I have been chronically confused for quite some time about i.e. and e.g.– it’s one of those things that I have been meaning to look up but always seem to forget about when I am at a computer. Marielle’s post on Instructify today cured me forever by pointing me to this simple explanation. Thanks, Marielle!

I troll Metafilter every so often, looking for content for Instructify. Today’s been a neat day, because it seems more people than normal are looking for stories and poems they remember. Take a look.

• What’s the name of this story about a president beheading his ministers? It might have been in Spanish.
• Can you help me find a poem, published in the NY Times Book Review 20 years ago, about a baseball pitcher?
• Looking for a poem I read about a domestic frustration and a housewife snapping after toiling away in quiet desperation.
• Please help me locate a collection of Russian/Eastern Bloc short stories. One concerns a snowman and the other is a reflection on life while falling out of a window to one’s death.

After a weekend of intense scrabulizing, I have won a couple more games and lost a couple more games. Curiously, I’m now beating the people who are pretty good and losing to people who aren’t; I think I truly play to the level of my opponent. (Granted, against the better players, if I can’t find a 30-point word right away, I’ll let the game sit for a while and come back when I have more brain space and patience. Against the opponents who don’t play me so tight, I’ll play a word each time I open the game.)

I spent much of today working on poems, revising a small handful (minor edits here and there, things like snipping an article or strengthening a line’s rhythmic qualities) and working for a while on one. In November, I wrote a poem called “Man on Ski Lift Passes Reindeer,” triggered by, of all things, a Starbuck’s commercial. When reviewing the November output, this poem, which was really dashed off and felt, at the time, woefully incomplete, was the one that interested me the most. I’m now using it as the basis for a poem that I agreed to write one night in July after several glasses of wine with Dean Young. I was surprised at just how thoroughly “Man on Ski Lift…” adhered to the rules I knew I would want to set for this other poem… without realizing it, I’d begun a poem I’d been intending to write for some time.

I bought the new Foo Fighters album, knowing before I listened to it almost exactly how it would sound. Turns out, I was right. Do they have software for crapping out their new albums? Have they inserted a microchip in my brain to ensure that I will like each one?

The terrifying Marielle Prince shows up in Poemelion’s new issue, out today. This issue is all prose poems… rock! (Also features Jeannine Hall Gailey.)

Though I’m not sure Bill, Jeremy and I have come close to mastering it yet, Inch is now using an electronic submissions manager. This should make it much easier for cheapskate poets to send us high-quality work.

This may sound like I’m being snarky, but I’m serious when I say I know a couple of terrific poets who are complete and utter cheapskates. But I’d go to great lengths to get some of their work in our little magazine.

I don’t know why the majority of today seemed rotten. I think it started early, when I checked my morning e-mail and found some very unwelcome news; I just felt like I’d committed a serious social faux pas even though the missteps were unintentional, probably harmless, and hopefully easily forgivable. Couldn’t shake that feeling after I got to work, where I stared at my to-do lists and felt a little helpless; I would have been happier today chasing the instant gratification of answering every e-mail as it came in, but not many e-mails came in. I spent some time tinkering with non-work stuff, figuring that if I could get any mojo at all, I’d just make up the time tomorrow when I take a writing day. No dice.

I think I started the paragraph above intending to come to some moral or cathartic thought, but now I can’t remember what it is. Rats.

Oh, yeah, here’s what it was: throughout the day, the only thing that made me feel like a normal human being was reading a manuscript by this guy. It’s freaking terrific. I can hear his teacher’s voice behind a few of the poems, nudging them into where they want to go. There’s an unexpected authority in some. It’s heartening.

Grouchy to giddy in 3.2 seconds: Breeders tell all about new album

Should you find yourself looking to sample fine music before purchasing it from the industry that treats you like a criminal, BeeMP3 is a terrific search engine for mp3s. I’m currently listening to Bruce Hornsby’s “Mandolin Rain,” which is much cooler in my memory than it is in real life.

Check this class description for an upcoming class at WWC:

The repetition of phrases and sounds is a technique many of us use to give our poems rhetorical as well as emotional emphasis. Too often, though, our poems are overwhelmed by this gesture and devolve into so much noise. In this class we will look to Whitman and Hopkins’ highly charged poems of ravaged landscapes to consider how one might “repeat” (or return) as a means of making the poem and its argument /more/ muscular and fluid at the same time. We will look to issues of craft to guide us. As such, students will be expected to participate fully in lively discussion.

Friends have already e-mailed to ask if I’m drooling with delight. I’m drooling.

The following bullet points consist of links you should follow and the context for following them.

• A parody of “The Office,” created to make you miss the striking writers even more. My friend Charlie directs, my friend Anthony stars.
• My little magazine gets a mention in the News & Observer’s holiday gift guide.
• I called American Gangster “fair.” Creighton liked it a lot better. Metacritic says 76. (Creighton, notice that Michael Collins got the higher ranking.)
• Pinksy gives some love to Van Jordan’s terrific Quantum Lyrics.
• My 14-year-old brother is now allowing me to stalk him via Twitter.
• I felt the need to end this short list with a lolcat.

As much as I enjoyed the poem-a-day grind for the last two months, it was really nice to wake up this morning and think, “I don’t have to do that today.”