09.04.03
Holy American Express, Batman
I just dropped $44 at the comic store. Someone is in deep crap. Though in my defense, I did opt out of dropping $80 on porno this past weekend so basically, in New Math, I’m ahead of the game. Yah ME!
Chase the muse on the Uptown 6
I was grousing to Jeff yesterday about the little writing project I have up and running. I mentioned the night before, I lay staring at the ceiling after lights out, rolling from side to side looking for even one idea for a story and was getting bubkis. There is still plenty of time, I know and wasn’t really worried other than the hours I wasted looking in an empty and obviously too-tired brain for a story. As Stephen King would say, the moving guys were still down in the basement and hadn’t started moving furniture up stairs for me to rearrange. So whatever.
Then I swear to CHRIST, yesterday as I’m power-shuffling across 23rd street to catch the uptown 6 train, a character starts to form and then two and then a story starts unwinding in my brain and I’m sure as shit going to miss the opportunity if I wait until I get home to the AMBR to get it entered so I get on the subway, pull out my faxed lab results from my physical last week which is my only spare paper in the bag and start furiously scribbling the wedge that’s stuck in my head. And so I guess that’s how that particular muse is going to dance for me. I’m keeping some spare paper handy from now on to catch all this righteous brain leakage from now on.
09.02.03
A Collective Noun Writing Project
I love how things are categorized and organized into groups by distinguishing characteristics and given definition by being in those groups. In my life, I’ve gone out of my way to collect collections, even if they hold no personal interest for me. Books seem to be my biggest guilty pleasure this way; I’ve bought and still continue to buy whole series and collections of books even if I can’t get past the first, awful one simply because in my heart and mind, a collection needs to be kept together to hold onto some theoretical synergistic magic. Anne Rice has profited significantly from me based on that crack-pot theory.
In thinking about a writing project I wanted to work on, I decided to focus on using collective nouns as an engine for starting stories. Collective nouns, as we all know, are nouns that give names to groups of things or people: bunch, group, handful, swarm, bundle, etc.. In historical times, they took these collective nouns and made them into a language to help describe the groups of animals they were hunting: a flock of geese, a pride of lions, a bevy of quail. Known as ‘terms of venery’, the language has expanded outside hunted animals to include just about everything and anyone imaginable. So my little brain latched on the idea and the almost poetic nature of these groups and the idea of a Collective Noun Writing Project started forming. Getting excited, I thought I could use up the rest of my natural born life writing short stories using all the venery terms as titles and subjects but being basically a good-natured and social member of the worker bee class, I started thinking with so many talented writers out in the Blog, I’d really be missing out on an opportunity if I didn’t open it up to people interested in taking on a writing project with me.
So here’s the deal: I’m looking to throw together this project with anyone who’s interested. All the skinny about the project is here or you can also find it through the collective noun writing project link at the side. Guidelines and rules and legal stuff is all over there. Please email me for more information or if you want to participate.
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09.01.03
swine-tabulosa
My biggest gripe about living in New York City and what I feel is my biggest failure at trying to be a New Yorker or even a good ‘mo, really, has been my abysmal lack of collecting any original art. I could never even round up a friendship with an artist who was willing to make me some art I loved to hang on the wall. I’m 33 years old and all my artwork is store-bought; a little of it was moderately expensive but mostly, it was cheap and came from places I won’t name. It’s an embarrassment I live with for the sake of having a home that looks finished. My thought has always been, when I do start collecting friend’s original art work, I’ll replace the cheap shit piece by piece.
Today, Jeff and I bought our first piece of original art for our wall. We found a local artist who has a shop in the town next to ours and commissioned a piece. We picked it up today and it’s everything. Of course we understand it’s not everyone’s taste and might question our choice of putting in the spare bathroom, but then again, art is in the eye of the beholder and right now, we’re beholden to the other white meat.
rink-a-dink, dink, a big new sink
Old kitchen, new kitchen with the new counter and new sink. It’s d’lovely.
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