keef dot org shows no signs of lethality or psychosis

oppsie1: i assure you that if you are a procrastinator now in school, you will always be one even after you graduate.
KeefKeefKeefKeef: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo
oppsie1: yes
oppsie1: resign yourself now
oppsie1: old habits do not die hard or soft. they live FOREVER.
KeefKeefKeefKeef: That was my fear.
oppsie1: but if you’re lucky you can dupe people into thinking they’re just part of your “character”
oppsie1: and they add “color”
KeefKeefKeefKeef: heh. Okay.
KeefKeefKeefKeef: I’ll put it on my business cards. “KEEF KEEFERSON, procrastinator.”
oppsie1:ooh look at me, i am the brilliant writer who cannot remember to replace the toilet paper because i am so brilliant!

So my friend Karrey says that she doesn’t like reading long blocks of text and that I should break it up with a picture. Thus, I will force myself to include a picture at some point in today’s hot-poop update. Even if I don’t want to. Because that’s what you, the reader, demand. At least, one of you demanded it. And so I shall provide.

I have to do my radio show tonight. Today on ebay a seven-inch that I have sold for $40. My roommate Mariah got one of those “My Pet Monster” dolls and it’s in the living room. It sits on a speaker and when I leave to go urinate in the middle of the night I can see its eyes from across the room and it is very disconcerting.

WHEEEEEEEEEEE!

So we got our first bunch of student pieces to be workshopped today. I’m starting to get really nervous in this class, but not for the reason I was really nervous before. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to criticize these pieces in class for fear of incurring the wrath of others.

There’s some really bad stuff.

[EXAMPLES REMOVED]

What can I say about that and not hurt the writer’s feelings?

And now, here’s a picture of my friend Bill wearing a dress.

Okay. I work all day tomorrow in the comic shop. I guess I’ll rap at ya some more after that.

I’ve decided that if I ever happen to become a Mob enforcer- you know, a hitman, or an interrogator or something- I want my nickname to be “The Boob.”

I can just imagine it now. All the other mob enforcers would shiver at the mere mention of “The Boob.”

Gangster: Hey, man, who’s that guy?

Other Gangster: Oh, man, don’t fuck with him. He’ll tear off your kneecaps and play Frisbee with them.

Gangster: Naw, man, he don’t look so tough.

Other Gangster: You maroon! You know who that guy is? He’ll rip off your testicles and play paddle-ball with them. Both of them. At the same time!

Gangster: That guy? Who is it, man? Who is that crazy man-monster, that invulnerable killing machine?

Other Gangster: Keef “The Boob” Keeferson.

Gangster: Holy Fuck!

Yeah. That would be so cool. Once I joined the mob, I’d be “Mister Intimidation.” No, wait, I guess I’d be “The Boob.” I’d rather be “The Boob” Than “Mister ‘The Wussy’ Intimidation” any day. Okay, this is getting kind of ridiculous.

I worked tonight, and this kid Chris is supposed to be showing up. But he hasn’t shown up yet. I’m getting kind of tired. I mean, I’m going to do a bunch of laundry yet tonight, but I’m a little annoyed he hasn’t shown up yet. He’s one of Mike’s friends who’s here for orientation and so he’s gonna sleep on our couch or in Mike’s bed or something.

Anyway. The laundry room beckons. With static clingy fingers.

KeefKeefKeefKeef: So are you frightened of Keef “The Boob” Keeferson?
LilKarrey: No.
KeefKeefKeefKeef: psht! Liar.
LilKarrey: I might want to fondle you, though.
KeefKeefKeefKeef: yay!
KeefKeefKeefKeef: That’s almost as good.
LilKarrey: Heh.

And, on an almost completely unrelated note:

Nathan: I’m doing laundry too
Nathan: we’re a team
KeefKeefKeefKeef: Yay!
KeefKeefKeefKeef: Naked twinsies!
Nathan: haha
Nathan: I’m wearing stuff though
Nathan: my mom and sister are awake still
KeefKeefKeefKeef: you wuss.
Nathan: I don’t wanna mortify them
Nathan: “i didn’t know they got so big” they’d say
KeefKeefKeefKeef: Hahahahahah!
Nathan: “your father’s pretty small” my mom would add
KeefKeefKeefKeef: You’re scaring me.
Nathan: I’m scaring me too

Ahhh, fourth of July. This day brings up many happy memories of sitting around Atlantic’s airport field in lawn chairs, surrounded by pickups and white trash, watching the JayCees set themselves on fire.

I spend the day in Ames. We hiked around Ledges State Park, our arms full of as many joyous things as we could carry into the wilderness to make ourselves feel more at home. We lugged a grill, several coolers, bags of potato chips and sodas.

It was actually a lot of fun. I walked in the stream, caught some tadpoles (there’s nothing that’ll make you feel more like a character from a Mark Twain novel) and chased guppies.

Plus, I played Frisbee, in the first real bout of activity I’ve had in a while. It was a lot of fun. I sweat like crazy. Honest to god, my shirt was a much darker shade of grey after playing Frisbee, because I was goddamn soaked. I don’t know a single person who sweats more than me. I am so damned sweaty.

My poor kids. I just know I’m gonna pass on the “Sweats Like a Sweaty Sweaty Bull Moose” gene.

Well, I guess if I update every few days that’s okay too.

I didn’t really do much this weekend.

