My buddy Charlie came to Chapel Hill to do the mp3 Experiment.  It was terrific.

I have, over the last few months, given up on being a regular blogger because my carpal tunnel has been inflamed pretty much all of the time.  Which is, I guess, OK, since it forces me to limit the amount of time I spend on the computer.  It got a good two-week rest just recently, which is why I’m feeling good enough to poke into this blog and provide you with this list of potential topics for conversation.  Should you see me on the street, in a bar, or in a local department store, these topics would make for spirited chat, if you’re interested in chatting mostly about me.

List of Potential Topics for Conversation, Based Upon My Whereabouts and Interesting Experiences From the Past Few Months

• Warren Wilson MFA July 2009 graduation (subtopics here include: Matthew Olzmann who is cooler than you are, things Tua’s students say to her, joining Mike Puican’s family for an afternoon)
• Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference 2009 (subtopics here include: waiting tables, my reaction to a NYT kill piece, Bread Loaf brain loss, workshop leader Arthur Sze and fellow Stephanie Brown, some of the best poems about pigs I have ever read, BLARS, my visit to the laundry room, Voltron and my love of the scholars, Kara Candito’s Taste of Cherry, Brigit Pegeen Kelly giving a reading that may actually have killed someone because it was so good, the Dank Tank, Weather Walrus, my roommate Matthew Olzmann who is cooler than you are)
• NC state budget crisis
• Warren Wilson MFA Alumni Residency at Mount Holyoke College (potential subtopics include: panel on subject matter with Robin Black and Tracy Winn, an amazing welcome, staying in a dorm that is waaaaay nicer than my home, a future motion picture)
• the night Chelsea showed up on our porch
• El Bandito’s new cat and its potential names (potential subtopics include: the pros & cons of “Maurice,” my temptation to bring forward the name “Matthew Olzmann”)
• recent and upcoming publications (potential subtopics include: magazines listed on the “About” page of this web site which has been recently updated)
• arm removal (partial)
• going to Los Angeles (potential subtopics include: Dodgers, Angels, Frank Lloyd Wright, convergences of friends)
• new book from Bull City Press — State Street by Katie Bowler
• editorial changes at Inch, including exciting upcoming guest editors

Also, a reminder: if you’re still coming to this page, one of the following is true: I love you dearly, you are a spam robot, or it’s OK to stalk me from afar but please do not come to my home.

I miss @tweettales.

One of my best friends is getting married soon and has entrusted me with reading a poem in his wedding.  This is very, very cool, but it’s also really terrifying, because they’d like me to read one of my poems.  I do not make it S.O.P. to deal with the reader with utter sincerity, but the occasion demands it, so I have been out of my element a little.  The challenge, intellectually, is really enjoyable, but I have a tremendous fear that the poem will end up not being very good (despite the fact that the bride and groom chose it from a selection of poems, not all of which were mine).  I think in the elaborate, fearful fantasy I have been busy constructing, not only do I arrive at the ceremony with a poem that seems workable only to have it be total gibberish when I go to recite it, but the recitation is so awful that it causes the floor of the church to shatter and all of the wedding-goers to tumble into a pit of damnation, which, obviously, ruins the wedding day for the bride and groom, who not only never speak to me, but get a legal injunction barring me from ever publishing the poem, which wouldn’t seem probable anyhow but in the hours after the wedding-goers are swallowed up, I revise the poem and the revision is really, really good– it’s the poem I would have wanted to read at their wedding in the first place.

Unrelated:

• OK, so Scrabulous for Facebook is gone, but you can still play and get notifications by e-mail.  Daniel Wallace told me this.  I am so on… none of the Facebook alternatives has brought me quite as much joy as Scrabulous.  I just really like that interface.
• Speaking of which, Ladybug and I appear to be headed to a board game night tonight.  She does love board games, my wife.
• To anyone who doesn’t understand Twitter, let me just say this: when you’re writing a poem a day, Twitter is the best thing in the world, because you have all of that information, all organized chaotically, all of the thoughts complete and at the same time incomplete.  Could you ask for a better way to launch a meditation?

Further unrelated:

A couple of days ago, I linked to a 43 Folders post about Frank O’Hara and a series about making the time you need to be creative.  Merlin Mann hasn’t stopped thinking about carving out this space in his life (well, he’s on to attention in general, but what do you need attention for, if not to do the important things, and aren’t the important things almost always creative?), and he said something recently that I adored and wanted to rebroadcast:

Here’s the thing. It’s like being able to see The Matrix; once you realize the control you can choose to exercise regarding your attention, you’ll start to see all the unnecessary waste that everybody else thinks is unavoidable, natural, and even healthy (“I NEVER shut off my BlackBerry!”). See? Now, you are the weird one. Weirdo.

