oh no!

when i signed in (as robotdinosaurswithhumanhearts--i was hoping to change our blog colors in an attempt to re-reinvigorate discussion) blogger requested an 'upgrade' to google or something. i foolishly complied and now a bunch of stuff is missing--including some of our fine robotdinosaurs! these people:
knee hi mink, Big_Concrete, glass as selves, sefket, ray-ray, mother of bear, many copies, Kinky McDoogle, Esq., !devotchka!, DeusExMachina, party of my heart, Toochi-toochi

are missing from the sidebar! i will try to fix this, but maybe the quickest route to figuring out what's wrong would be all the above lovelies posting. why not just tell the other robotdinosaurs some good news. or tell us where you live, what you're reading, what you had for lunch.

Or I could just eat wasabi....

This is sort of related to Toochi-Toochi's post below and I could've posted it as a comment but I am feeling exhibitionist, which is rare, so I thought I'd seize the feeling and run with it.

I'm not going to blame MFA programs because I don't think they're the only, or even the main, cause of this phenomenon but so much recent stuff I read is oh-so-clever, such smooth talk, such lithe vocabularies, and so little else -- it's been so long, so very long, since I've read anything recent that made me cry. Is it just me? Am I just not finding the right books? This has been an obsession of mine for a while. I keep coming back to it; I may have already posted about it here but I am too lazy to scroll down and see if I did and anyway almost no one posts on here so it's not like I'm taking up space that someone else wanted and besides only 3 (three) people still read this thing so it's not like I'm taking up too much collective time either.

I like to cry when I read. At the ends of books, in the middle, even at the beginning if it feels earned (actually, if it doesn't feel earned, I *don't* cry, so I guess I don't need to qualify that). I cry while reading *children's* books, not just the obvious ones like Charlotte's Web and Watership Down (homeless bunnies! Who doesn't cry for them?), but even The Railway Children, The Wind in the Willows, certain bits of The House at Pooh Corner. So it's not like I'm a hard sell. But more and more it seems that sentiment has gone out of fashion, or that all sentiment is dismissed as melodrama, or that emotion can only be approached with irony. Maybe it's the South Asian in me -- maybe I'm hard-wired to love emotion writ large, on the Bollywood scale: loud, wet tears, sadness that kills, fury that makes people gasp. Oh, don't get me wrong, I think Bollywood simply transcribed makes for ATROCIOUS fiction, and there are a few writers who do write like that, all of whom I despise, yes, despise. But the other extreme seems like such a poor and dry place. I'm tired of tongue-in-cheekness and McSweeney's and stories from the point of view of quirky misfits doing strange and quirky things that don't change anyone's lives.

I'm feeling curmudgeonly, it's true. But on a less curmudgeonly note, I looked at P. Ho D.'s novel, just at the dust jacket, and it left me feeling hopeful. I haven't read it yet but I am hopeful that it might make me cry. Has anyone here read it? I am a total sucker for wartime romance. It almost always makes me cry, all that impetuousness and fatalism. I cried and cried and cried when I read _The Heat of the Day_ (Elizabeth Bowen, you must read it if you haven't) and I cried at _A Very Long Engagement_, which almost everyone else hated and the critics panned for being cheesy. So maybe PHD's book will make me cry, and then I will feel better about the state of contemporary literature.

If you've read anything lately that made you cry, let me know. I'm making a list.

A Salon Letter from an MFA student about her doubts about an MFA program has set off a ton of blogochatter, from the sincere to the angry to the snarky to the MFA-programs-produce-a-lot-of-third-rate-poo-poo. Original post here: http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2007/02/02/graduate_schools/index.html

AWP?

Are any robotdinosaurs attending? It's in Atlanta; I was thinking about crashing it.

Nonfiction

Hey all,

I was in the middle of reading Jesmimi's interesting post below, particularly struck by the aside,(Perhaps that was too much information for you--sorry.), when my mother's instant message popped up and blocked Jesmimi's text. Well, before that instant message popped up, I was thinking, Why the apology? Don't we love hearing the heretofore unspoken, private memories of our friends, acquaintances and total strangers? As readers we relish experiencing them, understanding them or, conversely, being left baffled by them. As writers, ditto. There should be more of that. More of the personal—our confidential moments willingly made public.

