Unless otherwise stated, which it won't be, the copyright to all the works in this directory is owned by me, evil_deceiver. Any of these works may be linked to, copied, printed, recited, and/or redistributed freely for personal or educational use as long as their authorship remains clear. All commercial or for-profit use is strictly prohibited unless written permission is obtained first. Quoting from or making reference to these works (by any individual or organization) is acceptable if and only if they are properly cited. Failure to do so is plagiarism, which is the last resort of the intellectually incompetent. All copyrights were established no earlier than 1993, in accordance with the 1978 US Copyright Law. (And yes, according to that law, I am allowed to use a "generally known alternative designation" instead of my real name when giving notice of copyright ownership.)
copyright | article notes | essay notes | poetry notes | fiction notes
I used to be on the staff of the Greyhound, as a writer, copy editor, and, for a year, Copy Chief. You may think the copy editing is bad now, but before, it was so bad that they had to, well, start hiring copy editors.
If you read any of these articles when it was actually run in the paper, you may notice that it looks different here. That's because some of the articles were horribly mangled at some point during the publication process (and, I admit, some of them weren't entirely perfect when I submitted them, either). The versions you see here represent the way the articles should have run. However, in terms of content, they are not substantially different from their printed versions, except when they include text that was cut by some editor or other.
The headlines are included in the interest of historical accuracy, and to preserve the visual effect. In most cases I had no input on them at all.
Review of Napster Lecture
I've said it before and I'll say it again: true Catholicism is very much
like true socialism. The comic strip alluded to in paragraph three is
a Calvin & Hobbes strip you've probably seen before; it
involves Calvin saying that "the ends justify the means", Hobbes pushing
him into a mud puddle, whereupon Calvin clarifies his original stance by
saying "I didn't mean for everyone; just for me."
Review of Protest Presentation
I walked home from this presentation with a "Nader for President" sign in
my hands, and at least one passing motorist smiled at me. I thought that
was cool. Harney asked us to e-mail him a one-paragraph response to the
show; I sent him this article instead. He wrote back and said it
"captured the spirit" of the presentation, or something like that. I
don't know whether he would have said that regardless, but in any case, my
article is at least historically accurate. It was a good presentation; I
can definitely recommend Harney if you're looking for someone to come
speak for you (though he'll actually end up speaking with you -- he
doesn't give lectures by any means).
Education Means Interaction
I often wonder how much of my college diploma is a joke. Lecturing is no
way to educate. I mean, it just doesn't happen that way. If I wanted
someone to talk at me, I could read the material out of a book. At least
a book wouldn't get me out of bed at 8:00 in the morning.
Our First Priority
One of the interesting things about writing in a small community is being able,
to some extent, to gauge the reaction of the community to your work. Usually the
reactions that people will admit to are positive, but I've overheard people who
didn't realize I was the author voicing negative opinions on some of my pieces. In this case,
I happened to overhear one of the people I quoted in the article (not sure which one)
in a campus cafeteria talking with a friend about how he'd been quoted in
The Greyhound saying the same thing for a second week. It seems he didn't feel his
statements had been quite so worth commenting on. So, anyway, that was
interesting. Other than that, I think the article pretty much speaks for itself.
I also got some positive feedback on it. It's just funny, really -- pretty
much every group on campus feels they're getting screwed by the registration process,
so from time to time they'll decide that they could use special treatment,
because at first they don't realize that everyone's getting screwed. Probably
because they have too much faith in The System. Dangerous, that.
GroupWise Celebrates Denim Day
This was just really interesting, to see GroupWise become embroiled in a
flamewar. Certainly showed us what kind of people we are, anyway.
