A tea towel, embroidered by my husband's grandmother + a cookbook I found at the farmer's market = a story waiting to be written

It’s that time of year when the world thinks of things, of gifts gifts gifts gifts, the over-commercialization of Christmas, bells that jingle and fully-decked halls. Physical items start to seem more important than they do the rest of the year: the bike you wrote to Santa for, the ornament your daughter made in second grade, the divinity candy you have to make though only you and your dad really like it because Grandma used to make it every year. Every string of lights or holiday platter bears memories, or the promise of memories yet to come. These things are artifacts of Christmases past, endowed with meaning that accumulates like dust as the boxes sit in the garage, far enough out of sight and mind to make them seem that much more important come December.

It seems the longer we leave an item alone, the greater the emotion it carries. This can make for some pretty interesting stories (if you’ve written one, Hayden’s Ferry Review is accepting submissions for their “artifact” issue right now). Dawn Raffel explores her relationship to items from her past in a series of short essays, quite a few of which appeared in Willow Springs 67. Each essay is titled for an item that carries a story–”The Prayer Book,” “The Bride’s Bible,” “Garnet Earrings”–and uses these objects as windows into Raffel’s past. Read more »

I received a letter in the mail from a magazine I chose not to renew.
Call me dumb as a doorstop, but the letter made me feel guilty.

I don’t like people being upset with me, so the stupid letter almost worked. It actually made me feel like I had done something hurtful, and mildly dirty, to the magazine. They had me so convinced I’d done something wrong I dug up old credit statements from the previous year.
All I can say is, if the letter were reworded just a little, it’d clearly scream “crazy, unhealthy relationship.” Just sayin’

AKA it basically says: Read more »

It’s that time of year again. School is winding down, the smell of snow is in the air, and we only have 20 more days until Christmas. So in honor of the holidays and the small number of digits in my bank account, I give you gifts for readers and writers on a budget.

Coffee + Inspiration = Writer's Best Friend

Write Like a Motherfucker mugs on therumpus.net.  If you’ve never been to The Rumpus, you should probably be ashamed of yourself. I love, love, love the advice column. It’s called Dear Sugar. And if you haven’t read it, you really, really should. The amount of insight and wisdom Sugar possesses is astonishing and comforting to read.  One of her weekly letters she responded to was concerning a writer who is/was jealous of her friends for being more accomplished in writing than her. So what did Sugar suggest she do? Write like a motherfucker. Fuck yeah. Price: $13.00 Read more »

 This past week I watched Miss Representation, a film by Jennifer Seibel Newsom.  It’s a documentary about the portrayal of women in the media and the effect on political and feminist discourse.  Despite people always saying women have come such a long way in the entertainment industry, and in politics, the glass ceiling is a myth, and blah blah blah—forget that, it’s not true.  “The media treats the women like shit,” Margaret Cho says in the film, summing it up nicely.  Cho had a sitcom in the 90s, and she was pressured into losing weight for the show, only to be replaced by The Drew Carey Show, “you know, because he’s so slim,” Cho says, laughing at the absurdity.

Disappointing, MJ.

  It’s really not funny, though. Seibel Newsom frames the movie in a personal way—she has a daughter, and she wants better than a world where female politicians are called Mrs. instead of by their earned title, where Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ankles are more important than her ideas on foreign policy, and where a photo of Michele Bachmann eating a corn dog or making “crazy eyes” is national news.  I want this, too.  I cried, in fact, because my oldest child right now is a little girl who is confident in her intelligence, her kindness, and her equality.  Right now, she believes she is both beautiful and smart, both kind and capable.  I never felt this way as a child, that I can remember, and it feels like one of my biggest successes as a parent that all of my kids seem to.  I fear the time is coming, though, those years when girls turn from confident happy people into virtual strangers who obsess about their looks and appearance, forgetting all that made them proud to be themselves as children.  Read more »

Who says turkey can't be sexy?

It’s that time of year again when we all gorge ourselves until we pass out, watch football, and awkwardly talk with relatives we see once or twice a year. So here are some links to be thankful for.

1) Martha Stewart makes mashed potatoes with Snoop Dogg.

2) How to make your turkey sexy.

3) Turkey carving lessons with Bill Cosby.

4) Smoked Beer Can Turkey? Yes, please.

5) Prefer cake instead of tryptophan? Try the Thanksgiving Dinner Cake!

6) Jones Holiday Soda in four seasonal flavors.

7) Need a little booze this holiday season? Try these cocktails.

8) Hate cooking? Now you can simply blow up a turkey!

9) Now your dogs don’t have to be left with left-overs or table scraps.

10) Unusual Thanksgiving recipes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

You rush a miracle, you get rotten miracles.

(Yeah, my title is a reference to a country song. Oddly, my other options for titles were also country songs.)

So lately, my bowling game has been suffering. My ball speed is inconsistent and the chance of me actually hitting my mark has gone down to maybe 50%. One of my teammates took pity on me (or perhaps was frustrated with my plummeting scores) and told me, quite simply, that I was rushing. My body and feet were moving faster than my arm, which often caused me to force an erratic swing at the last minute. I needed to slow down.

