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.

I’m in Columbia, SC tonight, staying at Tara’s while she’s in Calgary. We met up for a few hours last night and had dinner before she left at 4 AM. I spent the majority of the day on the USC campus, attempting to piece together a workable manuscript from the 170+ pages of printed material I have available to me from the last two years, but that was not a pleasant exercise. The only thing I felt I really accomplished was transferring one of the stories I did in June into the poetry folder– it seems the most likely candidate to lead off the collection, if there is a collection in all of this. Considering how often I look at animals with people properties (like talking cats), people with animal qualities (like the city of Galveston turning into owls), and things that are half-animal, half-something else, you’d think I would have a pretty decent chunk working together. But, I have a lot of work to do if I want to piece together a collection that I want other people to see.

It’s only day 3 of the month but already I’m terribly frustrated with the poem-a-day exercise. This is natural– I think I was five days in last time before I was certain I had nothing to contribute– but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s frustrating. I spent almost six hours of the day today trying to get something going and all I came up with was another installment in the Expert Advice sequence, which was really exciting to me for three days in April.

Long day. Exhausting. I won’t bore you with details. Read Jessie’s blog for a recap of two of the more pleasant of the last 24 hours.

I came home today ready to make more than a tiny dent in my packet, which is due on Monday. With the recent craziness at work, I had been coming home absolutely drained, with no real poetry in me. a had a very productive day on Saturday, but didn’t actually do much of anything that will help my next packet, then incredible difficulty focusing on Sunday, and I took yesterday is a sick day because I was just in need of a break (the sore throat didn’t help).

But today I feel energized. This is due partly to the fact that I accomplished quite a bit at work today and left feeling as though I am doing everything I can. But it is also due to the fact that a friend sent me a draft of a poem that left me awed and very excited about poetry. I shouldn’t need these little reminders, but occasionally I do: I am extraordinarily blessed. I’m sure some writers go their whole lives, and never feel understood, never feel like they have co-conspirators and collaborators. Over the last few years, I seem to have no shortage of co-conspirators, people like Ruba, Emma, Michael, Bill and Jeremy, Ellen, Philip and others who shall remain nameless, in order to preserve their reputations as evil intimidators. And all throughout my life, no matter which art form I was working on, I have always been lucky enough to be around people who challenge me to do better, simply by doing fantastic work on their own.

Consider this the occasional, obligatory gushing post about how good life is. Pretty soon, I will feel so saccharine that I will need to say something really rude about some poet I don’t know: watch out, poet, who writes about his childhood but never has much to say. When I write the letter that goes with this packet, you’re gonna get served.

Update: all the misspellings above are due to voice recognition. Yes, I’m embarassed. Will correct later.