Exhibit 21.1

I know, I know

I've neglected you during the move but I promise I'll do better soon. In the meantime, I'm focused on acquiring one (non-inflatable) piece of furniture, not dying in a fiery car accident, and reacquainting myself with the benefits of having a freezer. Here's how I'm doing:

Acquiring one (non-inflatable) piece of furniture - Great! Well, Great! as long as pillows count as furniture. If not, then Bad¡

Not dying in a fiery car accident - The secret so far is to put on one CD that I wouldn't mind having playing while dying in a fiery car accident. Somehow this prevents the fiery car accident from happening but I have no doubt if, say, I put on Saigon Kick's The Lizard, you'd all be reading about the gasoline-carrying semi that overturned on me. Today was Fear of Music. I welcome suggestions.

Reacquainting myself with the benefits of having a freezer - Great! Well, Great! as long as this French Vanilla Ice Cream and Hashbrowns sundae I'm eating out of a Tostinos Party Pizza cone counts. If not, then Delicious!

Exhibit 20.27

Everything I Own




Not pictured:

Exhibit 20.26

To-Do List for Wednesday, August 12th

1. Fill bucket with tears
2. Take bucket to the Salvation Army with the drop-off boxes instead of the Goodwill to avoid long conversation about bucket's poor sales potential
3. Feel bad about bucket's poor sales potential
4. Remember I still need a bucket
5. Buy different bucket at Salvation Army because Goodwill has sold out of buckets
6. Fill bucket with water, soap, remaining tears
7. Wonder if I should do something with remaining eggs or if they should just be thrown away
8. Feel bad about eggs/bucket/Nora Ephron's neck
9. Re-recycle twice recycled blog post idea
10. Spend all day inexplicably listening to Neil Diamond over coworker's iTunes
11. Die a little instead of sleep
12. Eat 18 different goodbye meals, none of which I can manage to make take place at McDonald's
13. Again promise to quit blog after move
14. Start re-watching Lost Season One for some reason
15. Lust after two apple pies for $1
16. Kill spider bigger than my fist
17. Look at email inbox and laugh
18. Begin composing email to spider's family
19. Decide this is crazy as spider seems to have come back to life
20. Don't go in bedroom anymore
21. Make 9-egg bucket omelette

Exhibit 20.25

Recycled Content

Well, not recycled, exactly, but just the best I can come up with while living a life that consists mostly of staring forlornly at unsold furniture and poking the wood filler I used on the apartment's backdoor and wondering when it's going to dry.

It's possibly this move-ennui that led me to turn into Raymond Carver during a company creative exercise (as opposed to the time I turned into Ruth Bader Ginsburg during a company basketball game). This month's creative exercise involved drawing a character, setting, time period, and plot then taking 15 minutes to write a story about it. This should have been perfect. I mean, I've read stories. I drew:

New mother
City park
Just after a fight
Someone has been embarrassed

I don't know, maybe there's something funny there--everyone else did something funny--but instead I spent those 15 orange juice and pastry fueled moments writing the following cheery piece. I then took pictures of what I wrote because I'm taking pictures of everything these days:







If history is any guide, I will now attempt to sell these notebook pages over the Internet before ultimately deciding they aren't really worth $10 and dropping them off at the Goodwill. They will then be sold and worn as a Halloween costume by some graduate student. When asked what he's dressed as, the graduate student will say, "A pretentious, flawed attempt at passe minimalism written by someone wondering whether a co-worker is going to eat that entire cinnamon roll or if he might go halfsies if offered a set of matching coffee and end tables."

Exhibit 20.24

Craigslist Transaction



When I got the first email, I didn't know if this guy was being aggressive enough in his quest to buy my bike. Then, five minutes later, the second email came. While more aggressive, this still seemed to be sub-optimal in its aggressiveness and clarity. That's when I realized he didn't want a bike, he only wanted to be friends with sale-rjwzk-130546842@craigslist.org.

That's when I realized he wasn't using verbs because the only verb he knew was "love."

Exhibit 20.23

Business Plan

Type of Business
Insurance Fraud(?)