If you think this is leading to me posting nude photos of myself taken by bathroom mirror reflection, please rest assured. It’s not.

Instead, I thought I’d post the chat I had with my mother just now, give you a taste of the material I haven’t yet let fully into my writing (for those of you from the workshops). I just don’t know how to neatly get all the mess in, or neatly take the pieces out and pin them under the microscope like some foreign bacteria when, really, in this example, she’s no germ: she’s my sister. And tied up in my sister are all these conflicts that eventually branch out to me, intertwine with my conflicts, and suddenly I’m dissecting myself again instead of making up shit about a girl who is deservedly diagnosed with an incurable case of DUMB ASS by her very own mother.


mowdy1948: hey
joelbmowdy: hello
mowdy1948: what are you doing up so late?
mowdy1948: my mic is still not working...been buusy doing other stuff
joelbmowdy: I had to make lesson plans for my classes that start on monday
joelbmowdy: been working on it all day
joelbmowdy: and grading I was putting off
mowdy1948: your sister Brittany is a dumb ass
joelbmowdy: uh huh
joelbmowdy: what now
mowdy1948: long story short
mowdy1948: she left her friend dominique watching thte kids on Wed. night...i was a t work til 11 and came home to find her here...said Britt would be home by 12:30
joelbmowdy: ok--well, so far this is better than I thought. I thoughtyou were going to tell me she's pregnant again
mowdy1948: Dom comes in my room and wakes me up at 1 and says Britt had car trouble...she went in to NYC with Bradley...some ass hole from around here..young ..no teeth drives a Mercedes Suv
mowdy1948: she was going to go get her dad...call britt back and go and help them
joelbmowdy: mmhm
mowdy1948: Dom couldn't get in touch with her so figures that they were ok and went home
mowdy1948: Britt never arrived home..I had to go to work...no one to watch kids..kept Brianne (youngest sister) home..Britt's cell phone wasn't working but I had Bradley's#
mowdy1948: kept caling...no answer til arond 11:30
mowdy1948: got a man on the phone ..asked for her..he said she wasn't with him...he was Brad's uncle...had picked up his phone from the vehicle cause they had been arrested and he was on his way to court to bail them out
mowdy1948: Brooke (another sister) informed me that she heared they were going into NYC to get fake ID
joelbmowdy: oh that's smart.
mowdy1948: anyway..still no call from her..he would all me when he heard anything
mowdy1948: wait gets better
mowdy1948: so Shannon (another sister) goes online around midnight ...finds out where she is being held...calls and finds out it is for possession with intent to sell
mowdy1948: she didn't go before a judge til fri at 10:30 AM
mowdy1948: her charges were dropped, but bradley is on his way to rikers.
mowdy1948: here is her version...see if you can find the holes
joelbmowdy: This is terrible
mowdy1948: they were in the city and got a flat and couldn't find a tire store and yada blah blah blah
mowdy1948: they finally got it fixed and were just sitting in the car minding their own business when a bunch of plain clothes police rushed the car with guns drawn
mowdy1948: they were initially arrested because a guy in the back seat had an open bottle of beer.
mowdy1948: when the car was searched the police found a bottle of about 100 pain pills with Bradley's name on the rx bottle but they charged them anyway..oh and they confiscated the $6000.00 that he just happened to have on him because he had just sold his other car
joelbmowdy: this story you're telling has an interesting contrast to the profile picture of you smiling in mid dance step.
mowdy1948: Brittany said he takes these pills for back pain ( she thinks) and there were a lot because it is supposed to last 6 weeks
mowdy1948: i wasn't dancing...just sitting at my desk being tired....oh can you find the holes?
joelbmowdy: In his mouth? Wasn't the last boyfriend on pain killers, too?
joelbmowdy: You look like you're dancing.
mowdy1948: let me give the holes to you and see if you concur...oh by the way Bradley drives an expensive car "because he owns a pool company with his uncle"...did I mention he has few teeth?
joelbmowdy: Finiding the holes isn't the problem. I'm looking for the solid ground. Why all the guys on pain killers?
mowdy1948: I guess dating Brittany is a painful experience
mowdy1948: ok here goes..mastic beach+ ...young .+.drives expensive car = drug dealer....yuh think?
joelbmowdy: Bradley's been investing in the wrong kind of grill.
mowdy1948: uh...if you own an expensive car...do you not have roadside assistance or perhaps a spare tire?
mowdy1948: didn't have time to put his stash of cash away?
joelbmowdy: Maybe he was going to the dentist.
mowdy1948: It is illegal to dispense more than a month supply of controlled substance
mowdy1948: and if he was indeed taking that much in a month should he be driving?
joelbmowdy: The L.I.E. is a stressful stretch of road.
joelbmowdy: How are her kids?
mowdy1948: anyway..gotta go ...Brianne is vomiting and crying...we got a new puppy too. tell you more later
mowdy1948: her kids are great...they didn't even miss her.
joelbmowdy: Tell Brianne I hope she feels better.
joelbmowdy: soon.
mowdy1948: I had to take off from work to watch them...oh and I found 8 western union receipts...she has been sending the other asshole (other gut on pain killers) money in jail so he can call her
mowdy1948: bye for now.....love you!!
joelbmowdy: Love you, too.
joelbmowdy: bye
mowdy1948: she is a DUMB ASS
joelbmowdy: She'll learn, or she won't. It's out of your hands. Try not to let it kill you.

