February 20th: A Book Review

Well, I've done it.  I have finished my good friend Robert's chapbook of poetry and now I'm going to review it as promised. 

Part of my job as a typesetter is to, well, typeset articles for scientific journals.  A lot of these journals contain book reviews, so I have a fairly good idea of how one should go.  Of course, I'm not going to follow the professional formula at all because formulas are fucking boring.

A typical book review in a scientific journal will include a brief description of a book's cover, the blurbs about the book and its author, and so forth.  Fuck that.  I took a picture of the book with my phone so you can look at it and judge for yourself;

No, I did not receive the book all bent and banged up like that.  It got that way from me toting it around in my back pocket and reading it at my writing desk at home while I drank MD 20/20.

Jesus, where are my manners?  The chapbook is titled Chasing Kerouac With My Credit Card, if you can't clearly read the title from the photo.  It is by one Edward Austin Robertson, which is the nom de plume of my good friend Robert.  But enough of these formalities.  Let's get on to the stuff that really matters; the poetry.

There are about sixty poems in Chasing Kerouac which are divided into two separate parts.  The first part chronicles feelings of restlessness and boredom and then the subsequent quest to put those feelings in their place.  The second part kind of tails off from that quest, but get's progressively melancholic toward the end.  I really enjoyed how the poems were strung together with a sort of chronological cohesion.  It made reading the chapbook (which is a pretty quick read at just over 100 pages of poetry) feel more like I was reading a novella of vignettes stitched together from the writer's memory.

 

This is how I suggest you read this collection.  Use your substance of choice.  Mine is shown.

The poems themselves have a Bukowski-like quality to them.  They contain unabashed descriptions of sex and debauch that never get repellant, but seem instead to draw the reader in to the moment.  And it's not like you'll be sitting there panting and wanting to beat off, either.  The moments are intimate and sweet and a little sad sometimes for all the sex they ooze. 

You know how I said it starts to get melancholic toward the end?  Well that's a bit of a Bukowski-ism too.  There are poems in here about starvation and frustration and loneliness and isolation (you know, the kind you can only see in the slow movement of the hand of a clock?) and you feel that too, especially if you've been there. 

For all of the influence drawn from old Buk's work though, there's a good slathering of the Beats in there as well.  The whole book is a journey from home to the world and back home again with all of the spiritual learning that entails.  We follow our hero as he travels from Texas to the East Coast, up to Canada, back down again, all the way down for some raucous shenanigans in Mexico, and then off to California and back.  Not once was I left feeling distant from the poet, but instead felt like I was right there beside him in all those places I've been and in all those places I want to see.  Even the food poems are good, for Christ's sake.

Anyone who's a fan of poetry or transgressive literature should give this little book a shot.  It won't eat up a whole hell of a lot of time (you could finish it in one sitting if you wanted to) and is plenty fun to drink along with as you read.

I found the book on lulu.com where it's sold, so here's the link if you want to check that out;
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=chasing+kerouac+with+my+credit+card&type

Check out Robert's blog here, while you're at it;
http://thaclick2pick.com/

The guy's hilarious and won't disappoint.

From the typesetting desk,
     Good night!

February 19th: The Sun Always Shines in Brownbackistan

Q: How is Sam Brownback similar to the Clap? 

A: You don't know who gave him to you, you damned sure didn't ask for him, he hurts to even think about, and you're ashamed to even discuss him in public. 

It's ironic how closely a sexually repressed, gay hating idiot like Brownback psycho-symptomatically resembles a venereal disease.

If our old boy Sam conjures the shame and grief of chlamydia or herpes, his policies are far more syphilitic in their effects when it comes to the moral and physical well being of the state of Kansas.  Sam's just made it perfectly acceptable for GLBT employees of the state and local governments to be fired for nothing more than their particular choice of who to love, or fuck, or whatever they want to do.  How that is even constitutionally acceptable, especially in the age of DOMA's demise, is beyond me.

