial temple.

Yet More Chokepo

FIVE SECURITY ZONES
Aaron Kunin

point of a building's
shadow enters you
Ferdinand Lopez

(are you carrying
anything that will
set off the alarm)

at Tenway Junction
(the security
guard sees that you have

no destination)
through a cloud choking
the sky's mouth minus

(smashed into bloody
atoms) his face said
get back on the train

A choke poem from Kent Johnson [revised].

I was having dinner with Francis Picabia, Kurt Schwitters, and the Count of Lautreamont. Some other minor poets of the pre-war years were there. Lautreamont was dead, of course, and his boiled body was being served in thin slices stuffed into baguettes the shape of milkweed pods. Everything was going famously, Picabia was making Vvvvv sounds, holding the severed wheel of his crashed Belogna; Ball was flapping his papier-mache wings at top velocity; and Man Ray’s three girlfriends, with their pointed, penitent hoods, were drinking absinthe and whispering mysteriously near the lime tree. Then it happened that Breton gave his ten year old, bowl-cutted son, Aragon, a slice of the Count’s perfectly shaped derriere. The child swallowed and immediately commenced to gag and retch, his little hands going to his throat, like the hands of a shot head of state, and he turned violet throughout the whole area of his body. Nadja began to scream, and Breton began to shout, though not words, but primal commands. The sounds coming from the child were those of crows, or something else I cannot yet name. In this moment of crisis, I didn’t choke, nosiree, I did not: I sprinted over and performed the maneuver I had brought with me from the future, the Heimlich, as it is known, wrapping my arms around the little Stalinist brat and squeezing and lifting his rib cage with all my might in five rapid successions. It worked. There on the parquet floor, ejected and writhing, covered in a film of slime, was a baby shark. "How on earth did that get into him?" cried Lacan. "I don’t know, but I could give a shit," said Gertrude Stein. "Pass the butter."

Must have more choke poems! Send 'em if you got 'em! Write 'em if you don't!

More Chokepo

small parts
Alli Warren



appearances show

the mouth

floods repeatedly

chokes on

pronoun

in the study

red wax

in the head

err on the side

one will

still not

a cure

UNTOWARD
Eileen Tabios

She has not looked back for three years. For three years, she lived her life by skimming the thinnest surfaces of an ice-covered body of water -- what she did for ecstasy billowed the sails pulling her iceboat. She could twitch the rudder so easily to return to thicker ice or solid ground. But bliss is addictive, even as she feels her bones thinning from a lack of rest. She sensed that looking behind herself would present the painful image of white shards fragmenting black water. So she continues to knife towards the horizon as if the horizon could be a destination. Perhaps a point exists ahead where the ice gives way to warm water thickened by salt -- it doesn't make her less or more eager. "Our deepest sense of what is fair and generous gets tossed aside so quickly in favor of a powerfully racing heart."* Untoward, she has grown accustomed to breathing through her drowning.



----------------------------
* Quote is from "My Russian" by Deirdre McNamara (Ballantine, 1999)

Did You Mean to Search For: "I choked"?
Gary Sullivan

[for Tim Yu]

As I saw what had become of them
a horrified shudder fled through my skin
and I caught a gasp in my throat
I chocked on the gasp and as I chocked

it grew. When they gave me processed
stew I chocked just a little bit again I asked
Dude I just almost choked on whater
Sarah: water!! Lisa: hee Sarah: What's

worse i almost typed chocked Lisa: I chocked
on whater! Help! In other fine moments
of recent days I had the most awful tasting
cough syrup ever ... I think it was Bill's Ocean

the name escapes me now but I was glad to
see Bill! I chocked the wheels with beer cans
gagged a few times but he just laughed.
After what seemed like hours he finally came

I chocked on his cum as it shot into my mouth
"Please let me come" I chocked through tears.
I used to go to this little dinky porn theater
on Melrose and I gagged but continued to suck

Would it kill you to ignore those M&M's I ate
a couple days ago? Could you let those french fries
I chocked down yesturday just slide on by!?
Then, someone must have come and unplugged it

because I wasn't so happy anymore
I chocked it up to his being an ex-seminarian
standing there naked masturbating! I feel sick
every time I think about it.