Item 31: Thoughtcrime at
Loyola
I like this article. I'm told it was really good too. It ran with the
last few words cut off. This was not really my fault, but when I'm billed
as "Copy Chief", every little error pisses me off. A friend of mine who
was an RA the year this ran told me that at a meeting, she'd discussed the
article with other RAs, that they'd dismissed me as a typical Loyola
student who only cared about being able to drink, and that they
wouldn't listen to her explanation that I didn't drink myself, but had
written the article because I didn't like them telling me what I couldn't
put on my wall. It's nice to have friends who know you that well. It's
significantly less nice to have RAs who're so bad at listening, and think
so little of the residents.
Y2K: Don't Panic
This was a long time in coming, and ended up being a bit rushed because I
just had to write the damn thing. It's okay, though. Mostly I'm just
disappointed because I had visions of it being much greater than it
ended up being.
A Modest Proposal
This was written to poke fun at a freshman writer on the Greyhound
staff who'd spent the year earning the hatred and contempt of the college
community at large. The funny thing is, most people didn't like him
because he showed them what kind of drunks they really were. I actually
respect him for that, and I'm glad he did it . . . the reasons I myself
didn't like him include his tendency toward flawed arguing, his implicit
assumption that, though a freshman, he knew our school better than it
knew itself, his poor understanding of how to develop a public persona,
and my suspicion that he could dish it out but not take it. So what I did
was look through his old articles for examples of these shortcomings, and
rehash all the best ones into the most extreme essay I could. That's why
this reads so strangely . . . there's scarcely a sentence in here that's not
50% his in some way or other; I just grabbed all the good ones and tossed
them together as best I could. My editor filled in the "______" with the
name "Chris Chin," which I thought was good. Then, out of a sense of
fairness (?), she let this writer edit it himself before it went to press.
He changed the name to "Joe Schmoe," replaced every appearance of Brian
Fox's name with the term "the SGA President," and removed the line about
his mother in the fifth paragraph (which, to be fair, was my own
speculation/improvisation in the first place, and not something he'd ever
mentioned or even hinted at). I can't say I'm particularly upset; I
feared he'd do much worse.
A Modest Proposal
No Taco Bell
Update on the state of dining options on campus: the Taco Bell is finally
installed, half a year late. To Your Health has no current counterpart on
campus; one has to content oneself with the salads at Primo's, which
aren't the same thing at all, but are at least a healthy option. Primo's
is a pretty good place to eat, though. The "Boulder Garden Café"
has opened, much closer to the East Side, replacing two eating
establishments that had already been done away with by the time this
article was written. It's not as good as Primo's, but it's an okay place
to have lunch. Starbuck's, curse its overpriced yuppie heart, is right
where it was before. Anything low-quality seems to have an incredible
resistance to change. The best part, though: in the 2/Nov/1999
issue, the Opinion section's editor, who declares herself a Taco
Bell fan, wrote an article criticizing our particular branch of the chain,
that began with the sentence "I miss To Your Health."
Eating Disorders Awareness Week
Looky here . . . it's a genuine news article . . . . After regretting
having submitted the Sexual Assault Awareness
Month article as opinion, I decided this one would be straight fact.
Gave me a chance to prove I can be a responsible journalist if I have to,
I guess.
The Evil that is Rudolph
This one took some people by surprise, apparently. But at least everyone
I talked to realized it was supposed to be a joke . . . although some
thought it was serious until they went back and read the byline. People
seem to take my writings way more seriously than I do.
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
Grading the Faculty
Definitely among the articles I'm proudest of. Strong points well made.
I think I got almost everything that I wanted to into it, too. Seems to
me there were a couple more things I wanted to say, but I can't remember,
and it's no big deal . . . .
Why We Should Hold Class in a
Coffeehouse
You know how sometimes you're writing something quickly to meet a
deadline, and start writing all sorts of insane shit that you think no one
in their right mind would put to paper in serious context, and later you
go back and look at it and say "Wow, that was good, I should do drugs more
often?" Well, I was hoping this article would be one of those times.
