--YOU COULDN’T HAVE BEEN A BETTER FRIEND TO ME

…You probably already know this, but the last week a man ate another man’s face.  Literally ate it.

It was a big news story with everyone talking about it.  I just read the headline and skipped the story.  It seemed too gruesome, and while I’m not the squeamish type, the face-eater’s photo looked really creepy, like a hillbilly version of Charles Manson crossed with Ted Bundy and maybe the Una Bomber.
But then today I was reading the paper and in a tiny part of the news at the very bottom of the page I saw where a Morgan State University student killed his roommate, then ate his heart and part of his brain.  It didn’t get much attention.  I guess people are most interested in things that obviously affect outward physical appearance.

…Lately I’ve been listening to the new B.o.B., the new Springsteen, Young The Giant, Neon Trees, and old Jason Marz.

…Last week some things I learned were these:

-The stock market crashed as the unemployment rate rose for the first time in over a year.

-Interest rates hit an all-time low at 3.78% for a 30 year mortgage (refinance, if you haven’t already.  I am.)
-Safeway and Walmart both sell vibrators.  (Yep, you read that right.)  A Walmart spokesman said, “People are more comfortable than ever about having one.  (Got yours yet?)
-In an attempt to limit sugary-drink portions, and thereby affect obesity, NYC is proposing a law that place a 16-ouce cap on bottled drinks and fountain beverages sold in New York.  A McDonald’s statement said, “Public health issues cannot be effectively addressed through a narrowly focused and misguided ban.”  (They can’t?  Really?)
-President Obama designated the month of June as Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Pride Month.
While listening to Rush Limbaugh this morning, he likened Obama to Hitler.  And this was just for Health Care.  He hadn’t heard about June being GLTG Pride Month.  (I try not to get political here, but Rush is a real hater.  He sounds preposterous so I listen to him now and again to remind myself why I can’t stand the man.)
-Thunderstorms cause pollution.  (Who knew?)
-Video games boost autistic kids. (Makes sense)
-Experts agree: despite the onslaught of texting, spelling is still important when you’re trying to make a good impression.  (Duh)
-28 cities posted their warmest temperatures ever in the month of May.  (No one seems to talk about Global Warming anymore.)
-In a nationwide poll, people said that youths would get a better start with:
25% --$250,000 in cash
71% --A college education
-28 states now have medical marijuana
-I am still a dolt when it comes to Twitter

                                                                          Heavy

            We were poor, so we butchered chickens.  Mother used a hatchet to lop off their heads.  Afterward, my brother kicked each carcass in the ass, sending the birds caroming down the hill with blood spurting wildly.

That was years ago.

Now Mother’s dead and my brother slow dances in a tuxedo.  He and she are the only couple.  Even in the dim lighting, you can tell his bride is pretty.  My brother is a stock broker.  He’s the one who’s gotten heavy.  He eats well, all kinds of meat.

--YOU USED TO BE A LION

…I’ve been away, but now I’m back.  I had a lot of fun, still it’s nice to be home and getting back to it.

Here are some fun, random things for you:

Samuel L. Jackson trivia:

He's the highest grossing actor of all time.  His box office take: $10.3 Billion
He's been in 111 movies
Has worn a trench coat on screen nine different times
Has died on screen 17 times
Said "Motherf--er" 63 times in my favorite film, "Pulp Fiction"
Has spelled "Mother--er" 56 different ways since he's been on Twitter in October of 2011
7 Days, 23 Hours --Time it would take to watch all of Samuel L.'s films

 States with the largest Mexican-born populations:

CA --4.3 Million
TX --2.5 M
IL --.7 M
GA --.3

TAmerica's Top Names for Girls in 2011

1. Sophia
2. Isabella
3. Emma
4. Olivia
5. Ava

Top Boys Names

1. Jacob
2. Mason
3. William
4. Jayden
5. Noah

Recently Los Angeles held a weapons buyback project over a weekend that included 791 handguns, 527 rifles and one rocket  launcher (really) being turned in from civilians.

30% --Percentage of Americans who have sleepwalked

3.6% --Percentage who have sleepwalked in the past year

If America had to eliminate a holiday, it would be:

35% --Presidents Day
22% --Martin Luther King Day
20% --Labor Day
4%   --Memorial Day
2%   --Veterans Day

Public figure you'd most like to follow on Twitter:

31% --Obama
15% --Dalai Lama
10% --The Pope
7%   --Ashton Kutcher

If there is a God, emotions you think he'd feel about us:

49% --Love
30% --Disappointment
7%   --Disinterest
5%   --Pride
5%   --Anger

Which of the following types of muside do you find the hardest to enjoy?