At the time I chocked it up as an unimportant
forgettable drunken moment.
And then I chocked myself full of Apple n Peach
And then my stomach hurt. Hm, it's the meat

attacking me one last time! Yes, I think
that must be true because I chocked during dinner
too. Haha, yes, okay ... I chocked it all up
to being a new mother--all those new duties

nightly feedings diapers bottles laundry
I felt nervous and excited all at the same time.
"You look absolutely beautiful"
I chocked out as we sat down

"Take your time and order whatever you like
I love you girly. So, yah, the time when i
chocked on you hair very funny
for me ha ha ha i went blah morning evil

morning carnt think." "Megatron, new body,
stronger!" I chocked. Optimus patted my back.
"It's okay Son, Megatron isn't here." he said.
Suddenly my mouth became very dry I was

exhausted but I chocked that up to not
listening to an album. I mean purely
because of the album. I hope the songs
keep coming. Ah the Souls. Imagining

vampires in every corner I chocked
the door open with my short sword
and we carefully pulled each coffin out
before opening the lids ... nothing.

Four-by-Five Pronoun Choke
Chris Murray

Choked? You? Never on!
Say, no I had to.
Say, no sequin love
could ever be It--

shining this sequence
in that final big.
Nor. Displaced, stepped off
to another choke,

struck full of wonder
bread: break-through preserv-
atives, man. Just do
It like shoes: Us

It was, pair as They
say, We: some big They
show. If She, always
He He anyway.

The Choke Goes On

From Ben Friedlander:

AFTER E. E. CUMMINGS

"could've been should've been would
have been without a doubt but
only if that kerry kood've
kept his wits for one more out,"
emits the drunken sadeyed lout


And from Patrick Durgin:

I will not regret choking
but self-medicate instead.

She asked me to dance but I wouldn't
and answered in fact that I couldn't;
then I limped to the bar
with my head in the stars
and retrieved my false pride where I put it.

More Choke Poetics

Courtesy of K. Silem Mohammad. Keep 'em coming!

Bourgeois Family Christmas

In February 1985, my throat and mouth
muscles lost all coordination.
I could not swallow and began
choking on my own saliva.

Due to a sore throat I had been swallowing
too frequently over and over repeatedly
like a mentally retarded dog, and was
choking on my own saliva.

Time: 5:33 pm. I started feeling all sorts
of "bad weird." Is that a mood?
I felt as if though I was
choking on my own saliva.

Thank fortune, I had gone to the bathroom
before I left work. Rather than
wetting myself, I settled for
choking on my own saliva.

I had a seizure in the kitchen
of my mom’s house, passing out
watching my hand slap uncontrollably while
choking on my own saliva.

The huge brown spider jumped on me!
Then I woke up panicking. The rest of the day,
my right eye was twitching wildly and I was
choking on my own saliva.

They tell me I will get so I will choke
on my food and evidentially get so
I can’t swallow and will end up
choking on my own saliva.

Who knows? See below for even bigger,
better results. Oh sweet Mary,
mother of Jesus. I am
choking … on … my … own … saliva.

"You mean my c-cock and … and balls?"
He nodded. "W-what … h-happened?"
I could barely find my voice and felt myself
choking on my own saliva.

I said, "Hello, Sanzo? Can I get a ride home?"
Response. Nothing. —What? My breath came
in gasps. I swallowed, almost
choking on my own saliva.

Current Mood: annoyed.
(ANSWER da PHONE).
September 8th, 2003. 12:00 pm —> *cOugH
Yes. There was a lot of saliva.

Don’t hate the playa hate the game!
___________________
___________________
I’m choking on my own saliva

People will kill me for this, but I remembered
choking on my own saliva
when I discovered that some phrases
I couldn’t recognize at all as Japanese were

off in my world of gnomes that strip and breakdance HAMMER TIME…
cuz I had that hideous mouth holder thingy and he had to push on it a li’l
to reach my back teeth and I kept saying no, while
choking on my own saliva.

Eleven years ago, I smoked two packs
of menthol cigarettes a day. However
there are no answers for preventing
choking on my own saliva.

Choke Poetics

Now soliciting: "choke" poetry from all corners, from Oakland to Boston to Chicago to Minnesota and anywhere victory inexplicably slips away. Send it here and I'll post it. Look for the anthology at a concession stand near you in April.

Here's a contribution from Taylor Brady:

CHOKING IN OAKLAND (for Terence Long)

How do you not swing?
An almost perfect bond

unites the man with thousands
circling him. He joins them
watching him as on a screen

he watches life seep from

things watched. A watch

is not a clock. It holds
the wrist stiff, outside

the time in which a flick
or stroke would come in time.
The pigeon in the field knows
your eye is there. Doesn‚t care.

