I'm in Chicago. I'm at Josh's place. I slept on his couch. I ate pizza with Josh and Lily last night.I think we're going to walk around today, bookstores and stuff. There's Josh now, in full-body pajamas, starting to make some coffee. He just smelled the coffee and said, "oh yeah."

I'm going to forget about my semester's final projects for a few days and instead I will grow out my hair and drive this car, hard, to Chicago, swim up the Schlitz River, and read my poems at Danny's with Christian Hawkey. This Wednesday night at 7:30 sharp. If you are reading this right now, and are in/near Chicago, then you should come hear the two of us read our little hearts out, despite your own final exams. Fail your classes, but do not fail me.

Oh, man. Press Press Press is heating up the holiday season. Press Press Press! Press Press Press! In your face! You like Press Press Press!

This is what my night looked like tonight. Walking around. Grading papers. Walking around.

Last two weeks of the semester. I feel like this. I feel like lying on floors. I feel like how lying on floors feels.

The ice storm of death was no match for the Clean Part faithful. Despite the time and venue change, the crowd showed. Cindy, Jason and Jen were brilliant, flexible, generous, funny, reassuring, brave, and good-smelling. Most of the day Saturday was about kinship, patronage, and drinking. The readers and the audience for this series constantly renew my faith in poetry, and this is all without losing it in the first place. Thank you.

The Clean Part Tonight: New Location! New Time!

Because of the ice storm, UNL closed campus today. Which means the Sheldon Art Gallery is also closed. Which means the Clean Part can not take place at the Sheldon Art Gallery tonight.

Plan B: The Clean Part Reading will be at Jones Coffee, 727 S 11th st (at 11th & G) at 6:30pm (NOT 7 pm, 6:30).

Jason Bredle, Cynthia Arrieu-King & Jen Tynes have traveled in from Denver, Chicago and Cincinnati. Please come to support their reading despite the weather.

Dave and I invited 3 or so people to our Hott Cider Party in our office today at 3. We were very excited, planning our day so that we would be prepared in time to host. Dave gathered up a few mugs for the cider while I tidied up the office and found a good online holiday radio channel. Everything was set. Then nobody showed up. Dave and I just sat there, two little hosts without guests. In our swivel chairs swiveling. We talked for a while, avoiding the obvious. But then, at one point the conversation went like this:

Z: Microwaves are weird.
D: Microwaves are weird.
Z: Yeah.
(long silence...we both sip from our cider at the same time...long silence)
Z: I bet my beard looks different in firelight.

The last one of the semester. C'mon, c'mon. You might win a pie. Probably won't though.

A and I raked leaves today (before going to the library for quiet study time). She took the front lawn and I took the flat roof (rake the roof!). I listened to appropriate music for the activity, made appropriate only by the names of the bands: The Fall, The Clean, and The Decemberists (exact albums pictured below).

Crowd around crowd around. Rabbit Light Movies are now online. Grab a pillow and some snacks. Listen first to the Stephanie Young in Episode #5. Become a better person.

If you live in Missoula, or within some sort of reasonable radius of Missoula, you should listen to the New Lakes Poetry Radio Show on Thursday nights from 8-10 on 89.9. If you don't live in Missoula, you should check this out. You like poems? You like my poems? You like songs? This will get you through the holidays.

Today, at a local sandwich establishment, in order to save a dollar, I ordered a water and recieved the clear and small plastic cup designated strictly for water consumption. When I got to the soda fountain, I decided that instead of water, I would fill my clear plastic cup full of lemonade. The employee who was wiping down the counter and picking up straw wrappers near the machine explained to me that I had a cup designated for water only and that I should not be filling it with lemonade. I told him that I was getting water--just water with some lemon in it.

Here are a couple of books you should buy.

Someone in the English deparment here threw out an LP called Skate Along with the Mighty Wurlitzer: Jimmy Boyce Playing the Famous Alexandria Rink Pipe Organ. I'm pretty excited to take it home. Maybe move the furniture out of the way and go to town in my socks on the hard wood floor. I also want to say Rink Pipe Organ over and over again.

Other stuff I'm currently listening to:

The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place by Explosions in the Sky
EP by Fiery Furnaces
Person Pitch by Panda Bear
Random Spirit Lover by Sunset Rubdown
In Our Bedroom After the War by Stars

(notice that 4 of the 5 band names are fire-ish)

Give me a minute. I'm under here.

Today, on my walk across campus to buy a bunch of tape for Octopus send-outs, a man holding a Ron Paul sign was handing out dum-dums. I appreciate free dum-dums. The dum-dums had Ron Paul information attached to them. The dum-dums then weren't exactly free, but a little more like a sneaky trick. He dropped his bag of dum-dums and it was windy. The dum-dums went everywhere. Maybe about 100 of them. Nobody stopped to help pick them up. Some people stepped on some of the dum-dums. I stopped and helped. I feel that this gesture of mine was equal parts: my love for people especially in a time of minor tragedy (ultimately a selfish gesture perhaps because helping makes me feel good about myself) and my love for democracy. I was thinking about democracy while I was picking up the dum-dums. I was looking at the flavor of each one. Here's a pineapple one. A banana one. I love democracy. I love it like I would love a twin brother. A brother I love as much as myself. A brother who has got caught up in meth, lives in my basement, and steals change from my children's piggy bank.

Today the Octopus Books collective is gathering in the Octopus cave and pounding out all of the copies of our newest and 11th chapbook, Document by Ana Bozicevic-Bowling. We're doing this for you. It is now available for you to buy. These might not last until the AWP bookfair, so don't dilly dally.

Read some poems from Document here

Adam said some flattering things about the reading last night. I believe most of them, but I thought it'd be better for you to hear it from him. I'm also trying to figure out if he called me physical attractive.

If you go to ONE reading this week, go to Harryette Mullen's. Its on Thurday night (11/8) at 7pm, Nebraska Wesleyan University Visiting Writers Series in the Callen Conference center.

If you go to TWO readings, then come see James Jay and I at UNO. 7:30. Weber Art Gallery. Apparently you can listen live to a taped interview I gave to Omaha's own KVNO tomorrow at 8:30 and 5 here. If I remember correctly, I'm quite bumbly and inarticulate.

Also, I am not as intense as I look in the poster. I will not eat your face off.

My sis, K, came over. It's a monday night thing now. We dusted off the 'tari and got down. Beep boop beep.