Exhibit 25.4

Everyone should subscribe to Gulf Coast or at least go to the website where you can read this great poetry discussion featuring Hannah Gamble, Zach Schomburg (himself a thing that is sometimes in Nebraska), Heather Christle, and Matthews Rohrer and Zapruder.

There's no getting around it, Zach's final quote is amazing:

A poem is not necessarily more surreal according to how far it sits on the dream end of that spectrum, but perhaps more surreal if it confuses the spectrum, if it confuses hurt and light, meaning and meaninglessness, just good warm sad blood spilling out in the forest.

Damn.

Exhibit 25.3

A Follow-up to Yesterday


Things That Are Actually in Nebraska

* Buffalo Bill Cody shot glasses

* Sometimes cranes, sometimes not

* Along the Oregon Trail, numerous tombstones for children who died of cholera, children with names like "Nads" and "Aaron Tagge is a Homo." You have to wade through a lot of buffalo skeletons to find them, however.

* All the country's best Platte Rivers

* That guy who looks like Jared Leto (ed note: I'm not convinced that guy isn't actually Jared Leto and we're all just pretending otherwise so we don't have to talk about his band).

* Jealousy of Iowa and Colorado, ambivalence toward Kansas, disdain for South Dakota

* This Man

* Kila Ka'aihue, apparently forever

* NebraSKA, a made up ska festival I always feared someone would start

Exhibit 25.2

So It's Come to This


U-Haul is just making stuff up about what's in Nebraska.

I would be worried about this unleashing a horde of tourists, but nothing happened when we had Chimney Rock on the state quarter so we should be fine. So, yes, America, go on flying over our wondrous refuge for weird rocks and fictional beasts.

Exhibit 25.1

Earth Day

On the freeway today, a bird flew into my car. I choose to believe it survived because it's Earth Day. I choose to believe it was trying to give me a hug.

I feel bad. About the bird.

Exhibit 24.27

Story Prompts

I'm in a class where we have to write a short story every week. To accomplish this task, we're given prompts which have ranged from very specific to very general. Now, to be clear, I think this has been sort of great or at least I would if I liked writing short stories more. I don't, really, at least not at the moment, and I'm also not exactly hurting for writing projects.

On the whole, this experience has been positive if frustratingly distracting. I've written a few things I like, a few I just typed, and then there was this week's where I literally looked around my apartment and wrote about things I saw.

I want to say this now because when you read my story about playing online chess and eating Dots in this year's O. Henry, you'll say, "Man, he really captured that Brett Pugly's ennui."

I so did.

Exhibit 24.26

Tattoo Ideas for Someone Else Sorted by Decreasing Likelihood

The Turtle from Mario Bros.


Old Timey Periscope Ad


Missouri License Plate


Map of Legoland


Sort of Grim Reaper

Exhibit 24.25

Miracles

I try not to use this blog to mock anything other than myself. And so I want to be clear, I'm not mocking this video. I love this video.

Other things that are unknowable miracles:

Metal cone coffee filters
Fish, all fish
Upside-down
Cricket
Smells
The metric system
Magnets (still)
Scientists
Mark Wahlberg as Bob Lee Swagger
A bucket of puppies
Those doors that open at the top and the bottom
Fingers

Exhibit 24.24

Basketball Team


Those are The Amateurs, the basketball team I was a part of this spring. We lost in the third round of the playoffs after going undefeated in the regular season. You can tell I had nothing to do with these accomplishments because I wasn't even given a uniform. I did, however, manage to make my own out of a similarly colored shirt. After that, they had to let me play.

It's called team spirit. I never want to have it again.

I stuck with jeans because I thought they looked cooler when I was sitting on the bench or looking confused whenever the ref said something. Mostly I was hoping that at some point I'd fall down and tear holes in the jeans organically so I would have something to nonchalantly mention at coffee shops. This is what coach told us to do. Unfortunately, I never fell down or jumped up so now I'll have to cut out squares myself with scissors. Everyone will know. My decaf extra-whip caramel macchiatto will go cold as I try to make it last long enough for someone to ask me about my cool uniform...