"I Choked"

I didn't do it. I choked back the tears
and didn't sleep a wink last night.
Definition found in 1: "I laughed so hard
I choked on my spit!" Bottom line: my
frou-frou bottled water, my fanatical
apathy ruined my life.
Other people lose jobs = I make money.
Holdsclaw: I think I shed a tear--
oops--I think I choked her,
a little dark joint winking
in the dark warm narcotic American night.
Here's a tale of the annual company barbeque:
you sucked, i choked on an undercooked
mailing list. That's
what lack of Baan work does to you.
It looks like a really trashy
hotel infested your new layout.
Sweet Jesus, I choked on a cookie!!
Well, when it came time to use the knowledge
that I thought had been firmly ingrained in my head,
on my first real day as a Dartmouth student,
ready to get ya jugglar vein slit/ your now dealin with
the scallop at the eat off.
I choked on a radish and the radish
had no name.

Cubs Elegy

You might want to add his sun-
shine side to the shuffle: don't

think you're so safe when you're
ground down & packed in.

Aloof, you're reaching the
point of prowess when,

as it would if you
hadn't been there, bat-

man hands wing out
like a wavefront. By

this prior arrangement we've
gathered sticks and stone-

pressed ice cream, horn-
rough beers and garlic

tones: but wait
for that gutter leaf to fall

from the year where someone
must have painted it.

I must have missed this, but The Skeptic and I were both citing Creeley in the discussion of linebreaks last week.

The latest poetry superstar...P-Gizzi?

No joy in Blogville tonight.

Well. Go Sox. The only thing more boring than mainstream poetry would be a Yankees-Marlins Series.

Oops. When I said that Nick's blogroll was "no longer his own," I did not mean to imply that the EPC had somehow seized editorial control of his links list--just that Nick's own blogroll was now appearing on the EPC--though I can totally see how what I said could be interpreted as meaning the former.

In fact, as Nick explains, the only change Nick made in the blogroll to post it up at the EPC was to alphabetize it; otherwise it is his and his alone.

My cryptic comment might also have been taken to mean that I think putting a blogroll up at the EPC is a bad idea, which I don't. I've always found the EPC to be an absolutely crucial resource, a kind of home base for many poets I'm interested in (and sometimes the only place on the web you'll ever find anything about a lot of them), and I think that poetry bloggers and readers have many points of connection--if not overlap--with the readers and writers served by the EPC. It makes sense to me that EPC users, many of whom may not be regular blog readers, ought to have some kind of gateway into the blogging poetry conversation that's going on.

It also seems to me that Nick is the perfect person to ask to do such a thing. He's been blogging as long as any of us; he has ties to a large community of writers, including bloggers and those associated with the EPC; and he's never allowed himself to get dragged into some of the squabbling that goes on among some of us at times. Most importantly, though, he's been a great supporter of other bloggers and an enthusiastic and comprehensive linker--generous and fair in this regard, more so than almost anyone. Putting together this list for the EPC just seems like an extension of what he's often done on his blog, which is highlight blogs, old and new, that he really enjoys and trying to help get them the audience they deserve.

That said...My comment may have betrayed some ambivalence about the idea of having an "EPC Blog List" at all, in part precisely because of the central role the EPC does play as an on-line poetry gateway. The EPC has a centrality and officialness, and I wonder if the EPC list will come to be seen as "definitive" by people, not so much by bloggers themselves but by non-bloggers who are just coming to the thing.

Part of this is just an inevitable effect of making any catalog or list. I always think, in this respect, of Ron Silliman's introduction to In the American Tree, where Silliman writes that "there are literally dozens of other poets and writers whose work has both influence and been influenced by the debate reflected in these pages" and that "a volume of absolutely comparable worth" could be constructed from their work--and then goes on to list eighty other writers who were not included. (This in an unusually generously proportioned anthology that already fills over 600 pages and includes some forty writers.) Yet ultimately a choice had to be made, leaving some in and some out for reasons that might in retrospect (or even at the time) seem pretty arbitrary.

The blogroll, at least, doesn't have this restriction, in that it can be infinitely expanded. And I do think that having one person's blogroll, formed by personal preference and experience, make up "the list" is far preferable to having the EPC folks officially arbitrate who's in and out; Nick's list is, I'd like to think, much more a report from the field than a carefully vetted table of contents, and will, I imagine, continue to grow.

