This Ruined My Morning.

When WordPress asked me just now if I wanted to “Insert” this picture into the post, I got nervous. Thanks a lot, Groupon.

Winter Break in Lists in Lieu of Substance.

Because lists pretty much tell you nothing except that I 1. remember what all I did over break, & 2. have run out of reasons not to bore you with it.

Stuff I’m Happy to Have Read in the Bathtub, in the Order in Which I Just Typed Them

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

Tongue Party by Sarah Rose Etter

The Weather Stations by Ryan Call

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

Goat in the Snow by Emily Pettit

Light Boxes by Shane Jones

The Failure Six by Shane Jones

The New Black by Evie Shockley

Metropole by Geoffrey G. O’Brien

Selenography by Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Stuff I Made in the Kitchen (With Multiple Assists from the Curator of the Stock Photography Museum)

* Numerous variations on this curry

* Homemade paneer (from the massive Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cookbook)

* Chicken curry & paneer pizza (I’d kind of like to think we invented that one)

* Nachos with homemade tortilla chips (because the downstairs store wasn’t open past prime nacho-hour)

* Hot wings

* Curried chicken salad with golden raisins & celery instead of mango because why not

* Many migas (secret recipe, inquire within)

* Egg sandwiches, times infinity

Other Stuff

* For the next few days, you can get good books for 40% from Small Press Distribution, here. I just ordered more stuff to read in the bath. You should too.

* I now own winter boots & belong to a gym. It’s, like, whatever.

* Who’s sleepy?

 

In the Meantime, Here Are Things.

Until such times as I can get back to the serious business of blogging (Business Item #1: Books I’ve Read in the Bath), here are some links to tide you over since, if you’re anything like me, you’re snowed in & have, in the last several weeks, made every winter cocktail possible within your limited budget & are looking for some other shit to do.

* My wonderful Sewanee friends Michelle Chan Brown, Lisa Fay Coutley & Nick McRae have poems up at the Country Dog Review. You will want to read them immediately.

* Do yourself a favor & check out the new issue of Devil’s Lake. I recommend starting with Corey Van Landingham’s “The Architecture of the Fathers,” which is surreal & strange & lovely.

* Here’s one such delicious winter cocktail, from Ms. Rachel Maddow herself. I have made approximately a bazillion of these so far this winter. I’ve tried it with both Speyburn & Johnnie Walker Red (ca-ching!), & maybe my tastes just aren’t as sophisticated but I liked the latter better. Still, I’m going to keep trying because I’m pretty much out of things on my to-do list except this last one that says “Impress Rachel (winkey face).”

* The new issue of Salt Hill is out, & you should get it. I’ve read the poetry in there from cover to cover (see: blog post, Books I’ve Read in the Bath [forthcoming]) & it’s an incredible issue. I’m honored to have my little platypus poem in it with the likes of Ben Mirov, Zachary Schomburg, Nate Pritts, etc. It’s just a straight-up fabulous read. Once I’m done rereading it I’m going to put it under my pillow & wait for it to turn into a sweet dream or a handful of snow or something.

* Don’t look now, but there’s a new issue of The Cupboard, everyone’s favorite quarterly prose pamphlet/chapbook series! But don’t take my word for it. Subscribe to their mailing list, like them on F’book, or best yet, pick up their issues here or at AWP, where I have it on fairly good authority that they’ll be giving out something pretty awesome with their issues (hint: it’s small, & it isn’t a pony).

* The sweet people over at the Cincinnati Review blog have sweet things to say about my poem here and here. I have by far less interesting things to say about it here. I’m pumped to read their next issue when it comes my way.

* Another Maddow cocktail classic I’ve been making quite a bit is the Old Fashioned, both her way & the Wisconsin way. I may have ordered a muddler from Amazon late at night while sipping on a drink I muddled with the back end of a knife handle.

* What? O, you want to know where you can get your own muddler? I know, sometimes I wish I were as cool as me too. Just, whatever you do, don’t get a lacquered muddler. I hear those things are bad news.

Where I Am Headed in Numbers.

Population = ~ 2 million

Hours it’ll take me to get there = 8.5

Times I have been there = 0

Its corners = Haman’s hat’s corners

People reading this blog who know what Haman’s hat is = Mom

People in Kansas who know what Haman’s hat is > 0, pending my arrival

People in this apartment thinking about writing a utopian historical fiction series where Kansans fight & win the Upper Right-hand Corner Border War to Complete the Square = 1 + ghosts

Times I will ask someone to clarify for me whether we’re in the Midwest or the Plains = ∞

Wheat = Corn?

Times someone’s asked me where I’m headed for the holidays & then made a Wizard of Oz reference = ∑ times

What’s Going On With Netflix.

I feel like I’m being punished for canceling my disc subscription. Punished with awesomeness! I can’t wait to find out what happens to Abel after he leaves his verbally abusive wife, illegally marries a widow & falls in love with her sister. No wonder he cried!

Why I Buy Stuff.

“What’s this?”, indeed.

Addendum to Things.

In my most recent post featuring good things by great people, I forgot to add that you should check out this wonderful interview with Adam Peterson on Camera Obscura‘s blog, & then immediately order the issue & read his story, “It Goes Without Saying.” It’s a great interview & a better story, & I’m not just saying that because this guy’s my boyfriend, although I will say that if reading your boyfriend’s interview on a lit mag’s blog really illuminates his thoughts & feelings on a number of issues, he’s probably from the Plains.

That said, you can ignore the section of the interview where he tells interviewer Tim Horvath that the future of American fiction is “Seriously, Laura Eve, is Valentine’s Day really that hard to remember?”

I Made Dinner & It Took Two Hours & I Couldn’t Be Less Interested in Eating It So Here Are These Things.

I’ve been rewatching all of 30 Rock & learning about migraines. Because some of us have shit to do, & the rest of us are tasked with picking up the slack slack. You think these episodes are just going to watch themselves?

My dear friend Mr. Dane A. Wisher has a great piece up at Untoward Mag. Read it & try not to scratch your ankles.

I edited an issue of NOÖ Weekly, which you can read here. Yes, I copy-pasted that instead of finding the O with the umlaut. There are some damn fine writers in the issue, & I couldn’t be happier to have my stupid guitar/hand picture associated with it.

Is anyone else confused by the new YouTube? Is the new YouTube even new? Why do things have to change?

Also, I skyped with my friend Jonathan the other day, which looked like this:

I don’t have a camera so I can’t take a picture of the soberingly huge amount of curry I just made, which is a shame, as it would have made for an effective piece of visual rhetoric re: the sadnesses of cooking for one. Instead, please enjoy this other saddest thing ever, courtesy of two seconds ago, when I dared to wonder what ever happened to my adolescence.

This One’s Not About Politics.

Just pretend it’s about the European debt crisis. That’s a thing, right?

99% of the 99% Doesn’t Get the New Yorker.

The New Yorker posted an office Christmas party cartoon on F’book to get everyone in the holiday spirit, & the ensuing comment string was mostly people trying to figure out the joke, not because these people are all idiots, but because…

…No. No, they do not. Nobody does. Haven’t you been reading The New Yorker, Sarah H.?