Or something. In any case, it was fun and, while I really am terrible at basketball, I'm sorry it's over.

Exhibit 24.23

Post-AWP

This was only the second time I've gone to AWP (a conference for writers/writing programs/men with western shirts), but that's enough to recognize this feeling of anti-personhood I've brought home. I've got to go teach now. Of course, I don't know what to teach my students other than how to erase themselves with static.

What I'm trying to say is, I'm tired. Be gentle.

Exhibit 24.22

Bad Ovums


Today a student gave me a confetti egg which, I was told after some time to lament my ignorance, is a Mexican Easter tradition. I was excited because the egg was a nice Royals-like powder blue. A good omen for Opening Day, right?

I immediately broke the egg.

I don't know exactly what this means, but I'd be feeling more optimistic about this season if I broke a mirror while opening an umbrella to scare away a black cat tracking spilled salt inside Zack Greinke's house.

Now you'll know who to blame if Jose Guillen cracks in half and a bunch of doughnuts come rolling out. Not that that would be bad or unexpected, exactly.

Exhibit 24.21

I Live Blog This Commercial I See on Hulu All the Time

0:01 - Is that text message from Marc Summers congratulating this lady on having the world's most disturbingly spotless kitchen?

0:07 - Should the crazy lady have headphones too?

0:08 - Is this the chat roulette I keep hearing about? If so, this girl got really lucky to find a geometry teacher and not...anyone else on chat roulette.

0:10 - I could do this. I like learning and stainless steel appliances.

0:12 - Hey, Melissa, maybe today's lesson should be on googling the word 'triangle.'

0:13 - Actually, I couldn't do this.

0:15 - Whoa, slow down, Pythagoras.

0:21 - We should focus a little less on geometry and a little more on getting Melissa out of the bomb shelter she's trapped in.

0:24 - Wait, we should be laughing now? I like laughing. Haha, Melissa. Fun! Hahahaha...

0:27 - ...hahahahaha. O, we're done?

0:29 - Wait, so if I learn geometry my kid will go to camp and we'll save that mountain?

25:30 - Why am I watching Chuck, anyway?

Exhibit 24.20

Basketball Coach

UH Hires James Dickey as New Basketball Coach



I honestly went to sleep thinking UH had named a deceased poet their next basketball coach. No, somehow they did worse.

These Dickey lines seem to sum up the situation:

To be dead, a house must be still.
The floor and the walls wave me slowly;
I am deep in them over my head.

Exhibit 24.19

On Editing A Novel #19

REWRITING YOUR NOVEL AFTER STUMBLING UPON A JOHNNIE LeMASTER BASEBALL CARD.


O man O man O man. The Master? What? No? Yes! That's just an awesome name. I've got to use this. Yes. Yes. Yes. Maybe I should just make that my pen name? No. No. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Calm down. O, good lord, LeMaster. First things, first. This novel is now about Johnnie LeMaster. Goodbye, Cornelius Buttons. Obviously, he can't be a butler anymore. He's got to be a, I don't know, the best at something. What was the real Johnnie LeMaster the best at? I guess the back of this baseball card will tell me. Jesus, nevermind. Okay, my Johnnie LeMaster is going to be completely different. First of all, he would hit higher than .220. Not that he needs to in his line of international espionage/mixed martial arts competitions but come on, no one named Johnnie LeMaster should be a light-hitting infielder. I will keep the mustache. Yes. Tagline: He bats 1.000...with the ladies! Yes! No! He can't be a baseball player. Or can he? He's definitely not a reticent butler tormented by missed opportunities. Which means he doesn't have a meaningful relationship with his Lord Windermere. Or maybe that's his nemesis? Yes! He'll need some kind of physical deformity then. Easy enough to do a find and replace green eyes for robot eyes. Great. Is Master even French for 'master?' I don't know. O, man, I forgot about Miss Farraday. Obviously Johnnie LeMaster isn't going to keep his feelings bottled up. No, he's going to... knock this one out of the park! Ah, that's no good. He'll just have to seduce her than kill her when he discovers she's a double agent working for the evil robot Windermere. I mean, she's his housekeeper, but she's also, I don't know, his assassin or something. She "dusts the shelves" could easily be she "dusts off a few agents." Good. Now let's pull back a bit. So we've got Johnnie LeMaster. He's the best at most things, including Bolivian judo. There's the nemesis. There's the mustache. He can actually hit a fastball but he'll choose not to. He's an undercover butler. But it's all for naught if I don't get a cooler pen name than his. Maybe somebody else on the 1985 Pittsburgh Pirates can help. Frobel? Foli? This explains why they lost 100 games. Well, Johnnie LeMaster could be both of our names, I guess. Memoirs are in. Holy hell everything is going to be so easy now that this novel is titled Johnnie LeMaster in The Remains of Farraday. Tagline: This summer, the butler did it. Yes!

