How for to make spell the name of the guy

I have seen Muammar or Moammar. I have seen Gaddafi, Khadafi, Gadhafi, Qaddafi, el-Gaddafi, al-Gaddafi, el-Khadafi, and I think others that I can't even remember.

So?

Interesting stuff

Also for a while the NY Times couldn't figure out how to spell "protester," which I know was causing my former University of Richmond journalism professors some indigestion. Looks like they pretty much have it sorted out by now, though.

And if you really want to be a total grammar snoot (or snootlet, per DFW, for the very young nerds) just head over to ESPN.com. Make sure to be alone in a dark room while you laugh because no one else is going to care. Except me, of course.

Engine Down

Been going back to these guys a lot lately -- they used to play all around Richmond when I was in school and are now no longer a band, and I miss them.

New bass drum stencil!

It didn't come out perfect, but not too bad at all for a first try. Let thine inner nerd shine!

Workin' on a new chapter, here's a little snip

Matt was in his front yard firing forearm-sized foam arrows at imaginary targets, targets that became real when Danny and his Mom rounded the corner of Market Dr. and proceeded downhill to his house on Faun Lane. The arrows could go surprisingly far; one needed to slide the hollow arrow over a very phallic part of the plastic bow, pull back a lever simulating pulling a bow-string, and then force the lever forward to expel the arrow with compressed air. Depending on trajectory, wind, and how much force he exerted, Matt discovered that he could make the arrow fly anywhere from nowhere to 30 or 40 feet; or, to give you a better idea, the distance up the sidewalk from his house to the corner Danny and Mom had rounded just in time for a yellow, forearm-sized arrow with blue Nerf feathers on its rear to smack unsuspecting Mom on the forehead just below her hairline, making the kind of dull pock that tennis balls make when hit with poorly strung rackets. Matt also liked to sing “Nerf Bow and Arrow!” – in what can only be described as a deaf person’s voice – to the tune of “Pop goes the weasel!” anytime he succeeded in hitting someone.

The best part about Nerf was that nothing ever hurt. And because it should have hurt but didn't, and instead almost always made this silly noise, getting hit with one of the things was always a funny experience. For adults it would be somewhat like having the ability to shoot each other with real guns/bullets without any of the Thanatoptic consequences. Though this begs the question: Why is pretending to kill each other so much fun?

Feeling like an asshole?

I've had my 2000 Chevy Impala for about six years now, given as a graduation gift from my excellent parents, and it's got these daytime running lights. When you turn the car off, the lights stay on for maybe 10-15 more seconds before shutting off automatically. No big deal, right? I could probably turn the setting off but I kinda like it, especially if you're in a weird place at night. It doesn't happen very often, but once every few weeks I'll park the car somewhere at night and go walking into, say, the grocery store and some kind person will inform me that I've left my lights on. My response used to be a simple, "Oh they turn off automatically in a second, but thanks," and it never fails that the person gives me this rebuffed look of like "Sheesh, I was just trying to help, dickhead." And I don't get it! Seriously, this happens every single time someone let's me know the lights are on, and I really don't think I've acted like an asshole - so I always wonder what's going through these folks' heads. So now I've amended the end of my response to include "but I really appreciate that you were looking after me," which I think just makes me sound condescending. So I can't really win. I'm almost to the point where I'm gonna just go, "oh shit, thanks so much!" and run back to the car and fake turning the lights off.

Got one!

Rejected, that is. Here's the response, short 'n sweet:

"Kevin,

Thanks for sending along your work, but this piece isn't quite right for us.

Best of luck,

The Editors"

So was it almost right? I'll never know! They did try to make it personal with the "Kevin" in the beginning, but then I wish they'd signed off as somebody's name (even if they just made it up, like: "Best of luck, Mark Ruffalo") instead of just "The Editors" unless it was actually the British band Editors. Yeah, that's what I'm going to believe. Editors read (and didn't quite enjoy) my piece! Well, Editors, I don't quite enjoy your music so I guess we're even-Steven.

i like the way you look tonight

Dunno why but writers tend to like to tell people when they've been writing a lot; whether it's true doesn't seem to matter. And this is kind of what this post is, because I have been writing a lot, just clearly not on this blog! ha ha!

bleh, that's how it feels knowing you need to tell people something they more than likely couldn't care less about. But I NEED this! har har, Anyway - just shipped off a new short story to some journals and writing contest things and am eagerly anticipating the thoughtfully worded rejection letters (or the generic ones they send to everybody, or ooooh a really mean one would be kind of awesome on some level), which I'll happily post here when they come.

So, what else? Been reading a bunch as always:

- Just finished Don DeLillo's 1985 novel White Noise (not to be confused with the terrible 2005 movie of the same name starring Michael Keaton)

- Antoine Wilson's short story "Everyone Else" from the fall 2004 Paris Review, which made me immediately order his 2007 novel The Interloper. (Seriously, do your eyes and pocketbook a favor and just buy a real fucking book, $4 at Powell's. Having to turn your iPad or iPhone off and stop reading during taxi, takeoff, and landing is a HUGE drag.)

- James Lasdun's short story "The Hollow" also from Paris Review.

And I can't really say enough about these next few excerpts from David Foster Wallace's soon-to-be-here-but-not-nearly-soon-enough last and sadly unfinished novel The Pale King.

"Good People" (published in the New Yorker). A snippet:

What it really felt like was a taste of the reality of what might be meant by Hell. Lane Dean had never believed in Hell as a lake of fire or a loving God consigning folks to a burning lake of fire—he knew in his heart this was not true. What he believed in was a living God of compassion and love and the possibility of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through whom this love was enacted in human time. But sitting here beside this girl as unknown to him now as outer space, waiting for whatever she might say to unfreeze him, now he felt like he could see the edge or outline of what a real vision of Hell might be. It was of two great and terrible armies within himself, opposed and facing each other, silent. There would be battle but no victor. Or never a battle—the armies would stay like that, motionless, looking across at each other, and seeing therein something so different and alien from themselves that they could not understand, could not hear each other’s speech as even words or read anything from what their face looked like, frozen like that, opposed and uncomprehending, for all human time. Two-hearted, a hypocrite to yourself either way.

"The Compliance Branch" [PDF Link] (From Harper's Feb. 2008 issue). The first paragraph:

My audit group's Group Manager and his wife have an infant I can describe only as fierce. Its expression is fierce; its demeanor is fierce; its gaze over bottle or pacifier or finger-fierce, intimidating, aggressive. I have never heard it cry. When it feeds or sleeps, its pale face reddens, which makes it look all the fiercer. On those workdays when our Group Manager, Mr. Yeagle, brought it in to the District office, hanging papoose-style in a nylon device on his back, the infant appeared to be riding him as a mahout does an elephant. It hung there, radiating authority. Its back lay directly against Mr. Yeagle's, its large head resting in the hollow of its father's neck and forcing our Group Manager's head out and down into a posture of classic oppression. They made a creature with two faces, one of which was calm and blandly adult and the other unformed and yet emphatically fierce. The infant never wiggled or fussed in the device. Its gaze around the corridor at the rest of us gathered waiting for the morning elevator was level and unblinking and (it seemed) almost accusing. The infant's face, as I experienced it, was mostly eyes and lower lip, its nose a mere pinch, its forehead milky and domed, its pale red hair wispy, no eyebrows or lashes or even eyelids I could see. I never saw it blink. Its features seemed suggestions only. It had roughly as much face as a whale does. I did not like it at all.

Go read, I'll have some more stuff soon. Promise. Happy Holidays!