Maybe I’m a bad kid, I dunno.  I wrote my mom a Flarf poem for Mother’s Day.

 Pink Bats

A mother casts her dreams into the sea.

A mother serves sugar.

A mother’s love determines how

a vase of flowers in a window frames

a villanelle.

Behold!

close your eyes–

see

from the distance of our separation,

like fairies in a tale

who are grand,

happiness can also be haunting.

Happiness, like a sunny day,

like most things, comes

from far away.

My darling

mother,

your children

have no fear,

are all in one

beautifully rushing glass.

How can you know

How to be a mother without

Hubble-Scopes?

I want to say

I could give the world.

I can’t.

I’ve lived a life of fantasy and terror.

Within your heart,

put sunshine.

Maybe more than sunshine?

Maybe a Snowdrift?

An Anchor?

Mere happiness? The song I’m singing,

not my contentiousness,

mirrors your love

screaming, screaming, screaming

be friends with

the sky

and the gardeners.

Home

is the place where

eyes in the back of heads

make memories

marooned

all day

taken

by the May sea.

The fairy tales

of grown children find

understanding

throughout the years,

making

no difference in

your love.

No.

Not long ago I,

without you, strained

to be like leaves upon the wind.

Weep, Weep,

my mother,

and feel the fortune of the years

you have.

Dream, dream

like the Arizona sun.

This article appeared on my desk not too long ago.  It’s both funny and sad.  The opinion expressed here is not just that of the author.  I was in Washington D.C., on the roof of the Chamber of Commerce, across the street from the white, on the night when Obama was elected.  People ran into Lafayette square celebrating his victory.  Students from GW mostly.  But there was another group grinning to themselves on the sly.  The Russians broadcasters who were there covering the story.  A Georgian friend later told why they couldn’t contain themselves.  They, the former Soviets, had finally won the Cold War.

Here’s the article from Pravda. (more…)

This week, I get back on schedule with a special piece by Joe Rose.  

Sorry about the skip week.  I had been working on a special post.  I conducted an interview with Andersen Prunty author of The Beard among other novels.  And just before I posted it, he contacted me saying The Dream People, a surrealist online zine, was featuring his works and was activitely looking for interviews and criticism with and about him.  So instead of posting, I submitted my stuff to The Dream People.  Hopefully, my stuff makes the cut and will appear in the May issue.  I’ll post about it if it does.

Here’s how I describe Joe–a shaman of the modern man.

In a world where most people have downgraded themselves to Human Having, or to the even more degrading Human Appearing, Joe Rose stands as a Human Being. (more…)

Gotta love how jacked up the world is.  Reading this kind of stuff fuels my absurdist views… seriously.

“This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR”

China: Crunch Time

By Peter Zeihan

U.S.-Chinese relations have become tenser in recent months, with the United States threatening to impose tariffs unless China agrees to revalue its currency and, ideally, allow it to become convertible like the yen or euro. China now follows Japan and Germany as one of the three major economies after the United States. Unlike the other two, it controls its currency’s value, allowing it to decrease the price of its exports and giving it an advantage not only over other exporters to the United States but also over domestic American manufacturers. The same is true in other regions that receive Chinese exports, such as Europe.

What Washington considered tolerable in a small developing economy is intolerable in one of the top five economies. The demand that Beijing raise the value of the yuan, however, poses dramatic challenges for the Chinese, as the ability to control their currency helps drive their exports. The issue is why China insists on controlling its currency, something embedded in the nature of the Chinese economy. A collision with the United States now seems inevitable. It is therefore important to understand the forces driving China, and it is time for STRATFOR to review its analysis of China.

An Inherently Unstable Economic System (more…)

I’ve been working on my CV to apply to the local university.  I’m quite certain that my education alone certifies me for the job. And writing my life achievement, or lack thereof, onto a single page is dehumanizing as hell.  I look better in person than on paper.  I come off as smart or at least a smart ass.  (I’ve come a long way from college.  Or maybe not.  Everyone thought I was smart in college as well, but looking at my CV I look kind of like a dumbass.) (more…)

It’s looking increasingly like I’m going to be working again soon. Like at a job, a job type job.