For all the wealth of material, it might be better to just leave the family unexamined, keep searching out the scraps I can get from friends, the anecdotes from acquaintances, the sideways looks at strangers on the bus, and let the family sneek in in dribbles as they always eventually do, making the work, somehow, though they are rendered unrecognizable, faintly about them anyway.

It's 4 AM, and I'm up

Hi everyone. I think this is only the second time I've actually posted an original post instead of a comment on this board, but since it's been a little quiet around here lately, I figured I'd clear my cyberthroat and say something. (This is almost as nerve wracking as commenting in workshop. My God.)

Anyhow, I recently purchased a new copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and when I thumbed through it, I remembered that I'm in it. Stay with me; I know this sounds weird. Anyhow, I read it for the first time when I was in high school, and around page 240 or so, a Buendia is introduced that seems to be...me. I swear. First, the character's name is Meme; my nickname is Mimi. Teenage Meme has a rigid, strict, authoritarian mother and an indulgent father: ditto for Mimi. Meme secretly rebels against her family and falls in love with a young greasy mechanic that no one approves of, and she sneaks him into her house at night for trysts. He is caught on his last night with her, shot in the back by a guard, and spends the rest of his days incapacitated and mute; as a teenager, I also snuck my rebel paramour into the house and was caught by my shotgun wielding mother who pointed a rifle at him and told him to get out of her house. Thankfully, she didn't shoot, but I'm sure that scarred him in some sort of way. (Perhaps that was too much information for you--sorry.) There are other weird characteristics we share, but I'll spare you the details.

Has anyone else ever encountered a character in a book that bore a weird resemblance to his or herself? Or am I the only delusional one?

(crickets chirp)

Moby Duck!

I hope everyone will pick up the new Harper's; Donovan's got the Folio piece, and it is absolutely fantastic. Hooray Donovan!

howdy

Hi all (it's Rachel L.),

I thought I'd do my part to revive the blog, since I loved reading it while it was jumping and was consistently lazy about contributing.

Get this: I'm reading Gilead and a waspy book about money management called "Rich Dads, Poor Dads" that my dad gave me...AT THE SAME TIME. It's not just contradictory; it's unholy. Anyway, it's been out for awhile, so this may be an unfashionable proclamation, but: Gilead just leaves me shaken. It reminds me of what I liked about religion when I was young (and maybe what I liked about writing back when I actually wrote)--I liked the imperative to examine and explore your motives and tendencies, to think of what would be virtuous, of how you would like to be, of what you respect...and then to go out into the world and try to remember it. Doesn't it seem like much of the bad you've done, you did because you simply forgot how you wanted to be?

On that note, check out these R Kelly videos: http://youtube.com/results?search_query=trapped+in+the+closet&search=Search

They're old news too, but I've rediscovered them and can't stop laughing.

I miss you guys.

R

Satisfaction

What, is this my personal blog now or something? I feel ashamed to post twice in a row, like I'm the jobless no-life junkfood-guzzling loafer who doesn't change out of her pajamas till dinnertime and has whole conversations about ass-licking with her dog. Oh, wait, I *am* that jobless no-life junkfood-guzzling loafer.....

