...I live on a lake. I like it. I love it. The weather has a lot do to with the way the lake feels, looks, reflects. The lake is like music in some ways. It can be Barry Manilow or Disturbed or Rah Rah Riot or Eminem or Carrie Underwood. Even Lawrence Welk at times, all champagne bubbles and waltzes. You just never know. This is one of the reasons why I like the lake so much.

...Currently the lake is Barbara Streisand dueting with Barry Gibb, slinging a droll version of their hit single, "Guilty."

...Yesterday was an action-packed day for feedback. One of my older stories, a very surreal piece that is the basis for my novel, that got published originally in The Medulla Review, got reprinted and highlighted at Fiction Daily yesterday. Yay. (The story, "Thoroughly Modern Families" is posted here under "Words In Print".) Then, however, in quick succession, I got rejected by Elimae/Kim Chinquee, whom I adore, got declined to work at Smoke Long Quarterly, a place I admire, and got my sixteenth rejection from PANK, quadrupling the record for most rejections at a single publication. (Can you say, sadist Len?) Roxane, as she always does, wrote a very kind and--this time--very matter-of-fact explanation for why she turned me down. She didn't have to do that. She didn't have to take so much time. Roxane is kind. Roxane is pretty amazing. I consider myself fairly prolific (I wrote my 364th story in 17 months last night) but Roxane runs PANK, writes as much as me, plus I think she's a teacher or professor somewhere. So I guess I'm a slouch after all.

...It's amazing the attention that pastor received for wanting to burn the Quoran. He has less than fifty people who attend his church. What a wack job. People like him give christians a bad name and make it easy for others to paint all christians with the same brush. What he did prove, though, was how one person can really make a difference. It's a bad twist on the starfish story.

...Not to get all political, but I'm also astounded by the outcry regarding the guy who wants to build a mosque near ground zero. What the hell? Is this not America? Didn't this country get founded on freedom of religious beliefs? I get that certain people might not like it. I understand that ground zero is sacred. I think about 9/11 all the time (really, I do), but there are a lot of things I don't like about America and I learn to deal with them. Freedom isn't pretty.

...Blah blah blah

...I make it a goal to read 100 books a year. I've found that, often, the thinnest books take the longest too read. Usually reading a slim volume is like eating Grape Nuts; a cup-full can wear your jaw out and leave you exhausted. At least that was the case with "Why I Write" by George Orwell. What a whining socialist. Yet, of course, there were some good nuggets in the book, such as these:

"When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing."

"All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows, that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention."