attention, humans: tomorrow evening at queen's pizzeria slam teams from mesa, phoenix, flagstaff, and tucson gather for a four team love fest. and just who the hell is hosting this fest? i am. i will be imprisoned all morning and early afternoon just a few blocks away at the best western hotel at main and country club. i will undoubtedly be mercilessly degraded and brow whipped until i feel as though i've been the victim of a non-invasive lobotomy. but on the bright side, when i get out i'll be extra frisky, so if you're looking for some top flight, insane hosting, ad lib madness combined with some of the finest slam poetry this state has to offer then by all means come out and enjoy the 116 heat. it promises to be the hottest of actions.

no coffee for me tomorrow, i'll be attending traffic school in mesa. that'll teach me a lesson.

I read Mary Worth through the filter of awesome that is the Comics Curmudgeon. I missed out on Aldomania, where character Aldo Kelrast eventually winds up dead at the bottom of a ditch after Mary cuts his brake lines (they say he was drunk at the wheel - something Mary and Toby obviously cooked up).

This latest storyline - Mary is about to open a can of pain on an interloper of one of the herd (Charterstone is a matriarchal society, like meerkats and hyenas), seems like it's going to pretty awesome, although I won't be satisified unless someone winds up on a slab.

Yesterday in class we received all of our assignments for the rest of the session. While I would dearly like to begin working on some of that, I think in a little while I'm going to go over to the library to return the failed Cheever biography, perhaps pick up some new things if they have anything, and then stop at Revolver Records because I've got a little something I need to get for someone, and I'm hoping they have it there. thaitea, Al, and I stopped into Revolver on art walk last week and I confess I was overstimulated. They have many many record bins, some labeled "kitsch," "for your plants," and "these aren't even records," and I said to thaitea, "I wish Tim was here!" because Tim likes records and he's the last person with whom I went to a record store. So, yeah, records. They're fun.

Per my previous post, things are looking up for Bourbon Fest after the earlier anxiety. I've been wondering if the universe is giving me signs lately with all these odd things happening. I even considered going to a fortune teller, which is comical. I don't know any fortune tellers and probably shouldn't be spending any money on that. You know what I'd really like to spend some money on, though? A haircut. It's been since early October since I've been to the beauty parlor.

Tonight we are going to our friends' Emily and Eric's for supper and Emily is going to make macaroni and cheese! So I should be using my macaroni and cheese icon for this post, but I'd already selected the Cooky Puss EP album cover when I got into that business about records.

Coffee sounds good. I have a slight headache and I am tired.

The really nice thing about Mesa is we're having more up weeks than down weeks. The last night we really good. About 45 people at its height (2nd round). We were having space issues at one point, which is a nice problem to have.

It's weird though - some nights - tons of poets, no audience. Others, few poets, huge audience. 6 poets is about enough to keep it interesting, but I'm more of the mindset you gotta have at least 8 for the full slam experience.

Overall though. I can't complain.

And Queen's Pizzeria remains the best venue for slam ever in the Valley that I've been a part of, save for maybe my first years in Arizona when Essenza wasn't being run into the ground.

We painted the camper white! Well, Greg did the painting but I helped with the prep work. It was a long and grueling process to get all of the equipment, do the prep and paint. I don't think I ever want to paint a vehicle again! It looks really good now and hopefully will not be so hot inside. Now we can get to the fun stuff on the inside.

For dinner last night I made gluten free spaghetti with buffalo meat then we rode our bikes to the Dairy Queen and had dessert. I also read a yoga magazine and tried some of it. I have tried yoga before but can never get it into my routine. I need to just start really simple and stay at it.

If you'd told me in summer 1999 that ten years later I'd be corresponding on a random Thursday night with a couple in Minnesota about renting a wigwam in Kentucky I would have said, "Pffft....huh?" And yet here we are.

Many months ago nagylany and the mister made reservations in Bardstown for two rooms for three nights of Bourbon Fest. Last weekend we and the nagylanys purchased our airfare to Louisville for Bourbon Fest, coordinating our flight times, rental car plans, and so on.

This week when the nagylanys phoned the hotel to confirm, there was some kind of mix-up, so they only had one room for three nights. Anxiety.

As of now, we finagled two rooms for Thursday, but still only one for Friday and Saturday. Al says he'd like to stay in the wigwams, so we might try and swing that for Saturday night and screw you Best Western. I'd rather stay in a death trap wigwam than a Best Western.

In other news, I went to a sweet suite at the Phoenix Mercury game last night, where I saw chris_wass on the jumbotron, and was then able to observe her in her seat from where I was sitting. I was invited by my pal from AZBHR. The Mercury kicked Chicago's collective behind. It was fun, but not as much fun as hockey. It's going to be a tough hockey-free winter.

Tonight we went with our friend Emily to Turf where we met up with kyle_aitch and Elyse for beers and acoustic music. Good times. The guy sang a song about Ohio. And I fly to Ohio a week from tomorrow. It is a crazy year for flying around the U.S.A.