Unfortunately, it wasn't. So we're stuck with a weak Communist
Manifesto parallel that I tried to make fit even though it doesn't,
and a sorry description of the coffeehouse scene. Description has always
been a weak point of mine. Oh well. :(
The Communist Manifesto
Topics of the Moment
I'm not overly proud of this one, but the thoughts were banging around in my
head asking to be let out, so I figured I could get them all over with at
once and make it a sort of variety piece or something. Surprisingly, this
has earned me possibly the most compliments of any article I wrote in my
first three semesters with the paper. One person commented that it said
some things he thought needed to be said. Hey, it's good enough for me.
Telephone Etiquette
Not a lot to say about this. Not one of my better articles, I don't
suppose. Valid point, though. The humorous parts sounded funnier in my
head.
The American Wasteland
Kunstler is quite a speaker, if you ever get a chance to see him. He
managed to keep me paying attention for almost two hours. He's written two
books on this subject, called The Geography of Nowhere and Home
From Nowhere. His writing style isn't as exciting as his speaking
style, but it's very good nonetheless. As for the article itself . . . my
editorial staff mangled it horribly. Full paragraphs were missing; so were
most parenthetical remarks. Words like "dialectic" were "corrected". I was
particularly pissed off because this is probably the best article I've
written yet. But that's the way things go. And that's why I posted the
full, correct version here.
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
Sexual Assault Awareness Month
If I've ever sold out, this is it. I wrote this at the request of
my neighbor, a member of the Loyola Peer Educators who knew I wrote for the
Greyhound. But it doesn't really feel like selling out (even if it
is a sort of bad article that I probably wouldn't otherwise have written).
I'm actually glad I did write it, because it's about all I did in the spirit
of the month.
Waste Your Vote
Well, come on, don't you know some taxi driver or barber who could run the
country better than any politician? Vote him/her in! Politicians are a
slippery, self-serving, uncaring lot anyway, in my experience. There's no
reason to continue to inflict them on ourselves. The FEC's website is at
http://www.fec.gov/.
Loyola Wastes
In reality I don't even think that any of the materials thrown into the
recycling bins around campus really are handled any differently
than the regular trash. One of my teachers brought his theory about this
to my attention, and wants me to write that article now. I do too,
but I don't know when I'll get the time or how I'll get the info.
Xenophobia, Hollywood, and the American
Subconscious
You can kind of tell I was running low on ideas. I mean, I'm not just
talking out my ass, I really do believe this, but I have no idea why I made
such a big deal out of it.
Straightedge
If I remember correctly, the Greyhound staff actually decided I
wasn't spelling "straightedge" right in this one. Anyway, the day I
handed this in, I found out that a good friend of mine on campus is
himself sXe, and I probably could/should have talked to him before writing
the article. He told me we have a few sXe kids that he knows of at
Loyola. Not enough to offset the number of bigots mentioned below,
but still, at least there are some.
Denim Day
In case it wasn't obvious from the article, Denim Day is this annual event
when the Resident Affairs Council and GLOBAL (Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals,
and Advocates at Loyola -- now disbanded and replaced with a group known
as Spectrum) encourage members of the campus community to wear some sort
of denim as a sign of support -- "support" being a key word here -- for
people of all -- "all" being another key word -- sexual orientations
(i.e., homo, bi, or hetero). In theory, it's a great idea. In practice,
it doesn't work for a variety of reasons, among which is the fact that
Loyola's campus is populated by a lot of conservative,
old-school-Catholic, Republican, J. Crew-wearing bigots.
Visitation Policy
One of my more politcal articles. I firmly believe that our school's
visitation policy is laughable at best, but there are a lot of people at
other schools who are worse off, and it hardly matters anyway, since in
practice, the visitation policy is almost never enforced. In truth, I'd
rather have a strict policy that was never used than a lax policy that was
enforced a lot.
copyright | article notes | essay notes | poetry notes | fiction notes
I guess this is what I do with coursework that I like. Why should I write nine pages that will only ever be read by one person? Actually, what would be really cool is if I could figure out some way to include the comments my professors write in the margins of my papers. It always warms my heart to read things like "Mike, your writing style is clear and concise, but I think you miss some important points. Try to engage the topic a little more. You avoid the challenge of actually answering the question. For instance, your argument in favor of Swift's proposal might be stronger if you had ever read the essay. And by the way, quit having sex with goats while writing your papers. A+."
