Category Archives: Hiatus

Hot Air

Poet’s Progress

Hi, again. Comin’ out of my book-writin’ hiatus just to let you know Bloomington poet extraordinaire Ross Gay has a new book of verses coming out. Entitled Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, it’s published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Book Cover

Gay’s New Book

Gay is an associate professor in the Creative Writing Dept. at Indiana University. He, along with Dave Torneo and Chris Mattingly, run the independent Ledge Mule Press, putting out limited edition books of poetry using letterpress and woodblock print.

Ledge Mule is throwing a poetry reading and book launch for Gay’s third tome Saturday, February 14th, 7-9pm at the I. Fell Building, 415 4th Street. Gay will read from his new book along with Ledge Mule poets David Watters and Romayne Rubinas reading from their own works.

Gay

Gay

Ledge Mule, a recipient of a BEAD grant from the city for its Poetry Project Reading series, will hold at least three more readings through the spring. The Gay book launch is the first event in the series. All the readings will be at the I. Fell Building.

Gay’s new book should be available at the Book Corner any day, depending one the good graces of United Parcel Service.

Now, back to work on my book — which I’m a hair’s breadth away from being ready to tell you all about. Stay tuned.

Hot Air

I’ve Got So Much To Say!

Oh man, oh man, oh man! If it weren’t for my book project, you know I’d be banging away at the Electron Pencil keyboard until my fingers were bleeding.

Dig:

  • Muslim extremists murder twelve cartoonists for being rude
  • A white man sets off a bomb at the Colorado Springs NAACP office
  • A bunch of families are giddy as all hell that their god somehow prevented them from flying on AirAsia Flight 8501 — it’s a miracle, they’re saying
  • The Indiana Legislature will consider a bill allowing business owners to discriminate against LGBTQ’s in the name of religious freedom
  • The City of Bloomington will not pick up garbage tomorrow because it’s too cold out
  • Scientists have determined that a series of earthquakes in Ohio in March, 2014 was caused by fracking
  • The new Republican-led Congress will take up cutting food stamps and Social Security

Yeesh, I’ve gotta stop or else I’ll start blogging right here and now!

Stayed tuned, kiddies, the book project is coming along nicely and I’ll be back screeching and pontificating here before you know it.

Hot Air

Last Of A Breed?

Cuomo

Requiescat in pace, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, the one guy all we liberals wanted to run for prez in the late 1980’s and into the ’90s. Instead we’ve since been stuck with the likes of Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry. And our victorious guys, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, were and are to liberal Democrats as sardines are to blue whales. No wonder the party got its ass kicked in November.

Even Mario’s kid, current NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is more a 1984 Republican than a Dem in the mold of his old man.

It’s enough for me — a guy who’s never once in his life voted for a Republican — to despair.

A Reminder

The Pencil is on hiatus — sorta — as its big cheese, Big Mike, works on a book. This communications colossus will be back carrying screeches, screeds, and pontifications on an (almost) daily basis before you know it. So chill, okay?

 

 

 

Hot Air

A Christmas Horror Story

The mood around Chez Big Mike is tense. The news came in this morning, via radio.

(I wish I could say I’d caught a “communique” on “short wave radio.” You all know how much I dig drama. But no, it was a little feature on NPR’s Morning Edition. And, sorry, I can’t link to it because NPR hasn’t posted the clip yet.)

Anyway, the jitter-inducing news is that the price of olive oil is about to skyrocket due to a lousy growing season in certain olive-producing areas of this mournful globe.

Olive Oil

Air, Water, Shelter, Love, And Olive Oil

Mournful, natch, because what’s the point of living if one can’t get his mitts on olive oil? I’d prefer gasoline to hit seven dollars a gallon to a shortage of olive oil. Right now, I pay anywhere from $17 to $20 for a gallon of the good stuff, depending on little vagaries like, um…, well, I don’t know. It’s hard enough to figure out why petroleum and gas prices fluctuate as they do; now I gotta decrypt the inner workings of the O.O. racket? Puh-leeaze.