Saturday was my first day on the job at the comic shop. I’m such a dork. It really wasn’t much like working at all. The majority of my duties, I suspect, will involve rifling through back issues and manning the front desk, which is all stuff that I pretty much do anyway. I was trained how to use the register- I’ve never touched one before. I was talking to Barb about it and she waid that it was truly remarkable that I reached the age of 22 without having my hands sullied by the use of a cash register. This is my first retail job.

I didn’t get any filming done. Everything fell through. I’ve got the camera till tomorrow at five, and I’m honestly thinking about pulling some guy in off the street, and saying “Here, hold this camera while I lay in bed with a blow-up doll.”

That’s the only shot that I really really need to have before I can start editing the whole thing together. There are some shots that I’d really like to have, and there are some re-shoots that I want to do, but this is the bare-bones minimum. i think I’m gonna have to call it off, film next weekend and then edit the week after that. This is the first chance I’ll have to actually edit one of my films, and I don’t want my efforts to be wasted on a piece of crap. It’s a shame folks like Jerry Bruckheimer can’t say the same thing.

My friend Karrey is one of the contestants on Survivorer II, a version of the show with e/n site admins instead of contestants. Go visit the site and root for her. Or I KILL you. Her web page is here, if you’ve never visited my links page and don’t want to bother with the Survivorer stuff but still want to know who Karrey is.

I’m still blank w/r/t an idea to do my big short story about for my class. Whee. Damn. Wrangdamn.

Barb was gone all weekend. I was lonely.

So I was diddling around tonight, tinkering with the future website for the spiff-ass Colleen Coover comic book Small Favors, which I am designing(the website, not the spiff-ass comic book).

Then I get this e-mail. It’s from McSweeney’s. It’s a rejection letter for a piece I sent them last October or something. The odd thing about it is that I received a rejection letter for this selfsame piece last December.

And I can’t really translate this second rejection letter. It kind of sounds like this reader read it, liked it, and gave it to someone else to read. So maybe it’s like a “Hi, yeah, this is McSweeney’s, and maybe we want it after all” thing, or maybe it’s like a “Hi, this is McSweeney’s, and we like this but we’re all full up and so I’m going to give this to some of my pals at the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly.” Or maybe it’s like a “Let’s send those dopes some more encouraging things and then laugh about it while we drink our expensive wine.”

I don’t like to think about that last one.

And the piece, “Haute Cuisine,” was really the last piece that I really polished until it shone. This was last summer, I did this. And then I sent it off and I haven’t really written anything since, I’ve been all worked up and haven’t been able to get the ink flowing. Although, goddamn, if that fucking thing gets published…

I mean, just the fact that someone’s showing renewed interest in it…

Jeez.

Maybe I’ll be able to start writing good things again.

So today my Fiction Writing teacher was giving us all these weird little tips and tricks. “If you need an adverb, you’re probably using the wrong verb.” He said, “You only need three dialogue tags: said, whispered, asked.” Now, I’ve read rather stricter versions of these rules before. People will talk about cutting out extraneous abverbs on the second draft, or only using “said” instead of other tags, which admittedly I can be fond of, especially “howled” and “screamed.” It made me curious why he’d allow “whispered.” I suspect it was because a short story he’d handed out to the class by one of his favorite authors used “whispered” extensively.

Regardless of any real or imagined silliness, I’ve got to come up with 10-20 pages of decent short story to be workshopped in the next couple of weeks. I’m pretty concerned, because it feels like I’ve been writer’s blocked forever. I mean, sure, I hammered out that “Momma” thing, but that’s not exactly fine art. I have a few characters that I might like to work with, but no story ideas. I haven’t had any story ideas for a long, long time.

Wish me luck, you bastards.

I read this piece in Atlantic Monthly that Barb gave to me called “A Reader’s Manifesto,” by B. R. Myers, about the nature of contemporary fiction. It was pretty derisive, criticising Cormac McCarthy and Proulx, Auster and DeLillo. I actually agreed with most of it. I thought she was a little off base with Auster- she was quoting his earlier works, which weren’t that good, and his later works, which haven’t been that good. She was taking these long and rambling excerpts totally out of context and dismissing them. For the most part, I agree with her. There aren’t very many good contemporary literary authors. A few from the McSweeney’s set, like David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Lethem. I like Paul Auster’s middle works, Mr. Vertigo and Moon Palace specifically. I love Stephen Dobyns. But these guys are few and far between, and most of the people who ride the spotlight aren’t very good. Is there a spot for me? Not yet.

Well. I’ve got to get to bed. I’ve rambled on for long enough.

So, this is my very first post in what will hopefully be a long long line of high-quality almost-daily posts by yours truly, aimed at informing my public about… things.

So it’s the middle of summer. I’m working, I’m taking two classes, and I’m reading a lot. I just got done reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and found it thoroughly enjoyable.

One of the classes I’m taking is a Fiction Writing class. One of our little in-class exercises turned into an actual premise for a short story that I find interesting. I’ve been working on it, a little, and then I hammered it out today because my friend Adam wants something of mine to publish in his swank-ass ‘zine, American Porn.
Here’s the thing. It’s called Momma. Let me know what you think.

I finally got an MP3 of Bright Eyes’ new song Waste of Paint from the Steve Lamacq BBC sessions. It’s gorgeous. I can’t wait for the new record.

I think I’m going to film some more stuff for The Rise and Fall of Betty Blow-Up this weekend. I’ll let you know how things go. That is all.