Equipment needed
Renter's insurance, baseball bat, patsy, insurance check cashing place

Capital needed
Enough for some Lemon-Lime Gatorade after all of the exhausting defrauding, plus whatever would lure the patsy into destroyed apartment and keep them occupied until the police arrive. Maybe some kind of adorable kitten(?).

Equipment needed (addendum)
Police calling phone, adorable kitten(?)

Business model
Sign up for renter's insurance, destroy furniture with bat, frame the patsy, relax with some Lemon-Lime Gatorade, take insurance check to check cashing place, use cash to buy new furniture and get more Gatorade maybe, attend trial of patsy from back bench and cackle menacingly when patsy's spouse begs me to turn myself in for the good of their children

Employees needed
Me - Will need to own their own bat, like Lemon-Lime Gatorade, cackle needs to be menacing but sub-murderous.

The patsy - Spouse, children, love of kittens(?)

Expansion plans
Car

Target Date
Sometime before this weekend

Competition
Hard drinking but honest police detective who believes the patsy's story, possibly because of their shared love of kittens(?)/hatred of cackling

Possible Complications
Hard drinking but honest police detective falls in love with the patsy's wife just as he unravels this most brilliant insurance fraud, realizes that if the patsy gets out of jail he'll never be able to be with the woman he loves

Equipment needed (addendum)
Hard drinking but honest police detective, cool nickname for criminal mastermind, love

One-year plan
The patsy visits with his wife on Christmas Eve, the kids aren't allowed into the prison, he goes back to his cell, dejected, through the bars he sees his wife get into the hard drinking but previously honest detective's car, somewhere far away Le Flèche Noire drinks Lemon-Lime brandy on his new sofa

Five-year plan
Consumed with guilt the hard drinking but again honest detective exonerates the patsy on Christmas day, upon leaving the prison and walking toward his wife and children, the patsy hands the detective the cat he's been raising while working in the prison library, somewhere even farther away Le Flèche Noire fingers his baseball bat while thinking about getting a new sofa

Exhibit 20.22

Things I Won't Be Blogging About While Preparing to Move

* My attempts to purchase everything for my new apartment on Amazon.com - I won't talk about this because then I would have to explain to you why my couch is going to be made out of remaindered copies of Tom Wolfe books. Frankly, this is something you should discover for yourself when you come to visit. When you see the Lego Star Destroyer I'm using as a coffee table, just pretend to be impressed and say yes when I offer you an appetizer off the back of a Roomba.

* This Houston-area ax-murder - I know, I know. You all told me, Don't move to Houston, if the heat doesn't kill you the ax-murderers will. Thankfully it was explained to me by former Houston-ites that they actually have "Cool Zones" where you can go to get away from the heat. This does nothing to stop the ax-murderers, of course, but it's a start. Come to think of it, actually, if anything it will just make us easier for the ax-murderers to get us all.

* My going away party - It's this Saturday. If I haven't invited you, it's an oversight and I'm sorry. You're invited. You and it appears the 9 people I still know in Lincoln.

* The great deals on used furniture & dogs currently going on at my apartment - I just like joking about selling Brett so that when someone says, You'd have to pay me to take her I can throw $20 at them and run away laughing. Sadly, Brett will probably just chase me. Then you'll use the $20 to by three-quarters of what I own. I'll then use that $20 to buy 39 copies of I am Charlotte Simmons.

* This Royals season - Oh, god, they're awful. Frankly, I'm going to be glad when the ax-murderer gets me. I hope we get the chance to talk about his job title as we enjoy the chilly air of the Cool Zone. I have questions. Like why is ax-murderer a thing, but if, say, you just going around stabbing people like some random Peterson, you're not a knife-murderer. Instead you're just sort of a jerk. I'm sure he'll have thoughts on this.