As soon as I heard the news, my imagination went wild: will my gallon of olive oil now cost $30? How about forty? Is fifty too crazy to even ponder?

In any case, I know what I’m doing first thing tomorrow morning. I’munna march right down to my nearby Kroger and cop at least two gallons of the extra-virgin. That’s what one does in an emergency — lay in a supply of life’s essentials.

Phew!

It’s over. We’ve finished shaking the Xmas money tree. Bucks by the bushel-ful rained down upon us at the Book Corner. Apparently, President Obama‘s failed presidency has resulted in a now-reasonably vibrant economy (even taking into account the wealth and income gaps, of course) and folks are spending money — not as drunkenly as they did in the years leading up to the dot-com bust, Bush II’s apparently wildly successful presidency (complete with his two treasury-busting wars), and the Great Recession but more liberally than they did in, say, 2009, ’10, and ’11.

At least that’s what it looks like from the vantage point of the northeast corner of Walnut and Kirkwood. Selling stuff, though, is hard work and the crew at the BC was worn to a frazzle by Wed. afternoon. In fact, any customer who dared enter the store after 1:00pm on Christmas Eve was pretty much risking death by dirty look.

Credit card- and cash-lugging patrons usually are welcomed with open arms in any retail establishment but by that hour the Book Corner corps — as well as those of pretty much every shop and store in this holy land — had had quite enough of ringing up, giving change, wrapping, smiling, answering questions, solving problems, shelving incoming inventory, and plastering the ho-ho-ho spirit on our faces even as our feet ached and our bladders bulged.

Bookstore

A Typical Bookstore The Day After Christmas

All I know is the last week and a half or so I’ve been collapsing on the sofa after my shifts at the store and waking up the next morning only to have to go through the same ordeal again. When I locked the Book Corner’s front door yesterday at 4:00pm, I let loose with a torrent of expletives, describing customers — and for that matter, all members of the human race — in as unflattering terms as any of the 100 greatest novelists of all time could have conjured. At that, my confreres looked at me and wondered aloud how it could be that I was still in a sunnier disposition than they were.

I got home, poured myself a medicinal dosage of Coppola Zinfandel, threw my socks at Steve the Dog, pressed play on I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and emitted a sigh forceful enough to make the pictures on the wall crooked. Next thing I knew, the light of the morning was waking the hounds up and they, in turn, were nudging me with their cold noses..

Today I plan to heal my sore soul and body. Tomorrow, we’re back at it as customers pound on our front door and demand to exchange their copies of Not That Kind of Girl for Yes Please.

Christmas.

Don’t Get Used To This Just Yet

[Just a reminder: The Pencil is on hiatus right now as Big Mike — me — devotes time and energy to a fabulous book project, the details of which will be forthcoming as publishers are sufficiently fawned over and contracts are signed. Stay tuned for news on that front.

Meanwhile, I’ll be putting up little tidbits on occasion, just to keep the circuitry of this communications colossus in working order. I expect to be back telling the world what it ought to do full time within weeks or a couple of months at the most. Try your best to survive without my inerrant pontifications until then, okay? Okay.]

Hot Air

The Police Are A Leftist Tool — Who Knew?

[Just a reminder: The Pencil is on hiatus right now as Big Mike — me — devotes time and energy to a fabulous book project, the details of which will be forthcoming as publishers are sufficiently fawned over and contracts are signed. Stay tuned for news on that front.

Meanwhile, I’ll be putting up little tidbits on occasion, just to keep the circuitry of this communications colossus in working order. I expect to be back telling the world what it ought to do full time within weeks or a couple of months at the most. Try your best to survive without my inerrant pontifications until then, okay? Okay.]

Sometimes I don’t even know what the stereotypes are that we liberals and progressives are supposed to live up to. So, I couldn’t let this pass without comment.

I was enjoying a heated verbal fistfight on social media yesterday, the gist of which was Isn’t it crazy that certain voices on the Right are blaming President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and Mayor De Blasio for the assassination of those two police officers in New York Saturday? Natch, Right Wing commenters got all huffy and doubled down on the canard, going so far as to suggest Obama et al secretly want to destroy America, etc. You know, the usual boilerplate demonizations and mad pronouncements.

