All good days come to a close.

Reading Transmet and hating all the people around me, makes me get to thinking of myself as Spider Jerusalem. This is it! You've reached the end of "blogaday." Hopefully my classes will be able to take up the necessary time consumption that this did for the last month. But I should still be back here occasionally. So I'll see you around.

The Way of the Game

If you had to tell me that as far as scheduling and "when are you going to sleep?" questions come in that today would be the closest I would get to not getting a blog entry in back a month ago when I started this new "blogaday" I wouldn't have called you crazy, because that's a cliché, but I would have been surprised. If you told me when I finally got up around noon this fact, I would still have been taken aback. I blame the little leaguers! I was waiting to watch Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption to spark some sort of topic for the "anthropology of sports." In the end, because the Little League World Series is still cluttering up ESPN at that time, I had to wait until the end of the Rays' game. Look at me, grumpy old man at 20, putting down twelve-year-olds.

Autopsy, the offseason

Don't worry, we're not giving you repeats for several months. Autopsy has actually gone over splendidly, with no readers, and not many posts or thoughts on the stories. I couldn't be more proud [half-sarcastic]. I'm very happy to have started something and actually seen it through to the finish, although while writing I also uncovered a whole packet's worth of more stories, so we can have season two of more of the same, and perhaps more after that.

From my abandoned NaNoWriMo

Autopsy is over for the first season. You'll hear more about that in the next day's post, methinks, but for this post I'm going to put up a few cuts out from the novel I wrote back, I don't even know anymore, two, three years ago? Many different narrators, so not all the sections are in the same voice or at least spoken by the same character. I'm not sure I can handle writing in multiple voices; I'm not sure I'm that talented. These are mostly from towards the end of the book. For the first time, I think, I'm simply going to be cutting and pasting for this post, but I think it's worth it. As opposed to what else I could put up here, I think this is a good, solid offering.

A Box of Blogposts

Finished this book a while back. Debriefing posts would be a lot more common if I weren't trying to maintain a structure at the moment. Eventually I'd love to push these out there for every book I've read, but perhaps they'd be better suited to be passed out through my tumblr, being only simple thoughts rather than these long unnecessary pages I write here. Then I guess I would be doing the same thing, setting aside a few books to write about here.

Chronological Hyperawareness

My apologies, but I'm still reading comics. Skreemer, a somewhat science fiction Peter Milligan comic really stunned me. Absolutely amazing in places. Here in "design and style" we'll take you through some of the interesting loops of the Milligan comic. In a way, Peter is able to show how comics can do certain things to perhaps their best success, places where other mediums cannot quite reach.

It's not just me.

Economics and politics are very much a part of international sports. Or it isn't. But it is a part of international sports reporting, since stories are always multilayered. What better way to expand on the game than by informing on the international background.

Where I'm From

Let's pause for station identification. This may or may not turn into a new occasional feature. "Where I'm From" was a blog post that never got finished, itself an idea to change the way I was using sorryforboringyou dot blogspot dot com. The title was the echo in my head of reading the title of Joan Didion's Where I Was From on Wikipedia. Now, writing this, I'm perhaps (hopefully) at the most likely place for this blogaday to fall apart. Sensical, isn't it? Once I began mentioning "blogaday" here and once I started creating blank posts to run out the end of this little tear, I would be stressed. Hmm... I'm just paranoid, I know. Somehow I did something seriously to my ankle today. It hurts but is maybe getting better. "Where I'm From" is an amalgam-style-post. After the jump, I will quote my original concept from the drafts page of this blog.

"Originally written as a horror story..."