Two things are brewing. A teaching gig at Sanya College, which would be cool because it would be a great excuse to read and write criticism if nothing else. And a gig writing a 2 page section of the local paper covering the development of the island into a world class tourism destination. This would also be kind of cool if it doesn’t take too much time and isn’t too bureaucratic.

It’s even possible I’ll be doing both because neither of them will pay much of anything.

I say these are kind of cool because I’m trying to keep myself from swimming out to sea further than I know I can swim back.

Some good news, an editor from New Pulp Press is interested in taking a look at my manuscript once they start reading again in June. Fingers crossed. I’ve also got queries out to a few other select presses. We’ll have to wait and see what becomes of this round of submissions.

Submitting writing for publication is an emotional trip. Looking for the agent was hard enough. Whenever I got a reply to my query letter I felt a mix of excitement and fear before opening it.

After enough rejection I got use to it and the excitement of opening another email reply was gone.

Then came the signing with the agent. For weeks after that I was a wreck. I wanted a weekly update from him about what was happening with the book.

Two years later, I’m back to submitting query letters, but this time to small press publishers. I’ll update with any further news as I have it.

I’ve been away from the blog for two weeks now.  Posting only limited stuff.  We celebrated Chinese New Years and had house guests.  I’m all fireworked out and I don’t think I need to eat for a month.  I’d seen crazy firework displays in Taiwan where spectators dress in motorcycle helmets and rain coats to watch fireworks because they shoot out into the crowd.  That was intense.

But Sanya gave an amazing display.  It isn’t done in any organized fashion.  But individual goes out on the beach and shoot of huge fireworks.  No pyrotechnic license needed.  It was a free for all–except the fireworks were expensive.  

I live on a beach that is 10 kilometers long.  On half of it, that’s 5 kilometers, there were solid fireworks going for 6 hours straight.  I went and sat at a beach restaurant and watched for a while.  It was 180 degrees of a constant spray of fireworks.  Plus they set off long chains of firecrackers.  Not the little ones we had a kids that numbed your hand if you didn’t throw it away fast enough.  These things would easily blow your hand apart.  The noise was terrorizing.  My wife got sick from the constant barrage of explosions.  

And that was just New Years eve.  It went on like that for the entire week.  My wife left town with the kid to visit family and friends in a quieter area of the island.  And I hung at home to write.  In two days I wrote 7000 words (The Dream of the Apple Head post came from that).  That was cool.  But every evening at dusk, I had to stop because the noise was too great.  I couldn’t hear myself think.  I couldn’t even think straight.  And there was no possible chance to sleep again until the sun came up and the Chinese went home.

I tried to take pictures but they didn’t turn out.  But a television crew came and interviewed me about what the Chinese New Year meant to me.  I’m sure I said some very nice things, but they came early in the morning and I hadn’t slept.  And Hunter wasn’t into it.  He’s holding up a stuffed tiger as his way to show how he celebrated the new year.  He, like me, prefers to be behind the camera. 

Good news today from Shanghai.  The Director at Zuloo who invited me to write a one-act play “really enjoyed” it and found it “very performable.”  And I thought he was going to file it under WTF.

Here’s a bit of the email.

I really enjoyed Insatiable.  I think it’s very performable.  It hits the cross-cultural theme rather well.  And that’s a lot of food, let’s be honest.

It will fit nicely into a one-act evening.  I hope that we can produce something at the end of March.

Since most of you, my reading public, won’t be able to get to Shanghai for a one-act evening.  I’ll publish the script in full opening night.  And now that I’m thinking about it.  I’ll talk to Zuloo about videotaping the performance.  Though I don’t know how I’m going to upload since Youtube is blocked here.

Speaking of blockage. The theater’s performance of M. Butterfly got shutdown by the censorship police.  Check out the article.

The guy pulling up his pants in the pic, that’s Daniel the director.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/expat/josephinemcdermott/10136117/high-drama-as-m-butterfly-is-closed-down-by-police/

After reading that, I have to say.  The censorship is not likely because of the play’s content, it’s because the theater didn’t build the proper relationship with the government.  Meaning, they forgot to pay somebody off.  The hint comes from the reasoning the police used.  They didn’t have a “License.”  Translation – you didn’t pay up.

I’m pretty sure my play about a competitive eater will get passed the censorship police–especially if they get paid this time.  Anyway, my play is too small for them to care about in the first place.  And even if they do see it, they’ll likely file it under WTF?