Yes, yes, yes, this puts into words a feeling I have been having very strongly in my life.  I’m by no means a zen master of my own attention, but I have been working as hard as I can to get there because it’s necessary for me to continue the creative life that I want to have.  I have been at the point where I have wondered if I lack empathy because I simply cannot imagine why other people aren’t working just as hard to control their own inputs and experience the rediscovery of purpose that accompanies.

But in case you were, I am in Myrtle Beach for Anthony’s bachelor party, and the most trouble we have gotten in to so far is buying Rock Band and playing all night.  Tame by any standards, but far more fulfilling than our aborted plan of hiring some strippers to come play Rock Band for us.

So, lest I be lost, allow me to update you on what’s happening.  (And seriously, allow me to plug YOUR stuff, if you are a respected peer.  E-mail me with your goings on.  If you are not sure if you have earned my respect, well, perhaps you should wait on e-mailing me your news and focus on sorting out the respect issue.)  I plan to be much more active, with healthy assistance from Marielle, about updating people as to the whereabouts and happenings of Inch contributors in the Bull City Press blog, which should launch in 2-3 weeks.  But those that have not published with Bull City?  I show them love right here:

• Rosalynde vas Dias is included alongside some pretty terrific poets (Robert Wrigley, Jane Hirshfield, some guy I have never heard of named “CK Williams”) in Cadence of Hooves: A Celebration of Horses, available now from Yarroway Mountain Press.  She says, “Like horses?  Know someone who likes horses??  This anthology of horse poems is the perfect gift!!  & my poem ‘Pupil Dilated’ is in it!!”  One can hardly find a better phrasing than that.
• Don’t be fooled by the outdated URL in the link– Emma Bolden’s The Mariner’s Wife is available from Finishing Line Press in the here and now, 2008!  (And look through the page… as I was scrolling down, I found a couple other books that I must have.)
• Twitterers, you are missing out if you are not following Jeremy Griffin’s new account, @tweettales.

Long talks this afternoon with two distant friends.  A short talk this afternoon with the wife, who will not, as it turns out, be going to the Turkish mudbaths.

Friends rule.  But let’s be honest, if it weren’t for them, I would have been writing in my blog for the last half hour.  Boo, friends!

I’m off to run trivia and perhaps compose hilrious Twitters.

Robin Black is this month’s One Story.  Purchase it now or perish.

Productivity blogs I read have recently recommended that, in order to keep some balance, you make sure that you divide your life into several sectors (work, personal/private, social, health) and accomplish at least one goal from every category.  They’ve run features on the importance of social contact with at least one friend per day, and “tickling” social contacts who are at a distance… basically, ping them every so often to make sure they’re still responding.  To keep them friendly.  I had lunch with an old friend, one I’d not seen in almost seven years, and he told the story of how his former drummer had a long list of people, and would go through that list, calling each one to check in and say hello.  When he got to the end of the list, which could take a couple months, he’d start again at the top immediately.  “We had a place to stay in any city we went to,” he said.  “We never had to ask.  If they knew we were coming in town, they offered up their place.  That’s why they were on the list, sometimes.”

I think a lot of poets have this going on, too.  I do not.  I’m woeful at keeping in touch with the people who are important to me.  It feels like at any given time I’ll have about eight in my contact list that I’m a reasonable friend to and will reach out to.   And there will be a small handful who haven’t yet given up on me and will check in occasionally.  But I never feel like I have the mental space, the bandwidth, to keep up with all the people who are important to me.  The Facebooks and Twitters and all those other tools are useful, though with Facebook I don’t always see when people change status. (Twitter seems to be just about perfect for keeping in touch… which is why I have come to value it so.  I wish everyone would Twitter.)  So I’ll drift in and out– more out– of contact with good people.  And if/when people re-surface that I’m excited about hearing from, sometimes I still manage to blow the exchange in some way.  Sooner or later, the malaise strikes again, and I go underground, not responding to calls and e-mails unless they’re essential to surviving… like, I have to answer for work.

I almost wonder if I should do like my friend’s drummer did, get a list and just go through, checking it off, maybe even pruning it every so often if I’ve lost touch and find that it doesn’t bother me. It feels a little overdetermined, a little contrived.  But it would, at the very least, get me thinking about what and who is important to me. How… mechanical.  I never wanted my friends to be a contact database.  I’m not trying to make sure I have a couch to stay on if I come to town.

But I also think about the joy of hearing from those unexpected folks.  I’m not just talking about the surprise contact from high school who found me on Facebook or MySpace, though sometimes those are really fulfilling as well.  I’m talking about the people who mean a great deal, the ones who just drift and drift further if I let them, and eventually drift so far in the universe’s bizarre orbital pattern that they eventually come back around, and for a brief minute– an e-mail or a phone call or a chance encounter at the burrito place– they’re back in my life.  I want to keep them there.  I want to be a better friend than I am.  I got a LinkedIn invite today from someone I last heard from over three years ago… I remember, because it was the day before my wedding that I last heard a peep from this friend. Hey you– if you’re reading, I don’t ever want you to disappear again.