Nick's blogroll is no longer his own; it's the "EPC Blog List", edited by Nick Piombino.

The rain's finally stopped--depriving me of the chance to try out that new raincoat I'd bought for a damp Bay Area winter, not a soggy Chicago fall--so it looks like Game 6 is a go.

Cassie in her own private deer head nation.

Enjoying the cut-ups and collages at Ironic Cinema, esp. the writing-through of Proust:

legend were my sorrows

my room the light arms
of my mother

Speaking of favorite montages--though I admit being the film rube I am I'm not even sure this really is one--I have the screenplay of Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould here and was flipping through it and remembering the scene where Gould goes into a truck stop to have breakfast (all bundled up & anonymous) and begins eavesdropping on people's conversations, first one strand (a busted flirtation) then another (two truckers swapping road stories), the camera cutting from one conversation to the next with increasing rapidity, then occasionally back to Gould who is sitting at his table, listening, conducting what has obviously become a fugue with the tips of his fingers, until his food arrives and he puts a whole lot of ketchup on it.

Jeffrey Jullich's original query about line breaks (to which I was responding earlier this week) is posted over at Silliman's Blog, along with Silliman's own, very interesting, reflections on the matter.

from Summi Kaipa...

Interlope #9 is out!

Interlope, the journal of Asian American poetics, has just released its 9th issue featuring work by:

Minal Hajratwala
Michelle Naka-Pierce
Jerrold Shiroma
Ken Tanemura
Hung Q. Tu
Tim Yu

Single issues are available for individuals at $5/each. Please send checks (payable to Summi Kaipa) to:

Interlope
PO Box 423058
San Francisco, CA 94142

NEWS: Interlope #10, to be published this winter, will be the final issue of the magazine. It has been a rewarding endeavor, and I thank all of you who have supported it. If you know writers who might be a good fit for this last issue, please forward them to summikaipa@earthlink.net.

An email came in (no, don't worry, a very nice one) over the weekend from Jeffrey Jullich, asking, in the wake of the discussion of Linda Pastan over at lime tree, what "lines" and "meter" even mean these days--can it be measured by conventional scansion, is it some kind of intuitive going on your nerve, is it an anarchic free-verse-for-all, or--worse yet--a residue that we all just use like robots?

Good question, Jeffrey. This is probably going to get me violently flung out of grad school, but I must say I've never seen any point in conventional scansion--you know, the funny little accentual marks that some English teacher along the way probably put over a line of poetry, or that you might find in the first few enthusiastically marked-up pages of your used copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Not that it doesn't have its uses, or that I haven't used such means to make a literary argument. But when I see any critic, no matter how brilliant, from Jakobson to Vendler, try to make an argument for the meaning of such rhythms, I admire the ingenuity, but am skeptical about how defensible such a conclusion really is. Usually what's happening is that said critic is simply explaining how the rhythm enhances the paraphrasable content of the text, thus demonstrating the poem's perfect unity; yet that critic might find him- or herself arguing that the same figure means precisely the opposite thing in another poem, given context. Nothing wrong with that; but it makes me wonder what scanning a poem really gets you.

As for my own writing--well, I've noticed that while I rarely write in conventional meter, the rhythms of my lines are extremely regular, sometimes (to me, at least) sickeningly so. I essentially seem to have two modes--a more discursive/expansive one, with long lines, and in this case my lines always seem to have precisely four stresses per line, though the number of syllables is totally elastic. In my more minimalist mode, it's generally two stresses per line, which usually translates for me to two or three strongly stressed words per line.

What gives? Well, these stress patterns seem to me (at least) to give the language a certain charge that I need to recognize soomething as poetic language. Hopelessly retrograde, I know, but there it is.

As for line breaks, they seem to be more radical for me in my shorter poems, where I often like to break phrases in the middle--a lot of heavy enjambment. For me, I guess, the king of the linebreak is still Creeley--the first time I saw "a" or "the" dangling at the end of one of his lines it blew my mind. The use of the linebreak against syntax is its major function for me, at least in these poems; it generates the tension that forces attention.

A couple years ago I was in a workshop where we were supposed to write a letter (fan mail, basically) to a writer (living or dead) we admired. I picked Creeley, and looking back at the thing it was mostly focused on Creeley's lines, so I'm going to paste it in here. I've toyed with the idea of actually sending the letter but have never really got up the guts.

