( The assortment: )

£10 / $20 for the lot. Alas, not selling them singly.

(Shipping depends on where you are, obviously - I can quote that later.)

The Fix has reviewed Sybil's Garage #5.

So far, the reviews I've seen have been wonderful - which is flattering to all of us published in it. On the down-side, none of the reviews comment on the poetry. Given there are only two of us represented by our verse, one would think a slightly more detailed comment wouldn't be so difficult? What's the taboo against commenting on poetry, anyway? I can't see the old "inaccessibility" argument as valid; poetry takes on forms so much more diverse - and, I'd argue, accessible - these days than it once did. I keep wondering what can be done about this.

Olbermann eats Bush for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

(Seriously, if you have NOT watched this Special Comment, my God. Run, don't walk!)

( I found my camera's cable, so all of them are here now. )

ETA: This post has somehow ended up linked at Unlocked Wordhoard. Hello, total strangers! Nice to meet you.

Has anyone else been experiencing a peculiar problem with Gmail? Since last night, any time I try to access my Gmail (I leave myself logged in, but when the problem started, I cleared all my cookies and re-signed in...and it still did the same thing), it loads near to completion, then starts loading again - and it does it over and over, never loading my inbox page and never fully settling. So the result is that I don't get to check my mail because it seems stuck on a refresh loop in perpetuity. As I said, I tried clearing my cookies, and that didn't work. Any advice?

ETA: There is sound advice in the comments on how to fix this problem, should anyone else be experiencing it!

To make matters worse, Milkweed Editions finally wrote back re: the full manuscript of Lost Books.

It's a no-go. And there are half a dozen places that still have my initial query, but haven't responded.

I'm really not sure where to go from here. Does anyone know of a small, yet reputable press that's amenable to poets who are trying diligently to get their first collection published? I've hit the point where I don't understand the difficulty, especially since I've done so well with single pieces in magazines in the past two years. As for competitions, they're a good thought - but I honestly can't afford to do them. I'm tired of tossing money into a black hole.

I haven't been exposed to this many television screens in ages. The world seems to have erupted into another series of natural disasters this week...

My last two days at K'zoo were so busy that I didn't have the time to post, but suffice it to say the following happened:

• Terry Jones gave a kick-ass lecture for the Society of the White Hart: "Was Richard II a Hated Tyrant?" (NO!)



• I hung out with angevin2 and erstwhiletexan at Pseudo Soc (which was not as good as last year).



• The session in which I gave my paper was astonishingly well attended. Went over swimmingly!



• OMGWTF. I'm now Vice President of the Pearl-Poet Society! Session-organizing paperwork, here I come.

I'm sure there are some other things that should be on my list, but I'm distracted by the WV primary.

Breakfast & Lunch: $18

Books which I was emphatically NOT supposed to buy: $103

Green t-shirt reading I WENT ALL THE WAY TO HAUTDESERT AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY...: $15 Priceless!

...so I've hauled Pearl down to breakfast in Valley II. The things I'll do for access.

James was still fairly ill yesterday, minus the vomiting. The drive from Chicago was uneventful, although we got astonishingly lost trying to get home from dinner at Fandango in Kalamazoo's city center last night. You would not believe how many circuitous, winding streets this town has.

I don't know about you, but I'm off to scout the dealers' tables.

What was planned: trip to Greenfield to meet up with twilightgardens at the People's Pint.

What happened: lifegivingsword started puking this morning and hasn't quite recovered yet.

We leave for Chicago early tomorrow morning; our flight out of Logan is 7:00 AM. At least elrice79, ida_pea, and sunqist will be waiting on the other side. After running around with them for a while, Laura, James, and I will finally hit the road for Kalamazoo. It's been weird having this Boston holiday tacked onto the front end of the trip, for sure. There are some things I would've done differently; staying in Worcester is...inconvenient, to say the least.

Yesterday: Salem expedition extraordinaire. Highlights included Front Street Coffee Shop, all the occult shops you can stomach, and a whole passel of old friends (preciousdark, aslanlionchic, and jennaria in particular). We finished off the day with a huge dinner at Legal Seafoods. Actually, I lied: my stomach is the black hole.

Today: Cambridge, sans electrical fires. Highlights included the Mass Pike, all the bookshops you can stomach, and Tealuxe. I wish I could say I caught up with some old friends, but that's tomorrow's business (the People's Pint in Greenfield, starring twilightgardens). We leave for Chicago/Kalamazoo on Wednesday.

I'm afraid we now won't be coming to Harvard Square till Monday. James's mom heard about this on the news and is unwilling to go until this is all sorted out. Underground fires. Surreal, and it would happen while I'm in town...

Arrived in Boston around 4:30 PM feeling very tired and very sore. One-and-a-half-hour cab ride from Logan to Worcester through heavy traffic. Dinner at Vinny Testa's. Am stuffed and exhausted. More tomorrow. Peace out.

...my body's never going to comply. My left foot slipped out from under me on the stairs early this afternoon, and I fell down about half the flight, hitting my tailbone several times and my head once before finally crash-landing on my back at the bottom. Judging by the pain, which I can feel even when I'm not walking around gingerly (running is out of the question, ow), I might have cracked my tailbone. And this two days before I'm due for a long, trans-Atlantic flight!

In other news, it's that time of year again! Kalamazoo 43 is pretty much imminent. Here's my Stateside schedule for the next couple of weeks, insofar as it's a work in progress:

30 April - Fly to Boston by way of Philly. Evade in-laws' dumb questions, sleep, etc.

1 May - Endure day-long visit from some relation of James's that I've never met before.

2 May - I'm going to be arguing for some kind of getting-out-of-the-house...

3 May - Belated wedding reception hosted by still more of James's relations.

4 May - Salem! Meet up with preciousdark, jennaria, and anybody else who may want to come along.

5 May - I'm strongly going to be arguing for another day out. I'm guessing Cambridge.

6 May - Western Mass! Greenville and The People's Pint with twilightgardens.

7 May - Fly to Chicago, where elrice79 will collect us, and we will all drive to Kalamazoo together. I think that a meeting with sunqist still needs to be sorted out (sadly, Karen, Laura thinks that Hot Doug's is too far out of the loop or whatever...we'll have to keep the meeting-place central).

8 through 12 May - Kalamazoo madness! My paper's on Saturday morning, I think. If anybody wants to meet up to do lunch, dinner, or whatever, let me know. Me and mine have a car this year, which is sweet.

Rare "Prehistoric" Shark Photographed Alive

I'm stunned that this didn't register on my news-trawling radar at the time. Whoa.

It takes a lot out of you, hauling two family members all over London and North Yorkshire for six days straight. My sister seemed to suffer from a semi-terminal case of teenage malaise, but by the last couple of days, she genuinely seemed to be enjoying herself. I was afraid my mother wouldn't be able to get over the terrible exchange rate, but by the end of the trip, she, too, had perked up. I spent a lot of the trip worried about my sister, though, as I had really, desperately wanted to show her a good time. I think that 17 is a crucial age in my mind because that's when I first set foot outside the U.S. (trips to Canada not included) in earnest. Maybe I was different from most 17-year-olds, but there was something about seeing Europe and the sheer presence and beauty of history everywhere I looked. I was never quite the same, in (I feel) the best of possible ways. I hope that Alyce will have taken something positively perspective-altering home from this trip. Maybe her friends will be jealous enough to give her pause.

(As for me, I took a pair of Dr. Martens that actually fits home from London, so that's all right!)