I should point out that, looking back over these papers from a distance of some years, while I broadly agree with their general themes, for the most part, I also notice some parts that are lacking, and think that perhaps my analysis of the examined works was colored perhaps a bit too much by my own philosophy (but so is everybody's, I suppose). People occasionally e-mail me to ask whether (and how) they can cite these essays in their own works. The answer is yes (and whatever citation style you're using should have a recommended format for citing web pages), but do keep in mind that not everything I say about the subjects of these essays will be generally accepted by the scholarly community (or, which is more important, by the individual scholar who'll be grading your paper).
Also keep in mind that while you're welcome to cite these papers, passing them off as your own is plagiarism, and in any school I know of, one instance of plagiarism is sufficient to earn you a failing grade for the whole course (or worse).
Isolation in Short Cuts
This is the good essay referred to in "Education Means Interaction". And it's
definitely one of the best essays I wrote in college.
Surrealism and Magical Realism
When I described this essay to my dad, he pointed out that most people
will just ignore surrealist paradoxes/contradictions/what have you rather
than reconcile them. Which is true. Morons. I got an 'A' anyway. I still
agree with a lot of what I said in here.
Hiroshima, Mon Amour Reaction Paper
Not long, or even particularly well-thought-out, but touches on some
interesting topics. I had a short debate over the film with Crum just before I
wrote the reaction, which I think made it immensely better (the paper, not
the film). It earned me an A and the comment, "A very [illegible]
analysis."
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Philosophy and Theater
This paper is flawed. It got an A-, but that was the lowest or
second-lowest grade in a class of five. Of course, it could have just
been that the professor didn't like me. He really didn't. By itself,
this paper outlines a bizarre and unstable philosophy, insofar as it
outlines anything at all, rather than just weaving about drunkenly. I've
posted it because (a) it was fucking long, and took two days away from my software engineering
project, and (b) it approaches, and says some worthwhile things about,
topics and ideas that are are becoming very important to me. Plus it's
fun to bash Nietzsche.
The Birth of Tragedy and On the Genealogy of Morals
The Theater and Its Double
Mother Courage and Her Children: A Chronicle of the Thirty Years' War
Naked Masks: five plays by Luigi Pirandello
Waiting for Godot
Suburbia: An Inappropriate
Growing Environment
This is a good essay (if I may say so myself). Notice it makes reference
to Kunstler, who we first met in my article on the
suburbs. I got an A on this, which I think I earned. I got an A on
my second paper for this class too, but I didn't earn that. It was six
carelessly-thrown together pages about Littleton.
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape
A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb
Mephisto and Third Reich
Culture
First paper for my "Hitler and the Third Reich" course.
Mephisto
How (Not) to Throw in the Towel
This was my final paper for my junior Honors Ethics seminar. I liked it.
The books I'm quoting are Shusaku Endo's Silence and Anne Tyler's
Saint Maybe. I'm still amazed that I found some way to talk about
these two books in conjunction with each other. They were the only two
books I read all the way through for the course.
Silence
Saint Maybe
Medieval Philosophy and Silence
Silence was Loyola's 1998 Humanities Symposium text. Good book.
I don't know much about the five other philosophers I wrote about in this
paper. The only reason I'm including it is because it was nine frickin'
pages long. If you're dying to know which books the quotations are from I
can probably find out; just ask.