---

Dear Robert Creeley,

Hearing you read for the first time—the sense of your voice, a new sense of how the movement of your lines mapped that voice precisely, the line breaks your actual hesitations, stutters, doubts. Your speech-rhythms naturalized what on the page seemed so fragmented, language exposing its own seams. The look of your poems was, then, deeply personal, grounded in your body and breath, form merely the extension of content.

And yet I think also of what you said of Williams—how you were surprised when you heard him read, reading right through his line breaks, when you had thought of them as full stops, the line pulled up sharply at its end. Your Williams was the Williams you saw, not heard, and you took his radical breaking of the line, the sentence, and the phrase as a model for your own even more severe practice.

When I look at your work what I see is speech, but speech struggling to birth itself out of the uncompromisingly objective materials of language. Your poems are full of "I," but so often I appears at the end of a line, the phrase that would give it content broken:

John, I
sd

Locate I
love you

Splitting these atomic phrases releases a kind of syntactic energy; the incomplete I leans forward over the line’s edge. It’s this kind of energy I have tried to harness in my own writing—an energy that can be produced by the simplest phrase left incomplete or dangling. And these are more than games. Language itself is your drama. Your poems make profoundly moving, and human, the exploration and relation of nouns, prepositions, even numbers.

An individual line can seem reduced to the point of nonsense. Yet somehow its compression and movement is lyric, in part because you find the burden of the lyric past in every particle of language. It risks banality, for not every reader will agree to grant each word this weight. Perhaps the best work is circular, turning obsessively back on the same words again and again until their histories are revealed—basic, embodied, utterly new.

The crazy-warm weather--it's in the 80s today--is killing the Cubs but bringing out the ladybugs, who have been wakened from their hibernation and are menacing downtown pedestrians. I tried looking out the living-room window this morning and found my vision obscured by about two dozen ladybugs clinging to the inside of the screen and crawling up and down the pane. One ladybug is cute; twenty is a conspiracy.

Well, at least the"Racial Privacy" initiative went down. I'd been planning to keep my race private, but I guess there's no hiding it now. Look out. Raar.

I knew it was going to be tight, but I didn't expect Davis and Bustamente to get pasted quite that badly.

Cubs lose, Arnold wins. The forces of good are having a rough night.

Chris Murray explains, quite sensibly, why that debate ain't happening.

I received a huffy email this morning from Michael Neff of Web Del Sol, accusing a number of us, mostly bloggers, of all manner of things, including "lack of nerve, peer fear, bad advice, psychotic break, diabetes, blog mouth, whatever, who the hell knows."

Our apparent crime was sabotaging the "poetry debate" ("post-avant" vs. "mainstream") proposed by Kent Johnson over at lime tree a few weeks back. Kent emailed a bunch of us to ask if we were interested in participating. I'd responded with some trepidation but basically said sure, why not.

That was the last I'd heard of it until Neff's venom landed in my inbox. A follow-up email from Neff declared the whole affair "a supreme waste of time" and a product of "bloggish, borish sniping."

Well. I like to think that in my brief blogging career I haven't been much of a sniper, and I can't think of many bloggers on Neff's email list who are either. But I don't appreciate it when people I don't know and have never had any interaction with start sending me emails basically accusing me of cowardice for no apparent reason.

For the record, I missed the whole Houlihan affair in transit--it happened while I was driving out here from California--and so really don't know what all the bad blood is about. I eventually did take a quick glance at the offending essay and was a bit surprised that there'd be so much rallying against an attack on Fence, which has been the subject of much withering critique from some experimental corners as well. The broader point--about the emergence of an avant-garde "establishment"--isn't such a bad one. Fence's slickness does make me queasy at times, even as much as I like the work that appears there.

Even Houlihan's dismantling of poems didn't strike me as all that surprising; the central point, that the individual words in each poem just "didn't matter" and could be exchanged with any other, has been made just as forcefully about "mainstream" writing by people from Marjorie Perloff to Ron Silliman. What "matters" depends on what framework you're using. Houlihan's takes on individual lines--

The word “muzzles” is an odd, perhaps inventive choice that may hit us later as the perfect one. For now, however, there's the troubling “that.” What is the referent for “that” if not the “axiom's inversion” from the preceding line? But how does the inversion of an axiom “muzzle”? At least the word “muzzle” is enjoyable, connoting a forced silence, a softened violence. In fact, all of the words are somewhat enjoyable: axle, evacuation, inversion, muzzle.

