A Brief Hiatus to Move

On Saturday at 1:00 a.m., my friend, Matt Lang, and I spent a half hour chatting about politics with a CTA security guard and a cop.

"Those are the issues," Matt turned to me and said as we stood on the platform afterward, "Abortion, the war, and gay marriage. That's what's going to determine our next president."

The security guard and the cop were both against the war. They were both prochoice (although the cop was only for abortion in the cases of rape and such...but still, that puts him against Bush's extremism), and all for gay marriage. I hadn't expected that, and it made me very happy to hear.

Last weekend, I moved into a new place, a spacious and pretty single-bedroom in Lincoln Square. It's a very me place—a bit old and falling apart in places, but generally very nice and well-lit, with ceiling fans, a good kitchen, and a bedroom that's dark enough that my eyes have to adapt to it every night when I go to sleep. This beats the near-daylight I had in my last bedroom.

So far, the only problem I've had with the place is that there isn't a phone. I spent two hours on Thursday on the phone with AT&T, trying to work out what the problem was, and when they finally told me I was going to have to pay at least a hundred, fifty dollars just to get it working, I finally broke down, cancelled my service with them, and got a cell phone. For years, I have resisted them, but AT&T convinced me it was high time to get one. Bastards.

This leaves me without Internet access for the time being, so for now, I'm writing from work. And I'm going to see about getting WiFi for my laptop, so I can make use of one of the dozen or so free WiFi cafes around where I live.

National Novel Writing Month
I was reminded, as I logged into blogspot, that this month is National Novel Writing Month. What is National Novel Writing Month, you ask? National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, since my fingers are getting tired typing out the full name of the holiday) is an experiment in writing a novel, not based on quality, but on quantity. More than that, it's an attempt to get people past their initial fears and woes about writing, and just write something for the fun of it. In the words of their Web site:

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

It's a great idea, as far as I'm concerned. One of the hardest things about writing, for me, is getting the inner editor to shut the fuck up for a little while and let me write. I find having a deadline helps. Anyway, I invite everyone to write a novel in this month, stop worrying about whether it's good or not, and just write. If you can't write a novel, write a short story or a piece of flash fiction. Send it to me. I'll post it.

links...
While I've been digitally incapacitated, people have been sending me links left and right, and now I'm going to post the ones I have in a single mad URL purge. Enjoy.

In addition to war, abortion, and gay marriage, the link between sex and voting seems to be a common theme this election year. My friend, Lara, sent me a link to Votergasm, a site dedicated to getting people laid for the act of voting. Which, just like getting people laid for voting Democrat, I'm all for (actually, I'm for getting people laid in general—they always seem so happy afterward. But these are particularly good reasons for it).

Also on the political front, a coworker sent me a link to Slap the Candidate.

Finally, there's the story of Wergle Flomp and Poetry.com. The year after I graduated college, when I had no money and too much time on my hands, I came across Poetry.com, and found their contest for—I think it was $5,000. So I wrote a twenty-line poem over a beer or three and then sent it to them and was all sorts of thrilled when they wrote me back saying that they liked my poem and wanted to publish it in their anthology. It wasn't until a little while later that I realized they would publish anyone in their anthology. So the story of Wergle Flomp made me grin, and checking their Web site, I find that my poem, "Man Melts the Sand so He can See the World", my twenty-line little gem, still sits there as a Mark of Cain, just to remind me not to be a sucker, and also to remind me that I know more now than I did then (you can find it, if you go to poetry.com and enter my name into the search engine).

(Incidentally, when Mudlark offered to publish me, their acceptance letter was so similar to the acceptance letter Poetry.com sent me that I responded to them somewhat angrily. The editor, William Slaughter, wrote me back saying that I had made him laugh—this was the first time a writer answered an acceptance letter in anger. Embarrassed, I apologized and explained myself. He was very understanding and kind about the whole thing.)