I often work on my poetry while I bowl. I like using the rhythm of the process to work out lines and edit poems I’m feeling unsure of. Unfortunately, I can say with all humbleness that my poetry has seriously been suffering this season. I know one of the dangers of being a concept based poet is that my ideas play out faster than I can write them and sometimes I’ll know where I want my poem to go when I’m only on line two. And if I’m being lazy, I might not take the time to figure out if my poem has something better to say than what I think it should say. Before talking about my concerns with my thesis adviser, I gave him some poems I had written lately and he told me they started well but then died a little in the middle. It’s like I was in a hurry to get to the ending.

Uh-oh. Read more »

OK, so this note is going to be rather short, as I’m on my lunch break at work. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been rather interested in the Occupy Wall Street protests, and they’ve got me somewhat optimistic for the first time in a few years.

One question that’s been bandied about is a pretty basic one: Why the protests? And to be sure, the protests are hardly homogenous; there’s all sorts of different viewpoints and myriad causes being supported by protesters across the country.

But at its most basic, I think it’s quite clear that people are angry, and at one group of people in particular: The Scrooge McDucks among us.

No, really, Scrooge McDuck. You may remember the Duck Tales, which featured Scrooge McDuck, a very wealthy Duck who made a habit of taking a morning swim through his vault of money.

Now most of the folks that I’d label Scrooges aren’t actually individual people. They are banks that got bailed out. Well, I was thinking about the bank bailouts, and after (hastily) doing the math, I realized that the bank bailouts had not only given the banks, we’d given them enough to actually make the opening scene of the Duck Tales possible, and then some.

Read more »

Last year I blogged here on Bark about how book trailers were essential–according to some publishing experts–to properly market your book. As expected, many authors didn’t agree and/or made trailers that made fun of the whole concept.

My favorite back then was Dennis Cass’s “Book Launch 2.0,” which won the 2010 Moby Award (The Oscars of the Book Trailers) for Best Performance by an Author.

Now I have a new favorite.

Here’s Max Barry promoting Machine Man.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEN10axDJtA&feature

I can’t stop laughing. It must be the Australian accent.

Morgan Spurlock–of 30 Days, Super Size Me, and A Day in the Life–is casting for a new documentary series.

Is there something that you have always dreamed of doing but have been too afraid of failing to try? Did you always want to open a restaurant, write that Great American Novel or maybe even climb a mountain! If you are ready to overcome that fear of failure, then we want to hear your story.

The new series will be called Failure Club and is “about embracing the fear of failure in order to change your life.” Meeting weekly for a year, the cast will help each other achieve their dreams.

I’m a big fan of Spurlocks, but have mixed feelings about this series. What if the people answering the casting call are just fulfilling their “big dream” of being on TV? Many reality TV shows have this problem.

Will most of the people apply because they think being on TV will give them a greater chance of getting published, open a restaurant, star in a play, or join the circus? As opposed to truly master a craft or a discipline. How will he make sure it doesn’t become another version of Starting Over?

Bottom line is, I’m worried about how he’ll make this a documentary–a style I love–and not a reality TV show–which I can’t stand.

Despite my pre-series anxiousness, I’m pretty sure I’ll watch the show. So far Spurlock has never disappointed me, and I’m a sucker for underdogs-achieveing-their-dream-type stories.

If you’re an “inspiring and fun every-day” person with “big, unfulfilled goals” and over 21 and happen to be living in or planning to move to NYC or the tri-state area, you should apply. I’d watch you every week and cheer you on. By the time the show airs, you either could have achieved your dream or be signing up for Failure Club 2.

"We lost good people on that server."

In case some of our readers hadn’t figured it out yet, I’m a bit of a geek. I may be a student of the humanities but I love science, I love technology, and my other big passion besides writing is video-games. It could be argued that the 1996 PC title Riven, a haunting game that explored the wonders and ethical dangers of storytelling, was actually responsible for my initial desire to write. I’ve found it compelling over the last decade to watch as electronic media emerges as an art form unto itself, and I follow developments related to that sphere with great interest.

Of course, as with any innovation, the results are not always shiny-happy-progress. Sometimes the results are actually harmful; more often than not, though, they’re just stupid. Kotaku’s Brian Crecente reports that a recent documentary by UK studio ITV features purported footage of “IRA terrorists” armed with Libyan anti-aircraft weapons, shooting down a Royal Army helicopter in 1988. The footage, while certainly riveting, is actually gameplay from 2009′s online combat shooter ARMA II. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen ARMA being played, and the graphics are quite good, if a bit dated. On the average low-quality TV screen some viewers, unfamiliar with modern conveniences like “video games” or “that awful rock-and-roll music,” would likely not even notice. That said: come on, guys. ITV claims this was a mix-up over use of the wrong clip, but any video editor worth his salt should have picked up on this right away. The glitchy, stilted movements of the soldiers in the beginning should have been a dead giveaway. Read more »