--wouldn't necessarily be out of place in a piece of pro-avant-garde criticism. Houlihan simply believes that a good poem should be obligated to offer up answers to these questions more readily than I do; these questions, for her, are dead ends rather than beginnings.

What I imagine really got people angry was that sense of the old wars being fought again, e.g. in Houlihan's last paragraph, comparing avant-garde writing to "the early stages of dementia." Okay. But even Fredric Jameson labeled the sensibility of Bob Perelman's "China" "schizophrenic," not to mention Jakobson and aphasia.

No, what's distinctive about Houlihan's position is that it's one of resentment--Harold Bloom likes to talk about the "School of Resentment," but here the dynamic is precisely inverted: it's the avant-garde that seems to be in ascendance, forcing its willfull anti-pleasures on the rest of us. It's that which gives the essay its bitter tone, that keeps Houlihan from arranging her close readings into productive rather than desctructive constellations.

And I guess that must be what's behind Neff's attack as well. Note how bloggers are made a particular target, with Neff trumpeting the virtues of his own "bust-ass-everyday" Web venture.

I guess this is exactly what I was afraid of: that this "debate" idea would degenerate into name-calling, power play, resentment, giving those identified with the "mainstream" a smug satisfaction in having opened their big tent to the rabble, giving some avanters a different stage on which to promenade.

Part of me wants to say that the very binary of the debate--mainstream vs. avant-garde--is the problem, that it just doesn't correspond to what things look like these days. But not because of what you might think--that we're all just getting along now, that the mainstream has opened its big heart and the avant-garde has settled down. It's that--and this seems to be what Houlihan is so steamed about--the avant-garde wing of contemporary poetry has gotten so big and influential that it's spawned its own institutions, its own "mainstream," if you will, which has little or nothing to do with the old "official verse culture" of the bad old days--as if my dream were still to publish in the New Yorker or Poetry. There are now multiple centers of gravity. But that does not mean they don't still have relations of power and conflict with each other. It's more that in the debate of mainstream vs. avant-garde there's really no prize for anyone to win; after it's over we'll just go back to doing what we've been doing--for better or worse, in some relative degree of comfort.

But of course the avant- wouldn't be very avant- if it weren't still pissing some people off.

THE DISCRETE SERIES @ 3030

presents Steve Benson :: Graham Foust

**Note the earlier time-- This event begins at 7 pm**

[Steve Benson is the author of Roaring Spring (Zasterle Press) and Blue Book (The Figures/Roof Press). He is known for incorporating collage of elements of previously written texts as well as wholesale oral improvisation into his poetry readings. Benson lived in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1970's and 80's where he was an important member of the Language Poetry community. He currently lives in Maine.]

[Graham Foust is the author of As in every Deafness (Flood Editions, 2003). His poetry has appeared in several publications including Jacket, Lingo, Slope, and DC Poetry anthology. He lives in Iowa where he teaches at Drake University.]

Friday, Oct. 10 7PM / 3030 W. Cortland / $5 suggested donation / BYOB

3030 is a former Pentecostal church located at 3030 W. Cortland Ave., one block south of Armitage between Humboldt Blvd. and Kedzie. Parking is easiest on Armitage.

The Discrete Series will present an event of poetry/music/performance/something on the second Friday of each month.
For more information about this or upcoming events, email j_seldess@hotmail.com or kerri@conundrumpoetry.com, or call the space at 773-862-3616.

October twofer: Next week, 10/17, come back at 9 pm for readings by Lisa Samuels and Brian Henry

There is a particular kind of embarrassment that follows feeling ill after eating something you cooked yourself.

Okay, all you Californians: please go to the polls tomorrow and vote against this stupid recall. Let me remember you with pride.

And while you're at it, vote no on 54.

It turns out new Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee is a sometime professor at the University of Chicago, which is why Robin reports unexplained sightings of him around campus. The U of C press release confirms his misanthropy: "We currently do not expect Coetzee to be available for interviews but have arranged for colleagues to speak about him."