Exhibit 20.21

Things That are Good

Octopus 12


Interview with Christy Call


This Recording's 100 Greatest Authors
(So far they've done Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3)

Exhibit 20.20

Sewanee Book Wrap-Up

First things first, I should just say that I can't recommend the Sewanee Writers' Conference enough. I'd been hearing about how great it was for a year from Dave and Ryan, not to mention sharing a dinner table with several of the people who were there with them. It was odd, I thought, watching them come together and hug and scream. As I put it to someone at the conference, it was like watching the reunion of people who'd been involved in something either truly horrible or truly amazing. Smiles that genuine can only be brought about when you re-meet someone you survived a mountaintop plane crash with (and didn't have to eat) or, apparently, someone you've been to a fishing hole with (and didn't have to eat).

The bar was set so high that I began sending sarcastic text messages to Dave from the Nashville airport. Then 10 minutes later it got fun and I stopped. The conference is remarkably well run and beneficial and, as important in a way, just a good time. Last year, applications were accepted beginning January 15th and presumably it will be similar this year. So, yes, apply. I can't wait until next year's AWP when I get to see all of these people and we'll smile and scream like something truly horrible/amazing happened to us and then we'll look guiltily at the spot where Phyllis would have stood/go get a drink.

Part of what makes it so fantastic is that in addition to a great deal of writers, there are a great deal of books. Since I'm moving and just couldn't face the prospect of buying these books and then having to move them across the country, I had to watch with jealousy as they were all snapped up by people who I suddenly wanted to eat at one of the fishing holes. I'm not sure how I made it--or how cannibalism became a running joke here--but I did and now I want to make sure I pick up everything I need once I get where I'm going.

So, a not entirely complete list of books I plan on buying and maybe you should too:

Fiction
What Happened to Anna K. by Irina Reyn - great to have in workshop
The New Valley by Josh Weil - ditto. Plus, novellas!
The Southern Cross by Skip Horack - loved his reading
Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch - ditto. I thought I was going to cry
The Summer of Naked Swim Parties by Jessica Anya Blau - ditto (-crying +laughing)
Red Weather by Pauls Toutonghi - ditto
The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard by Erin McGraw - ditto

Poetry
City of Regret by Andrew Kozma - person/book=awesome
Blue Colonial by David Roderick - ditto. Loved his reading, too
Now You're the Enemy by James Allen Hall - ditto. Funny, heartbreaking
Begin Anywhere by Frank Giampietro - ditto. ditto.
Midnight Voices by Deborah Ager - ditto.

That might not be a complete list (I actually did make a list which is currently lost somewhere among approximately 18,000 manuscript pages). Those are mostly from fellows and there were some more books by the faculty and staff on there, I know, but I'll at least mention Alice McDermott's incredible That Night and Tony Earley's Here We Are in Paradise both which I own and you should too.

Also be sure to look for books coming out this fall from Caitlin Horrocks and Laura van den Berg which should both be incredible.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll say more about all of these when I get them. Then you'll get them. Then we'll talk about them. Then we'll look guiltily at that spot where Phyllis would have stood.

Exhibit 20.19

If You Have Been Introduced to Me Recently

Me: Hello.
You: Hi, nice to meet you.
Me: [looks awkward]
You: So, what do you do?
Me: Look, I know I need a haircut.
You: [looks awkward]
Me: [smiles winningly]

Exhibit 20.18

I Don't Know

There was already
one memorial
dock floating in the reservoir
but I appreciate
the gesture
of giving me mine
now that I've drowned
and hate those who've drowned
before me
like you
dock rival

Exhibit 20.17

I Don't Know

I cannot read
these comments of yours
because your handwriting
is bad
but that's okay
you said them in class
and I appreciate and agree
with everything
especially the part
about the dog
not having super powers
but I want to ask
if in these scribbles
you gave to me
a new title
for Ultrapuppy

Exhibit 20.16

I Don't Know

What is important
is never forgetting
who is best
at cards
because it's me
so say the test results
but not your slip of paper
liar you liar

Exhibit 20.15

I Don't Know

At the dance
I should have
said I'm sorry
for your injury
instead I said
Michael Jackson
who is dead
which you don't appear to be
because you eat
lunch
I am sorry
about lunch

Exhibit 20.14

I Don't Know

Suite-
mate
you can
lock me
out
of the bathroom
but not
your heart
Kevin
Kevin