WhimsyLand

The reading at Cannon Mine Coffee was great fun.  Cate Wiley and Mackenzie Carignan were hard acts to follow, though.  Cate read her pie-eating contest poem, which immediately brought to mind that great scene from Michael where they're all eating pie and Andie McDowell sings her pie song.  Mackenzie is a freshly-minted PhD from Chicago whose blogroll has dozens of people I know (some very well), which I found surprising.  I read exclusively from my Junie and Barker poems, which are poetic vignettes, I suppose.  I started the series at Junie's suggestion about 5 years ago, modeled roughly after MJB's Louise in Love.  I'm going to break down and get them printed up in chapbook form one day, since only 4 of them have been published and the rest don't lend themselves to journals. 

Work is slowing down a bit, a mixed blessing.  I am one-part paranoid about running out of engagements and one-part desirous of luxuriating on weekends again instead of debugging 8051 code and FFT algorithms.  It's definitely pretty ugly out there.  Commodity prices have skyrocketed (not just oil, also wheat, corn, soybeans, copper, . . . ) and gasoline prices won't hit their peak ($4 a gallon?) until the summer.  Meanwhile, record numbers of people are losing their jobs.  The housing/mortage crisis is fueling a lot of the economic woes, but 8 years of Bush's mismanagement and record-setting deficit spending send the dollar to all-time lows, while the national and personal debt levels reach new highs. 

Der got his Easter basket and was happy.  He and his roommate Max (and lots of classmates apparently) divided the candy, which ranged from a Swiss chocolate rabbit to Snickers miniatures to those pink chicks made out of something like marshmallow.  I also threw in some money, cleverly hidden in a plastic Easter egg, to help fund Max and Der's summer adventure where they will put 10,000 miles on Max's parent's SUV in an attempt to visit every state in the union.  Also included were a "nose and glasses" disguise kit, a cap gun that takes those plastic circle caps.  The biggest single item was this giant box of Jelly Bellies that I found on sale at Ross Dress for Less.  Ky and Der kid me about Ross Dress for Less, telling me that it's OK to just call it "Ross" and that enunciating the full "Ross Dress for Less" is a little like saying "MacDonalds, Billions and Billions Served", so now I say RDFL but sounds too much like R.O.U.S. (rodents of unusual size), so I don't know what to call it really.  Ky, if you're reading, I owe you either a basket or a nice lunch with Eileen.

I received another zany and wonderful Abraham Lincoln (#2), the litmag child of Kasey and Anne.  It's hard to believe it's only $5, which is, variously, the price of 1.5 gallons of gas, the typical chapbook, or a fast food meal, take your pick.  The range of depth, depravity, hilarity, and profundity is too much for my increasingly small brain.  It's easier just to give you some examples:

Rod Smith, "We are Duende for Pigs":  "... loose the auto-confirm Boston intellectual pitbull's torte clamp device, & comely".

Rita Dahl, "Human Ape":  "What would I, a human ape and biological robot, know about life?"

Benjamin Friedlander, "Law and Order SVU":  "... Christian content is like poetry: / it often begins in torment, then like damp grass / eh, delusional."

Brandon Brown, "From Wondrous Things That I Have Seen":  "Dumped beer onto the lap of the gender performance."

Tim Yu, "Asian American Poem #5": "I am cooking your favorite meal again. / It contains shoyu, rice wine, scallions, / fish eggs and sukiyaki, and smells like dog."

Mel Nichols, "You Should Be Nice to Call Center Workers":  ". . . my underpants absolutely reek of curry".

Also in the mix are Cathy Eisenhower, Tao Lin, Kevin Killian, Lanny Quarles, Mitch Highfill, Joe Massey & Jess Myines, Patrick Durgin, Linh Dinh, Christina Strong, Rachel Zolf and Nada Gordon.  It's a great collection.  Go order it and start smiling and nodding and making that funny look with your eyebrows up and your mouth in a strange kind of happy moue.

I still have a good Atlantic and a great Harper's to tell you about.  See you tomorrow.