Silence
Dasein in Being There
The problem of Chance's being a character only of fiction is a bigger one than I let on. I was
afraid that my professor would say "well, this is worthless, because you're comparing the concept of a human being
to a fictional character," and give me a bad grade. However: for one thing, novelists have an obligation to make their
characters as real as possible, to spend months and years thinking about the actions and motivations and behavior
and preferences and quirks of people who they've invented. Given the practical impossibility of creating a blank slate
human being in a scientific experiment, Chance is not only as good as we can get, but better suited than one might
expect for the purpose for which I use him. In any case, Heidegger's Dasein is no less fictional than Chance merely
because it is supposed to be all human beings rather than just one. I dare say that Heidegger spent more time thinking
about the ideal or paradigmatic human being, whereas Kosinski spent more time thinking about a real human being.
Being There
Being and Time
Contemporary Gender Perspectives on
the Bible
This was one of two tests for a course called (appropriately enough) "Male
and Female in the Kingdom of God: Contemporary Gender Perspectives on the
Bible". It was a requirement; trust me, I wouldn't have taken it
otherwise. I actually wanted to take a different Theology course, but
because I'm an Honors student, I was too good for the one I wanted. It's
great to be elite. Anyway, I think the question I was answering was
something along the lines of "is Trible right" or "what would everyone
else say about Trible's statement". Trible was one of the saner writers
we read that semester. I never understood people's criticisms of feminist
theologians until I actually read them. Some of those people were a
sandwich or two short of a picnic. Exum was by far the worst. Do
yourself a favor and never read anything she wrote. It's funny that the
people trying to settle the question of whether or not the Bible can be
reconciled with feminism display such a shocking lack of understanding of
the Bible (and in some cases, of feminism too).
The Decline of Self
This is pretty good, except for the random inclusion of Camus and Beckett to kill space and make me look well-read. I'm
tired of page limits. When I get out of school, I'm going to write half-page essays and leave it at that. Usually,
anything important can be said in that amount of space anyway. Oh yes: neither Kierkegaard nor Nietzsche are
existentialist. But I didn't have any other names to use, and they were pretty close.
The Wall (Intimacy): And Other Stories
Endgame and Act Without Words
Beowulf, Frankenstein, and Grendel
I don't care at all for the way this ends. I was just trying to wrap it up. The professor could tell, too, but I think I
still got a pretty good grade, despite his comments. Grendel is an excellent book; I highly recommend it.
Beowulf: A New Verse Translation
Frankenstein
Grendel
Descartes' Second Meditation
This is a weak paper, because it could afford to be. I was the only student remotely interested in philosophy (being a
minor) in a class full of kids trying to kill a core requirement. I didn't care much for the teacher's style -- it would
have been more appropriate for grade school or high school -- but, to be fair, I suppose it was the best one, given
the class population. The plus side was that I developed a closer relationship with the teacher than one usually can. I
lent him my copy of Being There to read; in turn, he lent me a collection by
Camus that, though I didn't read the whole thing, I did manage to cite in my Decline of Self
essay. I also learned the wonders of skipping class to play Magic: The Gathering. Ordinarily I wouldn't have missed a
philosophy class, but we spent days in a row chanting the names "Locke, Berkely, Hume, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant",
as if a philosopher's name had a power all its own. I suppose it speaks well for something or other that I still remember
them all. I saw the professor again, a year or two later, at the Charles Street Player's combination-production of
an adaptation of The Inferno (bad) and No Exit (excellent), in which my roommate, playing Cradeau, managed
to break three of the six pieces of equipment that made up the set (and recover wonderfully, I must add). The professor
still remembered my name and the book I'd lent him. I thought that was cool.
Love in A Midsummer Night's Dream
One of my older essays; I found it while going back over old classwork (in response to a request from Dan, actually)
and figured it was good enough to post. It's weird to see what my strengths and weaknesses as a writer were
back then, and to realize that, while I'm not at all the same writer, it's only because I have different
strengths and weaknesses.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Plush Marketing Forest
This is probably the most intriguing title on my list of essays, but that just goes to
show you what a title's worth. I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote this. I
posted it here because I'm sure that, whatever it was, it was terribly interesting.