Anyway, I know some of you out there bemoan the fact that Harper's Magazine turned into one long left-wing rant in 2000 and never looked back, but like I said before, their ranting makes me happy, and this here below (you will have already seen it if you subscribe or read regularly), I don't know if it's a rant or a dare or a hoot, but it's oh-so-clever and I want to read it over and over again and so should you if you are the sort of person who will be glad that someone has stepped up to fill Lapham's reflective wing-tips:


http://www.harpers.org/OnSimpleHumanDecency=1149635660.html


Yes I know it's months old but I can't stop reading it.

Three Questions

Ha! No one wants to be the first to answer Starrykick's summons. But the thought of her sitting before this moribund blog in her windowless office is so sad, people, isn't it sad? Isn't it? Where is everyone?

1) Has anyone read Kathryn Davis before? She had a brief mention in a sort-of-recent New Yorker and I got curious and started reading excerpts on Amazon. They are weird and wonderful. If anyone has actually read her, perhaps you can tell me if I should read something of hers from start to finish, and if so, what (please keep in mind that reading something from start to finish is a RARE and MAJOR commitment for me).

2) Has anyone every noticed how easy it is for a dog to look like a gangsta rapper if you put it in a hooded sweatshirt?

3) Does anyone else here read Tomato Nation, in particular the letters to the advice columnist(s)? A visiting friend who shall remain unnamed just introduced me to the website. Well, they were PRETENDING to be a friend, but I think they must be secretly plotting my ruin, because why else would anyone foist yet another addiction upon me? I mean, how could anyone have expected notoriously week-willed me to resist the variegated temptations of an unlimited reservoir of human foolishness on public display? Such great fodder for nightmares, indigestion, and stories, if I wrote them. I particularly recommend the letter about the roommate with the prolapsed anus.

Leftover Mashed Potatoes

These leftover mashed potatoes have been made into a soup.

where are you robotdinosaurs??

can we stage a resurrection? I think we should. the whole point was to keep in touch about writing matters when people moved away. well look, it's officially winter here, and it's been clear to me for some time that People Have Moved Away. so: please start by posting anything--a hello, an update, a book you're reading or thinking about reading, a rant about your students, a picture of a leftover pile of mashed potates. remember blogs? remember when they were hip? I want you back, people. Ready? Go.

This Is Just to Say

That if you buy only one piece of music this year, it should be Beirut's Gulag Orkestrar. Please. It is wonderful. Fantastic. I can't get enough of it.

And if you only buy one book this year? Anyone? One anything else? Let's get some lists going.

a war worth fighting

Who else has www.kittenwar.com on their dashboard?

Apparently Angel Poo (right, or look under "winningest kittens") has won 75% of 796 battles. Crackers, please. That coy little paw! Those foldy ears! Let's make it 100%.

free fun at the aadl

When I go to the public library, I like to pick up one of the free bookmarks that they give out at the front desk. Today I got this. I am confused and delighted. What to make of this? Are we meant to assume since "dooooo" is replaced by "read" that the rooster is telling us, "Do(oooo) read!"? I know that the rooster is not really telling us anything, but I have spent perhaps too much time thinking about this bookmark and the people that designed it, and whether they just wanted any excuse to include the word "cock" on a bookmark. (Hello new readers/searchers for roosters/porn/roosterporn!)

There were still a few bookmarks left, but I can't imagine they'll be there long.

Best Books Written Since My Birth

Any thoughts on this list?

I haven't given it too much thought beyond noticing it's the #1 most e-mailed article today and was #2 yesterday. I have yet to even read A.O. Scott's related essay.

Perhaps some of you have considered this list (or your own) at greater length and wish to share. Beloved is certainly one of the finest books I've read in my 25 years on the planet, and maybe later I'll have the brainpower to think about why.

Magical Realism in Action

Just in case any of you missed this, I thought I'd post it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/world/asia/09cnd-runner.html

Also because it made me think of this Rushdie quotation I read a long time ago, about how magical realism might've been invented because life in some places is too absurd and too huge for the language of realism. It's a familiar idea, of course, but Rushdie put it better than I can, so if anyone knows where I can find that quotation, let me know. I think it was in a book by someone called Daniel Chua, maybe (?), about postcolonialism or anti-imperialism or some such Thing.....

News Flash (woosh!)

Why, you ask, does a story like this make the news? Maybe the creators of Southpark were right: everyone loves a cripple fight. The headline says it all.