I ordered Pictures That Tick for mad cheap thru someone on Amazon a few days back and am still wondering why there's such a discretion there, but I'm happy to have paid what I did. In looking at the book now for the link there seems to be none available new/used anymore which I find odd. But Amazon also appears to have dropped their price so you wouldn't be getting it for much more than I did if you get the free shipping on plus $25. But enough advertising. Sigh. I might write something about comix and poetry later on tumblr and link it here. It came in the mail today and I've read thru the first few shorts. I have all of the normal "autopsy" posts stapled together into two "season" packets. The next story is originally called "Lumberjack Reincarnated in Form of Tree." Ash, a story in the McKean book, also investigates the idea of becoming a tree, but in a very different way. The synchronicity of the tales caught me though making me write of it here. The title of this post is the beginning of Dave's own words on Ash in the book.

The Frog Hospital

Both Tao Lin and Bret Easton Ellis read Lorrie Moore books. I was at a book sale where these huge bags full were a dollar. I saw a Lorrie Moore book. I've read it since. It was, as expected, an experience. I'm not sure how to keep writing in this sort of concise, lame, entirely uninteresting tone. I'm afraid it's my normal voice.

Don't get any big ideas; they're not gonna happen.

A few different tie-ups here. Welcome to "design and style," where we discuss everything about books but their plots. Haha. But seriously...that's a pretty good description. The title of this post is the main line from Radiohead's "Nude." It relates. You'll see for yourself if you're willing to make the jump...

Behind the anthropology of sports

Warren Ellis wrote about FreakAngels in two tones. One was the open voice of uncertainty, he noted the story as an almost eternal ongoing. The second was his knowledge of the ending. In the next few days I'm hoping to have written enough to say the same for "blogaday." This is the real "anthropology of sports" and I'm actually writing on posting day. Hello, Mondays! But I'm sure you aren't reading this today. Now...now to decide what to write about.

The Future of Publishing

A bit of random musing. It's all inconsequential. I'm bloody useless.

We're back to football.

Sort of a choppy one. I'm not at all happy with what it ultimately says about well, first women, second relationships, and third the way we interact with sports. So...to avoid the problems I see happening from reading for these things, I will point them out to you and then say "don't read for these things." Especially anything it says about women. It's not trying to, it's just like the good-natured grandfather who says the wrong things, or should I say believes the wrong things. Anyway hopefully no one actually does read it that way, but I am saying that you can get the wrong impression of me if you read it without the disclaimer. This was straight writing in class, not a finished product, and I wouldn't write like this any other way. But besides, I think it's fun. Perhaps the worst of it is the original title, the terrible "Getting her way." The new title is a riff on the fact that we actually have football, and that I watched parts of the nationally televised season opener a few hours back. Typing it, I realized that I knew the characters and they were one of two couples I've written before, so the plan now would be to figure out which one. Well, if my story-voice is somehow different than my non-story-voice, than the latter one will stop blabbering for now...

Peter's Mulligan or On Milligan

This will be a bit of an odd one for "debriefing" (have I always put them in quotes? I don't remember...I might have to go and check someday when I care). We are at the end of comix week. Applause from the nonexistent masses who think this whole week has been a waste and nothing from the nonexistent masses who didn't care; it's kind of a you take two halves of infinity and they're both infinity sort of thing only with zeros. This is a reflection on the Peter Milligan issues that my dad had and that I've read. I'm through most of them now but I've got a few set out for the weekend. But if you want to hear more you'll have to follow me after the jump...

The Anti-Comic

Welcome to the second Design and Style of comix week. We're almost done for everyone I'm boring especially badly with this run of drivel. I'm currently in a post-Morrison burnout, nearly crying about the fact that I've just finished reading through Grant's entire Doom Patrol run and rereading his Animal Man. Morrison himself forecasts this emotion, when he talks about what I see as a sort of theme of both series, "Yeah. Well, that's the trouble with my stories--they always seem to build up to something that never actually happens. That's the trouble with my life, too." I won't tell you where that's from for fear of revealing too much, but I do think you can feel Morrison's early work here, like say Radiohead's "Creep," plunging into emotions that you want to exorcise from yourself, depressions you want to leave behind. The same sort of emotion that I read in a Tao Lin interview I can't be bothered to dig up at the moment where he talks about writing with the viewpoint that he was not happy at the present, but could foresee a future pleasantness. Blah, pity parade and all that, need to get to the technical stuff now before I turn the angst knob up past 11. Neo looking across the rooftops, eventually he has to make the jump...