The Ghost of Christmas Present
The supposedly historical information provided in this essay is, in case
you didn't know, a fabrication of my own mind, entirely unresearched and
almost entirely untrue. As for the philosophical message: I don't have
any problem with gift-giving -- that is, any problem that's relevant to
society at large instead of just myself -- but I think (a) that it should
be done at any season of the year, as a sensible opportunity presents
itself, without any expectation of reciprocation, and (b) that you should
never, ever give an inappropriate, useless, or unwanted gift simply for
the sake of giving one. I recommend e-cards as an excellent, virtually
waste-free way to express seasonal (or spontaneous) thoughts and
feelings.
The Solution
I believe every word of this, to a certain extent. Well, actually, I
believe it all right up to the point where I ultimately go through with
it, which of course I haven't done yet. I don't consider myself very
likely to, either. Life's not all that great, and anyone who sees a
reason to live is lying to themselves, but I'm not having such a bad time
of it right now, and there are, I've come to realize over the past year or
so, people who would miss me if I died. I guess I'm mostly alive because
of my concern for them. As far as this actual work goes . . . I submitted
it to the school's literary magazine, but it was, as my professor said and
I acknowledge, an unfinished draft, and it's not likely they would have
considered it good enough anyway.
The Gods Must Be Crazy
copyright | article notes | essay notes | poetry notes | fiction notes
I write a lot of poems, but few of them are really any good. These are the ones I thought had enough merit to be posted. Some are actually supposed to be spoken word -- you'll know these by the absence of line breaks. Let me take this opportunity to state that none of my fiction, and especially not the poetry, has any one set interpretation. The notes below may explain what I was thinking when I wrote the pieces, but if you find some other image, symbol, metaphor, or meaning that I don't discuss, that's great. It's supposed to mean whatever you see in it. In fact, if you come up with something interesting, tell me about it, and I'll probably include it here.
A lot of these poems come out of teenage angst. A lot of people tend to mock or dismiss teen angst. I tend to get angry about that. I don't understand why people feel that emotions felt during one's youth are less important than any others. I do understand that many people are surprised to learn that they're not the only ones who experienced angst during those years -- but that doesn't invalidate the emotion, it gives it universal appeal. And at the same time, I think teenagers are probably right if they feel that no one understands them. Most of the adults I know don't understand teens, and they don't care to either. I've gotten a few e-mails about these poems from people who radiate an aura of angst, and, well, since it means that my art is resonating with an audience, I view that as a good thing.
Some of my poetry has appeared in -30-. After an appropriate period of time, it will probably be included here as well.
In a Kitchen
This was an exercise in a poetry class. We were given a list of about 20
words and had to use all of them in the same poem. If you're wondering
why I choose such unrelated things to talk about, that's why. It's a
great exercise for any writer, though, and occasionally the finished
product turns out to be good in its own right. I've done it a couple
other times, but this is the only one that I thought had any worth.
after M.C. Escher's Ascending and Descending
My poetry teacher liked this one more than I did. I can't say I really
trust her judgement, to be honest;
we didn't always have the same taste in poetry. But I like Escher.
Surface Area
Not much to say about this. It's halfway decent, I guess. Nothing wrong with it, just
nothing right with it either.
S-H, S-L
The letters in the title do stand for something . . . something I've been
wanting to express in a poem for a while . . . and you can guess what it
is. They do not, however, indicate the order in which the poem is
to be read. I realized afterwards that one might interpret them as meaning
that the piece should be read first from "SCRATCH" to "HURTS", then from
"SPREADS" to "LIFE" -- i.e., down the left column, then down the right.
I don't think it would make much sense at all that way. In fact it's
supposed to be read from left to right, then top to bottom . . . so that the
word after "HURTS" is "ACHE", then "SPREADS" . . . etc.