47% --Heavy metal
25% --Hip-hop
13% --Country
7%   --Jazz
6%   --Classical

$1.4 Billion -- Annual sales of Romance novels

9% --Percentage of male buyers
49 ---Mean age for Romance book buyers

Where Romance readers reign:

38% --South
26% --Midwest
19% --West
17% --Northeast

Top lottery paydays:

March 2007 --$390 Million
Jan. 2011 --$380 Million
Oct. 2005 --$340 Million

When do you expect to retire?

54% --60-69
25% --70 or older
14% --Not retireing
7%   --Before 60

Top Life Goals for Men:

#1 Provide for my family
#2 Find a career that makes me happy
#3 Fine someone to spend the rest of my life with

33% --Percentage of men who are more successful than they expected to be

37% --Percentage who are less successful than they expected to be
35% --Percentage of men who say getting into a physical fight is acceptable and a normal part of being a man
44% --Percentage decrease in a person's cancer risk if you are a lifelong viborous exerciser
3 years --Amount added to your life if you exercise just 15 minutes a day
94% of Americans believe they can't get ahead

How much do you spend buying lunch per week?

$41 or more -- 25%
$21-40  -- 32%
$11-20 -- 25%
Less than $11 -- 18%

Countries with the highest percentage of adults who use social networking sits:

53% --Israel
50% --U.S.
43% --Britian
43% --Russia
42% --Spain

81% of people ages 18-35 use Facebook.

Facebook's IPO Deal is valued at $500 billion.
Over 50% of it's revenue comes from advertizing.
57% of Facebook's users say they never click on pop up ads, and 23% say they only click rarely.
44% of users say Facebook is a passing fad.

--MAN IN A BOAT ON A BOAT BOATING

…Yesterday I wrote poetry.  For a bit I did.

Here’s one short poem that came of it:
 

Since You

I watched a man fall a tree today.

He must have known the strange danger of root systems.
His truck couldn’t carry all the wood.
When he returns, I aim to tell him
a proper story about murder.

 …Last night just, before dark, it rained harder than I’ve ever seen it.  I rose from my desk and stood by a window in my office that overlooks the lake and watched the torrent.  The lake looked like puckered green skin, rippled goose flesh.  No one was out on the lake but there were empty boats at a few docks, uncovered, and I wondered if the boats might fill with rain and sink.  I wondered how hard it is for eagles to fly through a downpour such as that.  I wondered what it’d be like to be a fish looking up at the surface and thought it’d likely be a little frightening, a fish’s way of thinking Armageddon had arrived.

The rain sounded like a hailstorm but without the pinging ring.  If I needed to talk to someone I would have had to shout, so it’s probably a good thing I was alone.

It rained so hard, rain bouncing off the lake and ground and other rain pools, that the shore on the other side became sheathed in a mist and houses disappeared behind the fog so that the silhouettes of trees was the only thing visible, but even they had a ghostly quality, something from a Slasher movie maybe.

After quite a long while, the downpour decreased to heavy drizzle.  Wind came out of nowhere, slicing sideways, and sure enough an eagle flew overhead, a little, slippery fish caught in its talons.

It’s raining again, tears on my window.  They must be happy tears, though, because I’m smiling.

--NOT GOING TO HAPPEN

…Yesterday Egyptians voted for their president.  It was the first time in 5,000 years.  (Really, it was.)

…Yesterday I wrote a story called, “The Crying Girl” about a supermodel who becomes famous for crying on the runway.  It was such a sad story that even I felt a little depressed when I was done.

…I finished “This Is How” by M.J. Hyland.  It was 375 pages, yet one of the fastest reads ever.  Some sentences are one or two or three words.  She repeats words all the time, which is a pet peeve of mine, but in her case, it works.  The story captivated me and I’d recommend it, as I would all of her books.

…I’m often dumbfounded by the number of very long Facebook posts some writers put up, many times a day, about all kinds of things, often with attachments and quite a lot of commentary.  These are writers with side jobs and writers who are prodigious authors.

…I’m still not sure what to do with Twitter.  I’m an idiot on there.  I can’t think of anything pithy to say, …so all I do is share intriguing quotes.  Roxane Gay says it’s one of her favorite mediums and she seems to have a lot of fun with it, but she’s Roxane and anything she does seems worthwhile and meaningful

…People keep saying there are more readers than ever.  I also find articles almost every week saying it’s just a matter of months before Barnes and Noble goes bankrupt.  If that happens, I’ll be heartbroken.  I still don’t do the Kindle.  Don’t hate it, but I just prefer the sensory experience of a book in my hands, even if it means toting a dozen tomes in a suitcase for vacation.