Leadership

This is comix week and also "anthropology of sports" so I'm giving you a piece about the various ways that sport or art by committee can be done. We'll see if it works out. Catch you after the jump.

Funny Book

"Etymology" is a new occasional segment on this blog where I will investigate word and phrase origins. Somewhat art over science, or rather opinion over fact but hopefully if you want to be you will be educated. Occasional as in this might be the only one but I have a few ideas for more... Have to get this one written before my mind moves on, though.

Autopsy Presents: CHASING VICTOR

Autopsy Presents is a new feature which brings new stories to light, rather than investigating the inner workings of old stories. The following is in honor of comics week.

Where did she go? Out. What did she do? Everything...

(title is a slogan on the back of The Ballad of Halo Jones)

What my family vacation going on a month back now turned out to be besides its eponymous description was a good deal of both book gathering and reading. I finished The Ballad of Halo Jones, Pale Fire, The Storyteller, and Maps & Legends, all books I had started reading at one point and eventually put down. I don't think I read books the same way very many people do. Anyways, this is debriefing, and this is comics week, so here's a bit on Alan Moore and Ian Gibson's Halo Jones.

Self Vigilant Kitsch

In honor of what is my biggest distraction as of late, I'm going to write a week's worth of posts about comic books. Apologies to everyone who is put off by that (read "everyone"). This is design and style, a beat for sorryforboringyou dot blogspot dot com. Here we go...

Living Fossils of the Soccer World

Welcome back to the anthropology of sports the new segment of sorryforboringyou dot blogspot dot com we are presenting this introduction on a limited amount of punctuation so will throw you to the jump fairly quickly like just after the first period.

"The pot is full; let me take control."

These introductions are influenced both by the sort of "I'm still here" posts from Warren Ellis where he often announces the name of the location you've found on the web. I'm really into that. And also the bumps that Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1 gets on [adult swim]. The sort of inside view given to this season with little snippets from the creators before every new episode. Huh, using this intro as a reflection on my attempts to change my own intro writing ways, it seems I've mucked up the chances to actually introduce this piece. Oh pooh! I will only just add that this post is helluva long one, quite the doozy, do not start it if you're off to bed in five minutes or suchlike.

June

This story isn't about much of anything. It has a sort of thought process slowing it down so that the whole thing takes place in about five minutes that one might find reminiscent of Nicholson Baker, but not as inventive and often true as Baker. This is sorryforboringyou dot blogspot dot com. (That line is just another ripoff of Warren Ellis...) It's Wednesday afternoon in Seattle if you had any rush to read this (which you didn't). The following is another autopsy.

Praying in Common

Joan Didion is my favorite female author. While reading a Didion book I often think she's the best writer in English that I've read. When reading a DeLillo book she can fall back to second. Bret Easton Ellis is my favorite, but he's influenced by both DeLillo and Didion and you can feel a sort of authenticity to their work that I think makes their writing stronger, if not for me more personally enjoyable. This is the debriefing of A Book of Common Prayer, Didion's third, but it also acts as a commentary on all the Didion I've read (Play It as It Lays,  Democracy, and The Year of Magical Thinking). After the jump, I plan to consider what a bibliography is supposed to look like, what we want from novels, and what writing novels is like.

"Books" of "Poetry"

"it depends on your definition of 'of'" (intentional misquote, everybody)

Welcome back to design and style. This is the new sorryforboringyou dot blogspot dot com. It's gone by noon in California on the first day of the month if you're reading this. I'm writing it a few days back in Florida (still don't know why the time's set to Pacific). Stephen King calls writing "telepathy," I call it "time travel." See you after the jump.