bug powder and mugwump jism

i just learned that in anatomy, the word “helix” refers to the “folded rim of skin and cartilage around most of the outer ear.”

today something completely unprecedented happened. i finished putting together all of my chapbooks—!two! !days! before they are due. under normal conditions i would just be wrapping them up about half an hour before class, but as luck would have it this weekend i used them as a vehicle for procrastination (chapbook > lit paper, always). they turned out pretty sweet, i think. they better have…i spent approximately 14 hours making them. almost an hour per copy. (i made extras).

i also finished my gertrude stein response poem already, in time to put it in the chapbook. i typed it on an antique typewriter and left in all the ridiculous typos when i transferred it to my computer. originally it was my intention to type all of my chapbook poems on this typewriter, but i had no idea how outrageously difficult and slow and error-ful the typing would be. it’s such an awesome machine, though. and using it makes me feel like i’m in the movie adaptation of naked lunch, writing on one of those talking typewriter-insects.

my place of employment got radio headsets this week. they are way too much fun. i decided we need a warning code for when sue (the devil incarnate, who is ironically a fundamentalist christian) comes in to shop. but if we had such an alert system we would all just scatter, and she wouldn’t be able to catch anyone to measure her fabric. except maybe the new girls who haven’t met her wrath. and that would be very sad for them.

speaking of evil personified, my family decorated our little xmas faux-tree today, and this petite monstrosity fell out of the bag of tree decorations. i made it a long, long time ago—though not long enough to excuse the full horror of this cycloptic baby jesus-effigy. its skin is made of hosiery, and its mouth is part of a rubber band. oddly enough, it fits in with the other tree decorations. my family is really weird.