Anyway, the TKO came when one Conservative guy who’d already seemed ready to pop a vein decided to set everybody straight. Look, he said, we wouldn’t even need the police if it wasn’t for you soft-assed, dependent Lefties! Yeah, because if everybody had a gun there’d be no need for police. But you Libs have to have big daddy government do everything for you, up to and including protect your home and family.

Big Gun

Who Needs The Cops?

So, there it is. Now we’re responsible for the police. Who, BTW, seem to be shooting up everybody and everything on our side of the fence of late. I guess we love punishment.

Hot Air

A Wink & A Nod

[Just a reminder: The Pencil is on hiatus right now as Big Mike — me — devotes time and energy to a fabulous book project, the details of which will be forthcoming as publishers are sufficiently fawned over and contracts are signed. Stay tuned for news on that front.

Meanwhile, I’ll be putting up little tidbits on occasion, just to keep the circuitry of this communications colossus in working order. I expect to be back telling the world what it ought to do full time within weeks or a couple of months at the most. Try your best to survive without my inerrant pontifications until then, okay? Okay.]

The Time Of The Season

There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

— Mario Savio at the University of California-Berkeley, December 2, 1964

Savio

Savio

Hot Air

I Gotta Go Write One’a D’em Books

So, what’s the what with the Pencil?

This: Bloomington’s most renowned communications colossus will be on hiatus while its answer to Charles Foster Kane, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and Chris Hughes — Me! — devotes himself…, sorry, myself to working full-time and without distraction on the memoir of one of our town’s most notable citizens.

I can’t reveal this person’s name just yet because we don’t have a publishing deal at the moment. We’ve been working together since August and the compilation of material has been demanding. It occurs to me that my time would be better spent transcribing tapes and sourcing information right now, rather than spouting off about how the world should be run according to my specifications.

See, I work three to four hours a day on the Pencil. Yeah, believe it or not. Some of you might suspect I farm out a lot of the Pencil’s writing to a roomful of chimpanzees sitting before typewriters but, no, I really do labor over these screeds, searching for the right word or euphemistic insult, and cutting and slashing until my heart bleeds.

Writing

For those who’ve never tried it, writing can be an exhausting endeavor. Especially when the writer — me, again — often approaches English as though it’s his second language. (We learned a whole different tongue where I grew up on the Northwest Side of Chicago. For instance, we called our our municipal leader Maredaylee or simply Da Mare back in the ’60s and ’70s. For us, the expletive d’fuck was as versatile and necessary to our speech as the word the is to civilized humans. And, of course, the phoneme –th– simply didn’t exist in our little world.)

Anyway, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to devote more daily time to this memoir project so I can push it further along. Alas, the only thing that makes any sense is for me to work on it during those hours I normally devote to the Pencil.

So there it is. I’m not quitting — hell, what would this holy land’s intellectuals, academics, statesmen, and heavy drinkers do without the Electron Pencil? Can you imagine how screwed up we’d become?

Okay, call me selfish, but this project has to be done. Give me a few months and I’ll be back on the stump setting the world straight. In the meantime, you’ll survive.

Hot Air

Big Mike Update

In case you haven’t noticed*, I’m taking some time off.

[*I highly doubt my absence has gone unnoticed; I hear certain local churches are open around the clock for Pencillistas to hold vigils while I’m on hiatus, and the Bloomington City Council meets in emergency session as we speak to determine what to do as the Pencil remains dark.]

Honestly, I haven’t been at all happy with the topics and my treatment thereof in any of the attempts I’ve made at posting the last few days. As always, I figure it’s better for me to spare you from substandard blathering than it is for me to maintain some phonus-balonus record of publishing every day.

So, I’ll be back. Count on it. If you don’t see a post in these precincts by Sunday, send someone out to Pencil world HQ to check my pulse.

Don Cornelius

Peace, Love & Soul

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