Seven
The number seven here is intended both to refer to the hour at which the
boy "cracks", one might say, and finds himself forced to believe in
something which cannot happen, but also to hint vaguely at his age, which is
probably somewhere in the neighborhood of seven years. The problem with
this poem is that without the last line it's nothing . . . I'm trying to
work on improving the earlier lines.
Untitled
I wrote this at a time when a friend of mine was trying to set
me up with a girl, and I was beginning to realize that I wasn't ready to have a girlfriend just then. The "demon on the
telephone" in part II refers to my fear, at that time, that every time the telephone rang it might be her, because I didn't
want to talk to her. Actually, I've always hated telephones, so that fear kind of transcends the situation at hand. In
light of this information, the piece seems to contradict itself a lot. The narrator jumps off a building because he has no
one to be with, but then we find out he doesn't want anyone, and then he thinks maybe he does, if it were the right person
-- but then he "remembers why" he doesn't. I think it had something to do with not deserving that kind of happiness. The
third section is intentionally ambiguous; basically it's the narrator finding himself in a pretty neutral afterlife and
wondering if he made the right choice or not.
Satellite
I wrote this after my senior prom (which I did not enjoy). I hate always
looking up at the sky and wondering whether I'm looking at a star or a
satellite. At the time, however, I just wanted to write a poem, so I did.
Night Most Encompassing
Night Most Encompassing = NME = Enemy, in case you missed it. Any suggestions for a
better word for "asphyxiate"?
Pieces
This is one of my earlier works, and my second spoken-word piece ever. (I
don't remember what the first was, but I understand it was pretty bad.) I
wrote this without thinking about it, and when I re-read it, I was amazed
to think that those words had come from me. Now when I look back on it,
I'm amazed for a different reason: I don't really remember ever having the
specific political views it expresses (even if it is sarcastically). And
I don't like it much. I'd take it down, except it's competing with the straightedge article for the highest rate of positive
feedback among writings on this page.
My brother's first band (of many) recorded Pieces for a demo album. They abused their instruments while I recited it. I still have the tape. It also credits me with playing the kazoo on the "secret track", which is perhaps one of the most entertaining half-minutes of my artistic career.
Trapped
I actually wrote this about a class I was taking my junior year of high
school -- the class scared me that much. The poem won first place for
poetry in my school's writing contest that year.
poetry.in.motion
I'm not sure whether I really want this to wrap at the character at which
the line ends, or at a period. I kinda wish the browser would have made
that decision for me. Anyway, when I first got the idea, a single period
was supposed to take the place of the space between words, two periods,
that of a comma, and three, that of a real period (i.e. termination of
a sentence), but the existence of other punctuation marks and structures
made that impractical pretty quickly. Basically, the way it is now, the
more periods there are between two words, the longer you're supposed to
pause between them.
Like a Machine
I know, I know . . . you're wondering how a heart can be green. Well,
that's a somewhat problematic line. It's supposed to be green in the
sense that living things are green, and therefore not mechanical. I'm
not quite sure what else to do with this line, though. Other than
that, I think this is a really good poem . . . .
Unsupported
Not much to say about this. It's among those works of mine that I like
somewhat more than the others . . . and it was a fairly accurate
description of how I felt at the time, and to some degree still do.
pullingme
This was supposed to be written with no breaks between words at all, which
is why the title is that way. I altered it when I realized that my
browser was not going to interpret that in a way that would be at all easy
to read. The general lack of punctuation or other breaks should be enough
to convey the same general feeling when it's read. Parts of this actually
rhyme and are in meter, and parts are completely chaotic, and that's the
way it was planned. I'm not sure how well it works though.
Truth in the Box
Note that each line contains eight words, except for the last,
which contains four. Oh, and the third, which by some oversight on my
part contains seven. Interpret symbolism where you will. If you read
it right, this thing rhymes, too. In parts, anyway.
Cry For Help (I Think)
Excepting a few things for English classes and whatnot, this
is about the second poem I ever wrote. Of my own free will, I guess is what I mean. The first, though it won a prize in a
writing contest at my school, sucks (and that's not low self-esteem). This is probably one of my more impassioned works, by
which I mean that there was more feeling and emotion going into its creation.