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive/2323

#2,323! What a number.

So, I proposed my model for the Winter's Body setting to a group of world-builders. They poked a lot of holes in it. This is what we seem to have devised:

( World-Building Physics and Mechanics Foo )

Written for my Creative Writing class.

The Vulture
by Alexander Cherry

I walk these halls of death and pain
In them I always find my prey



The hospital, its I.C.U.s
Are my cathedral and my pews

I choose my quarry from the weak
Whose lives and fortunes are so bleak

They smile at me from their beds
While my bullshit fills their heads

Suffering brings desperation
I bring fables of salvation

I paint a comforting illusion
As I share the great delusion

I make believe that they are blessed
That "God" cares for their happiness

I lie and say that "Heaven waits
Forgiveness lies beyond its gates."

I fill their ears with the conceit
I soothe their fears with my deceit

It makes me proud that when they die
They'll still be swallowing my lies

Yet once they take their final breath
They learn there's nothing beyond death

They'll go marching to their graves
Believing that their souls are saved

But bragging rights for when I pray
Are the only things there are to gain

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive/2322

Not sure why this premise never occurred to me before! I wonder how accurate it is.

This summer has not been bad. I been here for eight summers. At about the third or fourth one in most know whether or not they can take it for a lifetime. For some it takes longer.

My first summer here I did not have air, which I think counts for two summers. Anybody who has been here for a while usually agrees.

I spent that summer in a Honda accord. When I drove down the mountain from Flagstaff for the first time and turned the air on and it died I knew it was going to a tough one.

That summer I discovered a litmus test of the different parts of the valley. I would count for curiosity how many other cars like me had their windows down. Then I would try to guess which ones had the windows down because they preferred it that way. In south Phoenix it is about 3 to 4 out of 10 cars with the windows down. Maybe one out of town by choice. In Scottsdale, sometimes it is 1 out 10 with the windows down, sometimes 1 out of 20. Few had them down by choice.

I am not sure what this teaches us, besides the obvious lessons.

Outside magazine has a place where you can submit one photo with a short, 300 words of less, story to go with the photo. They take there best for the magazine. I am planning on submitting the following. Julie, would you mind taking a crack at editing?

--------------
Luckily, the ruins of la Cidudad Perdida, the Lost City, is in Colombia and not Japan. If it was in Japan, I would have to walk one step behind our guide, Walter, for the rest of his life until I saved his life in return. I do not want to have to hike that path again.

I fell in the first of eight river crossings. I was swimming, or more accurately, aggressively floating to a large rock to try and pin myself. Walter dove in after me. Later he told me that he has almost died five times in that river and it has always been at the spot I fell in.

As soon as we made shelter I crawled under a blanket. I slept 28 out of 36 hours underneath a mosquito net. I had a cough, my joints ached, and I had the shivers. I wasn't sure if it was malaria, a cold, or sheer body exhaustion. I prayed to God, and I don't pray to God often, to make it exhaustion. I did not want to be the sorry son of a bitch that they had to carry out of the jungle.

It had rained for three days. The excess weight in my bag was both my and the jungles sweat. My notebook was wrapped in plastic, and then placed in my camera bag, which was wrapped in plastic again. Yet it was still moist. The internal lens misted over. My fingers and toes had wrinkled in the constant dampness. The pack weighed heavier every day. It rained as we climbed the last 1,800 moss-covered stones. The German, Volker, counted. He claimed that is what Germans do.

The military men liked my camouflage poncho; they claimed it made us brothers.

The ruins were round.

I'm having some bad luck with the wildlife. I just got back from seeing Ice Age 3 with irena_seraphina, Cranny, and this other guy Bill and the following things have happened since I've been home:

1) Al is fermenting seeds, which he sometimes does, by leaving them in water and pulp in containers on the kitchen counter. They grow mold and get disgusting. Tonight, good gravy what a stink! So I phoned him and asked could I please put that wildlife outside and he said yes.

2) After doing that and changing clothes and coming out to turn on some lights in the dining room (where I am sitting) I noticed a tiny gecko on the floor between the kitchen/dining room. When I bent down to touch it, it could still move its tail but not its head because apparently I stepped on it and crushed it! Oy. That was unpleasant and depressing. I swept him up and put him in the garbage.

3) By this time, I decided that I was really ready to try this bourbon Al brought home the other day called Fighting Cock, made in Bardstown. BUT when I was getting the glass ready I looked up and noticed another giant cockroach on the ceiling in the kitchen in the exact same spot where one was when we came home Friday night! 'Could be the same one, I don't know...So then I think I audibly said profanity, got the broom, and swished it off the ceiling. They don't really have the power of flight, they have the power to float. I had the broom ready to sweep it outside but it escaped between the dishwasher and the cabinet before I could get it. Those suckers are fast.

Now I really am having that Fighting Cock and hoping things turn around. Sheesh.

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive/2321

You've presumably just read the comic. Now help remix the comic.