Welcome to the FUTURE!

I'm crazy about QR's at the moment and can't wait to do more with them. My head is exploding with ideas.

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My asthma seems under control. I have been gluten-free for almost 30 days, and I have not taken any medication for about that long, too. It's been great. My skin feels tighter and healthier, and I just feel more alert and happier. But the asthma thing is the biggest deal, and I've been working on a miracle.

I have been fighting asthma for 30 years. I've tried everything. And now I think that I'm almost finished with it. One... more... step.

Here it is (it's a two-parter):

1. I'm going to quit alcohol completely.
2. I'm going to work on building upper body strength.

For the first one, it seems crazy. I don't know how I'm supposed to give up cider and white wine and gin. I love those things very much. After 30 days, perhaps I'll try to drink them once a month or something. This will be a major test of will power. Alcohol has been linked to asthma. It must be addressed before I can say that I've conquered my dark companion.

For the second item, I'm working on getting up to a hundred push-ups in one go. I'm going to try to get to 100 by June 1. I think I'll also get a membership to the Y and start swimming and bench-pressing. Upper body strength has been said to take the stress off much of your respiratory system. It must be developed to muscle out my dark companion.

When I've slayed the dragon, I will write a book to help other people rid themselves of asthma.

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Today I found out MBH and I would not buy the house we wanted. But we are moving the cafe and have signed on it and are renovating the space, and one big real estate deal a year might be enough for me. Yes, it sucks that I will not be getting the big tax credit. But that's all right. People have been buying houses without tax credits for a long time.

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Reporting on my vegan Thanksgiving.

Yesterday, the News Leader published an article that mentioned (my) veganism. That's really nice of them. Some of the comments on the article are not so nice.

I think my main problem with holidays is that everyone hates each other more than usual on them because they can't seem to grab what they really want: to love each other more than usual. It's as if there is such a huge expectation for everyone and that everyone feels obligated toward one another, something that is never pleasant and seems as arbitrary and ridiculous as dressing your girlfriend up like a squaw on a Thursday and forcing her to roast you a hideously large, genetically modified, flightless bird.

Then there's tradition.
Tradition is an obligation to nostalgia. Nostalgia is just a rosy version of the past. Yesteryear was not all that great. Every civilization has had a strange notion that the golden age was yesteryear, and now we're circling the drain, waiting for the end of the world.

I am a thirty-year-old heterosexual American with an iPhone. The end of the world is far from my mind. I think we are living in the most exciting times in human history. We are relatively peaceful, most of us aren't starving in America, we have time for art and literature and science, and most people I know have a computer in their pocket that can access more information than anyone ever thought would be available to a person born to working-class parents.

So just relax. No one cares how you were brought up or what you think of the way I eat. It's nice to be nice, and now that we all have the luxury to do so, let's! I don't have to kill animals to survive, and I live such a pampered life that I can act on my compassion and follow my conscience. I can live super-healthy and live as long as possible. Science has taught us what causes heart disease and other killers, so now we can avoid them! How great is that?! I'm thankful for all of that. I wish more people would be. If animals have wishes, that's what they wish for, too. Especially hamsters and flightless birds.

I'm also thankful for my girlfriend and her family, who have gone out of their ways in the past to make me feel welcome. They probably felt obligated. I hope they didn't.

Anyway, chill out, people. This holiday season doesn't have to be "the best ever." It doesn't have to match some imaginary version of holidays in Coke commercials or sit-com specials like Family Ties and Growing Pains. If you just act nicely toward one another, we'll all have a good enough time.
I'm also thankful for Indians. I love reading every year about how Thanksgiving is really celebrating brutality and war. Do you remember that episode of Buffy when the spirit of some Indian warrior was terrorizing the Slayer and her friends on Thanksgiving? I think Angel was int hat episode. Joss Whedon is a creative genius.

I've always disliked Thanksgiving, and I thanked the Indian tribes of the USA every year for giving me a reason. Now I kind of like it I guess. I mean, it's not Christmas or anything.

Jack Morgan; One Percenter

99% of poets are sycophants who see poetry not as a way of life, but as a hobby or a trade. They have no passion for the craft or for an existence founded on beauty and honesty and adventure. They have neither loyalty nor honor nor courage.

1% of poets adhere to a sense of justice and truth like masked vigilantes from comic books, leading an ostensibly normal life while chasing something more elusive and noble through words and experiences. They believe in the intensity and importance of a raindrop and the way people walk in pairs down sidewalks. They struggle with the power and inadequacy of words. They adore the smell of ink and the movements lips make when they whisper. They don't write because they want to. They don't need deadlines or assignments. They write because it's who they are.

I don't hate the 99 percenters. I've had many friends who are 99ers. Sometimes I even wish I were one of them, but it's always been clear that I'm not.