…I saw two more posts about the inequities of male versus female writers, how men are favored or more prominent.  Maybe that’s true.  Maybe I’m just reading all the women.  I sure seem to love the female authors.

…I’m not a snob, but sometimes when I turn the television on and try to watch the popular network shows, well, I feel sorry for my country and sort of worry that we’ve become a bunch of dolts.  “Celebrity Apprentice” is appalling.  “Dancing With The Stars” is god awful.  “American’s Got Talent” is inane. 

It’s true.  I’m just saying.

...Here are some good things to ponder:

“I don't know what I think until I write it down.” Joan Didion

“When in doubt, choose to live.” Terry Pratchett

"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." Gustave Flaubert

"Develop a sense of nostalgia for something or you'll never figure out what's important." Gary Shteyngart

"Wisdom begins in wonder." Socrates

"I'm going to turn on the light and we'll be two people in a room looking at each other wondering why on earth we were afraid of the dark." Gale Wilhelm

--NOTHING'S GOING TO CHANGE THE WAY YOU FEEL ABOUT ME NOW

...I'm reading "This Is How" by M.J. Hyland.  I loved both her other books and especially "How The Light Gets In."  Her writing is incredibly clean and spare, with undertones of sorrow.  She has a uniquely fresh voice, which is hard to find anymore.

...Yesterday I finished "Is Life Like This?" by John Dufresne.  It's about novel writing, but really more than that.  It's been helpful as I slog through my novel. 

Here are some of the best bits:

-We make sense of the world by telling stories.  Stories order the chaos of life.

-You can’t tell a proper story while you’re in tears.

-The writer’s problem, and her opportunity, is knowing the world.

-We spend too much of our lives not feeling, not living, so much as acting, going through the motions.

-Failure is a more humbling experience than most of us want to suffer.

-You have to get over the notion that you are wasting your time by sitting and writing, by thinking and feeling frustrated at what you’ve written.

-In the long run, you want to be a writer more than you want to have written one book.

-Every novel is about trouble.

-Fiction is a humbling business.

-Talk is how we find our solace, after all.

-Travel trains us to notice.  We allow ourselves to become susceptible to the stimuli around us.

--Writing is like carpentry—it’s a craft.  You learn it through a long apprenticeship.

--Being a fiction writer is being an archeologist.

--The truth about a good novel is that nothing is ever what it seems to be.

--We read novels for the people who live in them because we read to learn about ourselves.

--Everyone who has a life thinks he has a novel to write.

-At the heart of humor, as at the heart of all art, as at the heart of truth and beauty, is suffering.

-Responsible fiction is subversive in that it asks us to question our lives and the status quo, and it doesn’t let us get away with glib answers.

-The telephone, the internet…All of this keeps us from examining our lives, keeps us bewildered.

-Our job—our privilege—as fiction writers, is to imagine and inhabit the lives of others.

--I DIDN'T PLAN IT THAT WAY

We all have dreams.  Some of us get to them.  Most of us don't.  Are aspirations--the really big ones--sit there like a giant heap of marbles in our pockets and brains, chinking every once in a while.

Below is a post about "How not to write," but it could be about how not to do whatever it is you've always wanted to do.
I thought it was interesting and hope you do, too:

--How not to write? 

Sign up for another writer’s conference instead of actually writing.

Constantly tell yourself you have nothing to say.

Consult your horoscope.

Make a list of all the people who don’t think you’ll cut it as a writer.

Open an office.

Look for affirmation from everyone around you.

Ignore your own sorrows, passions, and music.

Whine about how nobody understands you.

Talk to telemarketers.

Play solitaire on the computer.

Complain about the English teacher who scared you.

Make a to-do list with writing as the top priority.

Edit as you go.

Check the rules of grammar and punctuation before you finish every paragraph.

Talk about your ideas so much that even you lose interest.

Wait until you have children.

Wait until your children stop teething, finish soccer season, and go off to college.  Wait until you have two hours of interrupted time to write.

Wait until you quit smoking, quit drinking, or find the right drink and are stone drunk.

Wait until your siblings move and your parents die.  Wait until you meet the love of your life.  Wait until the divorce is final.

Wait until you go on vacation.  Wait until the vacation is over.  Wait until you retire.

Wait until you find your muse and are inspired.

Wait until a doctor says you have six months to live.

Then die with your words inside of you. --Regina Brett