You know, I should probably devote a whole category in this blog to my friend Emma.  Her new chapbook is available for pre-sale from Finishing Line Press.  Go get.

It is a well-documented fact that I have a certain automatic distrust for babies, though I should like to be fed, clothed and cared for. Perhaps I view them as competition.

So a baby has to be exceptionally cute for me to be warm to it… but my frequent co-conspirator Ruba has had a heck of an adorable baby:

Congrats Ruba and Shom. Welcome, new friend. How long will it be before we can play Scrabulous? With your parents, I give it… six to eight days.

Some more news from the Emma Bolden camp tonight reminds me that she’s a total rockstar. (Keep an eye on her blog, details will no doubt appear there soon enough.)

If you don’t already have her book, why don’t you swing by Toadlilly Press and order yourself a copy? You can thank me later.

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.)

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.

My buddy John Betz Jr. is a terrific comedian. Now, you have the opportunity to find this out for yourself. He says:

Hey there. I’m in a comedy contest and I’m sending this out to everyone I know. I performed at the HBO Comedy Festival last week in Las Vegas and the final round is judged by online voting. If you had some time, I’d love some votes and some word-of-mouth to others.

Please go to this website: http://ziddio.com/contest.zd?dispatch=landing&contest=53

Register with Ziddio if you haven’t already and then Vote for John Betz. Vote as often as you can! The rules permit multiple votes, all you have to do is close your browser and open it again. I usually open 7-8 windows at a time, vote on each one, close them all and start again. Also FYI, you don’t actually have to watch the video. The voting is two weeks long. From 10am on Wednesday, Nov. 21st to 11:59pm on Tuesday, December 5th. It’ll be a long two weeks, but worth it if I can win.

Vote relentlessly!

Creighton outlines some issues with Cary’s instant runoff elections, and in so doing, shakes my faith in the American voting system and baseball’s MVP voting.

Further proof that you should stay off the waterways if you value your life: my buddy John Thompson just landed a 19-foot fishing boat, which he’ll be captaining around.

Words without poems: I have been limiting the number of unnecessary inputs of late, but two that have my attention are Scrabulous for Facebook and Wordie. Scrabulous is a fine application that allows Anthony King and Lee Creighton to absolutely pulverize me in Scrabble at the rate of one or two turns a day, leaving me doubting that I have the vocabulary necessary to be a decent poet. Wordie is a site that Rosalynde Vas Dias turned me on to, which allows me to find new ways to attempt to punish them back, if I have the right tiles…

Happy Halloween, people. After racing home from work to get Halloween candy in time for all the tykes in my neighborhood, and buying a metric ton of those bite-sized candy bars, we’ve had one trick-or-treater. What the junk, kids? Get on the stick and ring my doorbell with your super-scary plastic Hulk costumes. Take this candy off my hands. I don’t really want it!

Today’s the last day of the month, and in about an hour and a half, I will have written a new poem for 31 straight days. Gluttons for punishment that we are, Matthew Olzmann and I will be continuing the experiment with slightly relaxed rules, all through November. I don’t think the rest of our gang will join us– and I don’t blame them. October has been mentally taxing; I can’t think of many days when I didn’t have a little demon on my shoulder all day reminding me that no matter what I accomplished, the poem wasn’t yet done.

But the exercise has not been an empty one– I have a few drafts headed straight to the circular file and a few I’m excited to keep working on. The goal is to try to practice so much that I’m able to internalize the good stuff– so when I have a poem that needs writing, the craft will be deeply a part of what I’m doing.

So, November. 26 poems in 30 days. Yup… I get one day off each week.

Long overdue: just subscribed to 32poems.

Computer woes from yesterday are no longer a concern. All hail Bryan King! Also, while watching him and Leo blow each other up, I had an idea for a poem… despite the fact that I’m writing one per day in October, the ideas only come about once a week. See the inherent problem?

(Not literally blow each other up– they were playing this:)

Bandito has a blog. In about fifteen minutes, he’ll also have some Dillard’s in his belly before we hit trivia. One must never underestimate the power of El Bandito when it comes to trivia nite. The man is a storehouse of knowlegde, some of it useful.

I’m in Phenix City, AL today, trying to do some work in a hotel. I drove in last night to see my pal Emma, but since it’s a football weekend, I’m staying the next city over. We had a nice dinner (certain to start rumors with the restaurant staff, who are used to seeing her there with Will) and then Big Whit came to join us for drinks. There was a hilariously bad lounge singer, a woman who had to be at least 65, with a voice that was a cross between Chloris Leachman and Louis Armstrong.

I had planned to do some work today, but I think first I’ll watch the Carolina/Miami football game. I don’t care one iota about football, but I’m on vacation. I figure I’ll catch up with Emma around dinner time, but since I’m currently in eastern time and she’s in central, I have a little extra time. I get a kick out of that. We’re in the same county, but different time zones.