Going Live and Getting Jacked on Your iPhone

TrainwreckUnion.com is your one-stop spot for all things Jack Morgan.
Stormy Petrel Press is Jack Morgan's press. That's where you can buy Sara Mumolo's chapbook!
A lot of you didn't know that. They haven't been totally live for very long, and there are still a few things about them that we're tweaking, but I am proud of the sites and I am grateful to know one of the most elegant programmers I have ever met.

Ryan Stark is able to write code that looks super simple, which is way more difficult than it sounds. It's harder to make things that look clean and disciplined than it is to be fancy and opulent. What looks like a basic website for Stormy Petrel is actually a creative way to handle content management, one that I have never seen before, one that I am entirely impressed with because it gives me way more control than I have ever had on a website. I want to build a statue of Stark and put it in front of city hall or the mayor's house or something.

Speaking of opulence, if you use your iPhone to visit TrainwreckUnion.com, I've made a fav icon for the device. If you go to the site and add it as a bookmark "to Home Screen," it will put the Trainwreck logo where the apps are so that you can just hit a button and your iPhone will take you the site. How cool is that? And the button looks really awesome.

And as long as this is a web-heavy post, someone told me there was a press ripping me off. I checked them out, and I don't think they are. I think I'd like to submit to them because how hilarious would it be to get published by them? I google fought them. I won, so I feel OK.
Trainwreck Union forever!

Play

I missed Idiolexicon last night because when you never sleep, sleep has a way of catching up to you when you least expect it. I just fell asleep and didn't wake up until it was almost over, so I missed it.

Instead I went to Hubba Hubba Revue! I enjoy that show very much, and for five dollars, it's one of the best deals in town. Last night was particularly great. Tarzan and Casey came to the show for the first time and were happy they did.

We went to Van Kleef's afterward.

Good times

There are pictures of Jack Morgan at his last reading at Trevor Calvert's Blog.

Someone told me that I have an exciting life. That makes me happy. I guess I do have an exciting life. It doesn't always feel that way. Sometimes it's hard to think that people stay at home and watch television. Come out to play, people.

blogs

A lot has been said of poets and blogs... or poets with or without blogs. Or something like that.
Here are the blogs I like the most right now. The ones I check every day and am bummed out about when they don't update.

• Bronwen
• Clay
• Jane
• Tao

I don't think that a poet needs a blog. In fact, it might hurt more than help, really, unless you have one of those filters between your mind and your hands. I don't seem to have one. I have to be more careful lately. People get very angry with me about this blog. So I edit more than I used to.

I think it is a way to keep writing while taking a break from writing. I am on the computer a lot. I don't have a job on the computer right now, but I am working on it a lot. And I don't want to get up and go out all the time; I'm broke after all.

Some people think only failed poets have blogs, and others think that you have to have a blog to be successful. I started this blog to kind of record the lives of poets. It's not a blog about poetry. . . there are enough of those, but I want it to be about what it is to be a poet right now.
I've learned to love my blog.

I hope that it helps me find a rich woman to marry for love.

More Drinks with Poets and a Chekhov Quote

So we were drinking last night. I know you're thinking what everyone else is saying, "all you trainwreckers do is drink." But Chekhov said in Uncle Vanya "[I drink] because it gives me the illusion that I might be alive. I like that.
Drinking puts one into situations. Some of the darkness of the night is only accessibly when intoxicated. It's not for everyone, but neither is Becket.
Pablo, as is his wont, was pulled away by an angry woman. The rest of us ended up back at the Grad, where the nicest girl in the world works, Mo.

It was there that I met Tiff Dressen. Tiff Dressen is one of the cooler people I have met in recent months. She talked a lot about Kelsey Street Press, which, thanks to Clay Banes, I actually know about. I hardly know anything, see. Normally my face would screw about my nose at the thought of a women-only club, but I would be wrong were that my reaction to this one. Sometimes we all have to grin and bear the obvious double standards that pervade contemporary gender issues in order to see the twinkling stars through the miasma. . . I guess.

We ended up sharing a street home, and we spoke about the things one speaks about at three AM with friends. There are certain nights on which one moment can turn the sting of drink-regret into an appreciation of the sweet core of the licorice night.

I read a little of her stuff today, and find it quite Susie. I hope you do to.

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Geoffrey G. O'Brien kind of saved my life this week. . . seriously. For his gallant intervention and candor, I personally excuse him for not going to Nabalom, Nabolom!

Clayton Banes, a Trainwreck Union member, has called in too many favors already lately to get more time away from work and sleep, so he won't be coming, but he's excused, too, with a tear.

What's your excuse? Most simply do not have one good enough to miss the impending disaster this evening at Nabolom Bakery.

See the flyer at the bottome of this page for more info.