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For a while I thought of myself as a writer of short stories before anything else. Then I started writing lots more poetry. I kept trying to write stories, though, because I thought they could better illustrate my grand points than poems. I ended up either preaching too much or not getting my point across at all. Finally I abandoned a fair number of the "rules of short story writing" I'd set up for myself, and began to put out works that were a bit closer to what I'd been aiming for. Isolation and The Web are both products of my newer style, which focuses less on the grade my English teacher would have given it and more on getting my thoughts out on the paper. These days, what separates my fiction from my spoken word is attention to capitalization and punctuation, mostly.
Writing stories like this takes a lot of work. Revision sucks. Sooner or later you enter this zone where you're totally unable to look at a story objectively and tell whether it's good or bad, or whether it was better or worse before. This is my way of saying that you're not seeing any new stuff posted here in the near future, because it's draining to produce a worthwhile work, and lord knows I have neither time nor energy lately.
Story
This was written for my "Forms of Fiction" class and published, after only
minor revisions, in the 2000 issue of The
Garland. The class
assignments were basically all flash fiction, not because we were being
taught to write flash fiction, but because we were being taught to write
several different forms of fiction (amazing how that works) and had only a
semester to do it in. Most stories had to be under six pages and satisfy
some other requirement as well, but this one, as I recall, just had to be
under two pages. Never content to merely follow the rules, I
decided from the outset that I'd tell a whole story in one sentence, and
here it is. It contains one semicolon, two parenthetical comments, one
dash, one colon, and one period. I had to read it out in class, too. As
for its literary merit as a one-sentence story -- well, I'm happy with how
it turned out. It's a bit raw -- gives preference to emotion over style
-- but that works in its favor, I think, because it has a universal
appeal. I called it "Story" because that was the point: it's a love
story, but that's secondary to its being a story at all.
The Web
You can make of this what you wish. Basically it's about someone who makes
the wrong decision, thinking it's the right
one. The decision can be between
heaven and hell, good and evil, suicide and life, business and pleasure,
etc. More importantly, it has absolutely nothing to do with the
internet or computers. I usually say that art is whatever you get out of
it, even if the author didn't put that in there, but I definitely didn't put that
in there. "The Web" is just a web. Not the World Wide Web.
Isolation
Fairly straightforward. The three main characters (after the mime/god) that
approach the narrator are
very loosely based on characters from my own life at
the time this was written -- which is to say, they graduated high school
with me. I don't recall exactly how intentional their naming was. Joseph
was so named for the sense of grandeur and importance I hoped it would
impart to him, but I think it was actually someone else who pointed
out to me that the names Chris, Stan, and Mike all recall theological
figures. Not that that made me change it. Kinda makes me think . . .
like, what's the relationship of these lesser divinities to the god/mime?
Are they furthering his plan, or are they ignorant of it and just acting of
their own accord? And what has theology to do with the perceived
isolation of a
typical high school student?
Throwing Rocks at the
Moon
Surprisingly, this is not the longest short story I've ever
written. Of all the long ones, however, it's probably the best. I won
first place for short story in my high school's writing contest for
seniors with this. That's not to say it's actually good . . . but it's
not getting revised. This is among the oldest works on this page, and
certainly the most developed of the old ones, and
I'm
not at all the same person as I was when I wrote it. So I feel that
rewriting it would be unfair, and also result in a less effective/real
story. On another note, I also think it's necessary to add the disclaimer
that this story is not real! A lot of people think I'm writing from
experience here . . . I am, partly, but I'm also writing from what I've
seen on television, or from what's happened to my friends, or just purely
from imagination. As for interpreting the story . . . there's only one
major metaphor in it, and the rest is pretty literal. If you don't get
it, go back to the paragraph that starts "The strangest part of the story
. . .", and read through to the end again.
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