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• Don’t be fooled by the outdated URL in the link– Emma Bolden’s The Mariner’s Wife is available from Finishing Line Press in the here and now, 2008!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!