The university did issue a statement from Coetzee, which is even less revealing:

"I received the news in a phone call from Stockholm at 6 this morning. It came as a complete surprise-I was not even aware that the announcement was pending. I am particularly happy that the announcement has come during this autumn quarter, which is the time of year that I spend at the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago, and in particular the Committee on Social Thought, has been my intellectual home for the past seven years. Saul Bellow, my literary predecessor on the Committee, won the prize in 1976. This year I am teaching two courses with colleagues here-a course on Plato with the philosopher Jonathan Lear, and a course on Walt Whitman with the poet Mark Strand. And I am of course continuing with my own work. I am working on new fiction, and I have a book of translations of Dutch poets due out shortly."

I imagine his class enrollment numbers will be up a bit.

When Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize, Harvard kicked him upstairs by creating something called the "Ralph Waldo Emerson Poet in Residence," which meant he no longer had to teach, just be.

The Trib article about Coetzee is godawful, obviously mostly cribbed off the Web. I think saying a book is a "timeless fable of the human condition" is now a federal offense.

I haven't tried playing "Stay Up Later Than Nick" in a while. Well, two words: job market.

Hey Bookslut: Welcome to Chicago.

And they are not making you pay to use the bathroom in Borders. Are they? It's probably that awful one on Michigan Avenue, the one the sad carriage-pulling horses park in front of.

Well, come on down to Hyde Park: Seminary Co-op. 57th St. Books. Powell's. Just take the #6 bus. And if you must go (ha) to our new Borders, the toilets are free of charge. For now.

All of Aimee's Buckeye talk is reminding me of my high school geometry teacher, a fiftyish eccentric dandy and sweet guy who did things like wear a pink suit on Valentine's day. Anyway, every year on the day of the big Ohio State-Michigan game, he'd come to school decked out head to toe in OSU gear: Buckeye cap, jacket, sweatpants, the works. Then, during his classes (and he'd repeat this act for every single class during the course of the day) he'd stop in the middle of class and announce, "This is the day when the Buckeyes of Ohio State meet the Wolverines of Michigan." (He'd pronounce this last word "Meeeesh-igan"--does this have some significance, Buckeye fans?) As he launched into a stirring speech about the proud history of the game and of the Buckeyes, he would proceed to take off his clothes, piece by piece--at which point it would be revealed that he was in fact wearing many layers of Ohio State gear, until he was down to an OSU T-shirt and shorts. (Add this to the "you couldn't do that in school anymore" file, along with the time I menaced a squeamish labmate of mine during frog dissection with a pair of blunt scissors.) He would then draw himself up and give a rousing rendition of the Ohio State fight song, ending with a high note on the "O-hi-ooooo!"

In case anyone doubts this, I caught it on tape for our video yearbook.

I suggest that Aimee name her new dog "Haiku."

I'm ashamed to admit that I've never actually read any of Coetzee's books; Robin (who's much better read in contemporary fiction than I am) keeps scaring me off them by telling me how harrowing they are. I have seen him a couple times around Stanford, though, where he's been a visiting professor.

I heard him read from Youth last year. He has a remarkable voice: small, precise, dry, literally chilling to listen to; if any living writer embodies the Yeatsian dictum to "cast a cold eye" it's him. Youth is ostensibly memoir but told in the third person; musings that would seem self-indulgent, as when the young Coetzee wonders about his future as a writer and about the quality of his work, are regarded with such detachment--and at times, with such withering contempt--that the effect is quite the opposite: no one could be harder on Coetzee than Coetzee. The action, at least in the section he read to us from, was utterly dull, recounting Coetzee's work as a computer analyst at a British military base: little there but the routines of work, awkward meals with the one acquaintance he seems to make, the loneliness of his room. It was a memoir actually driven by self-hatred; the drama lay not in the events but in the sometimes palapable disgust of the backwards glance.

Coetzee seems to be one of those people who is truly a misanthrope by temperment rather than from embittered experience. By all accounts he was unfailingly polite when forced into conversation, but preferred to remain in his office with the door closed, and would rarely give more than one-sentence answers to questions breathlessly posed by students or fans.

J.M. Coetzee has won the Nobel Prize for literature (thanks Jordan).

Memo from our department administrator: "The Mac's have all been upgraded to OS X and are suffering."

Wish my snacking habits were as healthy as Stephanie's. I'm about to go park myself in front of Cubs-Braves Game 2 with Pringles on my left hand and Chicken in a Biskits on my right. (The latter taste extremely good with milk, in a third-grade kind of way.)

Cubs win!