If you find yourself doubting that Brownstain's recent slight of the moral hand will result in any gay employees getting terminated, allow me to get a little hypothetical.  As a Kansan who's spent the majority of his employable life working for either the state, city, or school district, I can assure you that most of Kansas is populated by people with-shall we say-"anachronistic" world views.  These are people, well meaning or not, who use the word "faggot" in it's original and completely not-pleasant meaning.  These are people who still base their senses of humor largely around racial epithets, for crying out loud.  Imagine the type of person that rises to a position of management over such folk.  They tend to be a particularly high grade of asshole, just look at the governor himself for an example.  If you don't believe any of these people are capable of begging their superiors to fire Jimmy because he's a "queer that keeps starin' at my butt", or giving Linda the pink slip just because they "don't want any dykes on the payroll" (read both preceding quotes in your best stereotypical Kansas accent for full effect), then I invite you to live in a small town in the middle of Kansas for a month.  That's all the time you'll need to witness some spectacular form of ignorant hate or another.

When Alabama allows gay marriage and your state doesn't, even though it's the state that basically made the whole "Civil War" thing a struggle for fundamental human rights, then you start to realize where the whole gonorrheal shame thing comes from.  I guess none of this should come as a shock in a place known nationally as the home of the sociopathic Phelps family sect and the equally sociopathic and piratical Koch brothers.  It just hurts as a born and bred Kansan to have to say, in all honesty, that you are ashamed of your state.

Look at that smug, evil fool.

 

And I am ashamed, oh yes.  I voted for Davis last November, even while he was being ripped to pieces in political ads for going to a strip club once.  When I stepped away from the polls and then watched them on election night, I felt my heart sink into a new, ever more profound place of darkness.  It was almost worse than when Bush was reelected in '04.  I didn't cry this time.  I had the opportunity to cast my vote against the vile scumbag Brownback and his retinue of some of the worst so-called human beings who've walked this planet (here's looking at you, Kobach).  My outrage was such a defined thing because I thought that Brownback's incredibly imbecilic botching of his first term would be evidence enough to oust him.  Clearly it wasn't.  I sat in an almost blind rage, trying to figure out how anyone could've overlooked such monumental ineptitude, and then I remembered; "oh yeah!  I live in Kansas!"

Everyday is a struggle now to not allow myself to slide into complete cynicism and laugh while I watch the great ship Kansas sink with every soul who'd elected the captain still on board.  I have to remember the children, the mentally ill, the poor, and the GLBT community who are basically being punched in the face daily by the biggest asshole I've ever seen or heard of.  Because of that, I am in a state of constant, simmering rage.  One day an aneurism will take me and I'll be free at last, or I'll move to Colorado or Oregon and just forget that I ever lived in such a stupid, fucking place like Kansas.

To end on something of a positive note, I put my electronic signature on the petition to oust this dick and his cohorts.  I urge you to do the same if you're reading this and you're just as incensed as I am while writing it.  The link is right here: http://www.petitions.moveon.org/sign/recall-sam-brownback/
While it doesn't seem like much, it's at least somewhat encouraging to know that 35,000 people and counting can't stand the guy. 

From the typesetting desk,
     Goodnight.

February 17th: Beating Around the Bush

First order of business; I am in the process of reading my good friend Robert's chapbook and will have a review posted soon.  I can assure anyone who even reads this that it is, indeed, good shit.  Now, on with the show.

There's a lot of news already about GOP presidential hopefuls for 2016.  In the running we have the union busting crypto-fascist Scott Walker (who doesn't believe in evolution, but looks oddly ape-like), Rick Perry (everyone's favorite racist cowboy), a friendly looking writer and neurosurgeon by the name of Ben Carson, Chris Christie (who looks like the guy who can't make it all the way through Ikea and has to stop and sit on display furniture every couple of minutes, breathing so loudly you can hear him over the rest of the crowd), and Jeb Bush.  Might I add as an aside that my state's own inept and sinister governor, Sam Brownback, is not in the running as of yet.  That guy shouldn't be allowed to govern a high school prom committee, let alone an entire state.

Now it's too early to even begin to tell who'll get the nomination to run for POTUS from the GOP, never mind what any pundit tells you.  The late, great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson turned such speculations into a betting game, and his wagers were fairly accurate.  I'm going to attribute that to Thompson's insane genius far outstripping that of even your most intelligent political pundit.  That said, all of the hoopla right now seems to indicate Jeb Bush as a potential darling for the Republicans.