Exhibit 24.18

Links

* I made an Octopus 13 for you.

* I'm doing this at AWP. Should be times.

* Joe Posnanksi interview on the Royals. The worst thing about Yuni Betancourt? He's terrible. The best thing? He's terrible every day.

* What computers mean we can say part one, two.

* Front page story in the city where I live: 84-year-old man gets in armed standoff with the police because he's been married "too damn long." Nothing else happening, apparently.

* Front page story in the city where I used to live: Cops stop kids with BB guns who went on a 9-day reign of terror.

Exhibit 24.17

Reading List Review

Writers on Literature
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum - Ms. Hempel Chronicles
Jean Thompson - Who Do You Love
Edward Jones - Lost in the City
Christopher McIlroy - All My Relations
Elizabeth Strout - Olive Kitteridge
Alice Munro - Selected Stories

In case it's not clear, this is a class on American short fiction. Well, there's Munro, but I think American means North American. Or maybe it doesn't and Canada can deal with it. I don't care as long as I can link to my favorite Wikipedia entry for something that isn't a real thing.

I have to admit, I'm a bit torn. On the one hand, these are all great books written by obviously talented writers. Our instructor's genuine affection and belief in these books makes them impossible to ignore. On the other, they're books I'd likely never read on my own (and nothing about reading them changed my mind). That situation is, I suppose, the great thing about taking such a class, but it's also left me feeling confused about American short fiction and what it should do. Despite all the talent on display here, there's little that grabs me about these texts, at least as books (all had at least one story I could stick up for more strongly).

Take Olive Kitteridge, likely the best of the books (aside from Munro) and more than deserving of its Pulitzer. It's really quite phenomenal from story to story and is possibly the first "novel in stories" I've read that wears that label as more than marketing. It's the ideal book for a graduate school fiction class, rich in description and character, full of the supposedly genuine. It's also mostly uninspiring, at least to this writer. Each story seems to me a perfect example of what one is told to write in graduate school, the sort of stories I ignorantly associate with Iowa or whatever else I want to insult at the moment. It's heartfelt and reflective and graceful and boring. It's exactly the book I'm going to give my grandmother for Christmas (which is a compliment).

None of this is to say I didn't enjoy it or learn from it--or any of the work here--just that I don't feel it's a conversation I'm presently capable of adding to. I can't out character Thompson, or out setting Jones, etc. Each of these books does the things we are told are important and they do those things remarkably well. Those just aren't the things that brought me to fiction. Though now that I think of it, I doubt very much it was short fiction that brought me to fiction either.

And so it's good to read this stuff rather than only chasing the new. Munro is obviously a different case. I hadn't read much of her that wasn't in recent magazines. Certainly not my writing hero, I wouldn't argue with anyone who claimed her as such. "Our Chekov" as the blurb says sounds about right. I'm just more of a Dostoyevsky guy.

Overall verdict: Eyes Opened/Shut