Loose Motions

Ha ha. The title is a reference to a conversation some of us had a few days ago; I think I'll just let the rest of you wonder about it (and no, it's not a problem currently affecting me, thank you very much).

Anyway, where is everybody? Shall we make more lists? Here are some things, literary and non-literary, currently making ME happy (and I hope you all appreciate the gall involved in creating a NEW POST for my list rather than appending it as a comment to Bizness's post):

1) Not having to teach anymore, particularly because it means I won't ever again have to lay eyes on a certain lumpy lab rat of a boy who only bought the textbook 3 weeks before the semester ended;

2) The tulips in my front yard -- we didn't plant them, so what a nice surprise! Tulips, where there were none before! Just like that! 0 effort, all reward! The tiger-striped ones are my favourite.

3) Frozen treats (and the weather to eat them in): lime popsicles, red bean popsicles, green tea mochi, passionfruit sorbet.

4) The hubbub over Kaavya Viswanathan (age 19)'s fourth-rate plagiarised novel:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/04/23/young.author.ap/index.html

And more here, to lend credence to the accusations of plagiarism:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512968

I swear I wasn't originally jealous of Viswanathan's big contract, because what's to be jealous of? So some college sophomore writes a shitty book that everyone wants to read -- I do believe any of us could've written such a book as college, if not high school, sophomores. If anything, it made me sad (once again, or still) that that's what people want to read these days. But then, after the plagiarism accusation, when she came out and said she'd read both _Sloppy Firsts_ and _Second Helpings_, and that these books really "spoke to me," I thought, okay, this girl needs to be taken down. To find nothing better to copy, when Dickens and Nabokov and Rushdie and Ian McEwan exist or have existed, now THAT'S a crime.

5) This and other poems by Nancy Willard:

http://maggles.stumbleupon.com/

6) The Martin Amis story in the most recent New Yorker -- okay, at one point I thought I wouldn't be able to finish it because terror clogged my throat and I couldn't swallow my mochi (by the by, do you know that choking on mochi is one of the most common causes of death among old people in Japan?) -- also, now that I think about it, I'm not sure I can list this story as a thing that makes me "happy." Nevertheless, there it is. A thing that keeps me awake at night.

Won't you all come out to play? If not with lists, with amusements of your own?

small bright things

When I move away, I’ll get my own blog and it will be nothing but useless lists. Until then, link-lists (with little to no book/writing related content) and the occasional embarrassing comment will likely be my only contribution to this fine robotblog:

1. Michael Chabon writes about the good his MFA program, with its “regular exposure to the healing rays of healthy disillusion, and in particular the hard-earned skepticism of grown women,” did him. I very much like the end, where Chabon manages to mention Doritos and the smallness of our lives in a single paragraph. (The Doritos-&-life-is-finite combo. actually seems a pretty natural match. Doritos totally freak me out though, for reasons I won’t get into here). [Via Bookslut]
2. I read “Black Hole” by Charles Burns this weekend and was mesmerized. Any recommendations of other graphic-novel/comic series that I should immediately read (besides Optic Nerve, Strangers in Paradise, and Jimmy Corrigan—my only other genuine forays into the genre) would be most welcome.
3. None of the aforementioned comics brings me as much glee as my new favorite. I sure hope there is more to come, and soon. (Click the pictures to make them bigger.)
   
4. The main squeeze and I saw “Thank You for Smoking”last weekend and both dug it (a two thumbs up from the Bizness/Squeeze duo is far rarer than the Ebert/Roeper variety). It was quick and fun; I’m not sure how long it will stick with me, particularly since it seemed to last a little over six minutes. The Michigan theater screening room was totally packed and while I love watching funny movies in full theaters (never were burp jokes funnier than when I watched “Monster’s Inc.” seated behind a class full of kindergartners) the laughter was so riotous as to obscure some of the very hilarity it was in response to. It reminded me of concerts where you can’t hear the singer’s banter over the fans. Let Debbie Gibson talk, people! (Hers was the first concert where I personally experienced this frustration).
5. As hard as I try, and the Squeeze can attest to the fact that I have been trying very, very hard, I cannot grow tired of this song.
   

Please: tell me about the ephemeral pleasures that have recently made you glad for your short, orangecheesefood-fingered time on Earth.