As far as Republican scum of the earth goes, Jeb seems fairly innocuous.  He looks a smidge'n more intellectually sound than his older brother, the last Bush who held the job in contest.  That doesn't mean that I'll vote for the guy.  No way, no how.  I'm politically unaffiliated, but I steer clear of Republicans.  There's a creepy, rich-old-white-guy vibe that they exude that I can't quite come to terms with.  That and I came into my full-blown social consciousness during the reign of Jeb's older brother, George W. Bush.

 

 

Doesn't he look smart and almost friendly?  Appearances can be deceiving.  Personally, I have very little knowledge of the man's background save for his family tree and that he was governor of Florida once.  Those seem like horrible credentials to flout when vying for the presidency.  So your brother is mentally handicapped and you can just barely keep a penis-shaped peninsula that's been turned into one big Jimmy Buffett themed hospice center from sinking into the Gulf of Mexico?  Well, shit, my friend!  Here are the keys to the little black box that holds the launch codes for the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in human history!

 

I jest, of course.  George W. Bush was not mentally handicapped, just dangerously close.  The man just might go down in history as the president single handedly responsible for putting the final nail in America's superpower sized coffin.  I remember an administration rife with racists, anti-immigrant and anti-gay agendas and war-profiteering schemes.  I hated George W. Bush with a passion, I mean a fervent fucking passion for many years.  I cried when he was reelected, cursing that I was a few months too young to cast my vote against him.

 

When I think about it now, I kind of like the guy.  I mean, I'll never be able to overlook the awful things he did, like botching the whole Katrina thing and starting two of the most embarrassing and globally irresponsible wars in history, but I consider him to be a kind of comically tragic figure.  The guy paints portraits now, for gods' sake.  He's basically a dumb, rich kid with a coke habit and a love for partying who never grew up and ended up being used by a cabal of some of the worst people ever to pull off the greatest, shittiest heist of all time.

 

Look!  He even feels the same way about babies as I do.  Seriously though, I'd love to meet the guy and send him sprawling off the back of the wagon for one night of raucous debauch and discussions about how mesmerizingly evil Dick Cheney was.  That would be a damned good time.

So I guess what I'm saying is, no Jeb.  Please don't.  Your brother made a shitty president, but he seems like a fun guy.  You will also, most likely, make a shitty president, but you don't seem half as cool as old George is.  Look at that face!  The baby's too!

 

February 3rd: Happy Early Birthday, Bill

Two days from now will mark the 101st birthday of one of America's greatest writers from the 20th century, William S. Burroughs.  I'd like to commemorate that day (Feb. 5th) some more on the actual date, but I'm not sure if I'll get to it.  That said, I'm doing this now.

William S. Burroughs is one of my favorite writers.  I was introduced to him by reading Jack Kerouac's On the Road.  That book, by the way, may be solely responsible for my decision to take writing seriously, but that's a tale for another time.  After I'd read the parts about all of the weird shit that went on at Bill Burroughs's ranch, I had to look the guy up. 

My first exposure was intentionally going to be Naked Lunch, but of course the nearest bookstore to me at the time (a Hastings in Hutchison, KS) didn't have it.  All they had was Junky, but I wasn't complaining.  I picked the book up and read the first 40 or so pages of it that night.  I loved it.  I'd never read anything like it, replete with it's vignettes of collapsed veins, rolling drunks in the subways, and trading illegal firearms for morphine.  Not even On the Road, which at that time had pretty much been the sauciest, sexiest, drunkest thing I'd ever read, could touch it.  By the time I'd put that book down I was a staunch admirer of the insanity that was Burroughs.

The gun thing was a huge part of the mythological persona of Burroughs.  I tend to visualize the man in a dapper suit on a heroine nod with a shotgun cradled in his arms.  If I recall correctly, in a previous post I mentioned that he shot his wife in the head during a drunken, high-out-of-their-minds game of William Tell.  That actually happened.  That incident, by the way, is probably the most polarizing aspect of Burroughs, because you either love him, hate him, or have never really read or heard of him.  There are many out there who consider the man to be a murderer for what happened to his wife, Joan.  I just listened to a documentary on Burroughs on the This American Life podcast.  It was really good, actually.  Iggy Pop narrated and John Waters and David Bowie made some appearances.  One of the detractors said that the "artistic apologists" seem to overlook the fact that Burroughs killed another human being, if only accidentally, and that makes him a despicable killer.  I'm not sure what to believe really, but I do know that I love the man's work.  An exhibit of his art was held at the Arts Center here in Lawrence not so long ago, and the stuff was about the kind of crazy chaos you'd expect from the man.  I was not disappointed.

There's a sort of correlation with the insane and highly talented American writer and the love of guns.  When I think of such figures, I'm immediately struck with two who also happen to be a few of my favorite writers ever; Hunter S. Thompson and Ernest Hemingway. 

 

 

Anyone familiar with these two will know that Thompson was a drug abusing lunatic and Hemingway was a manly alcoholic.  They were both suicides in the end, as it turns out.

 

I guess it goes to show that inner turmoil, a propensity toward insanity, addiction, and the love of all things destructive are a perfect recipe for genius and an untimely end.

 

The last thing on the list for tonight, before I get back to typesetting, is the addition of tabs linking to the various pages on this blog.  Those tabs can be found just below the title, so even I will be able to navigate to those pages!  Alright!

 

February 2nd: Chapbooks and Shit

First things first, I apologize to anyone who may have read that last post.  That thing was written in total haste and didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense when I read back over it.  It's been revised now, so hopefully it's a bit more palatable. 

The second item on the list is another apology; I did indeed have the tour diary on here after all, and not just the one that I rewrote a few days ago.  It is actually located on it's own page which is titled "Tour Diary", so if you can navigate to it (I can't fucking figure that part out myself) you are welcome to read a more contemporary account of a few of those days on tour.  It's illustrated too.  There are plenty of pictures of scenery and TJ for your enjoyment, so by all means go forth and... enjoy.

Now that the first two items on the agenda have been taken care of, allow me to move on.  Recently I've been getting into podcasts.  I'm painfully aware of how much of a walking anachronism I am because most of you have already been listening to podcasts for years, no doubt.  At any rate, the whole craze started when Jake put on some Hardcore History a la Dan Carlin while we were driving back home from St. Louis last Sunday.  We listened to a multi part series on the Mongols, which I found to be engrossing.  We were only able to get about 2 1/2 of the episodes in before arriving at home, so I quenched my thirst by downloading the Podkicker app on my phone and finishing what we'd started.  Ever since I've been hunting for other podcasts to keep me from braining myself or any of my coworkers here at the old typesetting desk, so if you have any suggestions, please post a comment!

I'll be honest here.  I've got nothing particularly pertinent to discuss today, but seeing as it's the first Monday of February, I feel obliged to write something.  Here goes nothin'.

I received a text about an hour ago from my lovely girlfriend, Christina.  She was letting me know that I got a package in the mail from my old friend, Robert.  Robert and I have been corresponding via email lately.  I hunted him down through his blog after losing his phone number when I finally had about all that I could take of my old phone (I wanted an excuse to get a new one, so I punched the old one repeatedly until it stopped working).  There was an interesting blurb about him, the author.  Little did I know, because he never brought it up, but he self published a book of poetry.  I asked him about it, and for the price of a beer next time he's in Lawrence, KS, he told me he'd send me a copy.  Robert is a hilarious dude and one hell of a restless traveler, so I am raring to tear into that poetry book.  I'll probably rip into it tonight and base a little bit of my next post on it as a sort of review in progress.

Knowing a published poet has inspired me to start collecting all of the loose poems I've penned over the years.  I'm intending to take the time soon to self publish a chap book of my own.  I've rounded up about 20 or so poems for that purpose.  This is in the midst of working on the first draft of that novel I mentioned in earlier posts, trying to shop out some short stories to online publications, and the never ending song writing process, so I'll have to keep ya'll posted on this.  It might be a while.  To tide anyone over who may be interested, here's a link to my writerscafe profile where a few of my poems (more to come, I promise!) can presently be found; http://www.writerscafe.org/prairie_wings

Now before I leave to continue my adventures in typesetting, I'd like to leave you all with an inspirational image:

That's right.  This blog is illustrated now!  And yes, that's TJ whoopin' ass at Guitar Hero.  You only wish you were that fuckin' cool!

G'night, folks!