Tuesday, April 6, 2010

I'm Leaving You For The Pretty Girl Down The Street

I'll keep this blog up for historical purposes, but for future posts:


http://sptypewriter.tumblr.com/


S

Oggi, Agagio

This morning it was steamy and raining and then it cooled off and drizzled, and apparently it’s supposed to get into the mid-eighties sometime this week, so I’ve decided to say the hell with trying to pick out proper clothing and wear the same thing day after day and deal with it. By Friday I’ll be reeking and disheveled, so… nothing new there.


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In other news, not much occurring today. I’ve made a few orders, received in some orders, checked on some orders, and was told that my very important order that I placed yesterday early afternoon and requested that it be shipped overnight was just being put into a box and shipped to me today, because (love this) the factory that had the parts was closed. Before 3pm. Same time zone as me, but they were closed.


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Exciting, no?


No.


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I’m nearly done listening to an audiobook by an author that I have respect for, but I hate this particular book. The best way I can explain the book is that it reminds me of the little introductory stories that some psychology textbooks use to start chapters, except it’s nearly four-hundred pages. It has taken me several weeks to get to where I am with this book because at least twice a cd there’s some dialogue or aside or explanation (this is a book that feels the need to explain a lot) that makes me punch the FM button in my car, roll my eyes, and curse myself for starting the damn thing. But I’m obsessive, so I have to finish.


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The rain has stopped and the clouds have thinned to the point that the sun is coming through nicely. At twelve I’ll drive out to a nearby park and sit in my cluttered car and eat salad while listening to the audiobook, or music, or Rush Limbaugh, who I disagree with the majority of the time but whose pomposity and energy I find interesting, if at times repulsive.


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If today was a song it would be spare, without strings.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Avoiding The Crowd by Wading In The Basement while Shouting & Murmuring to myself

This morning I signed up for an Open Salon account, spent about five minutes noodling around their website, then signed out and came back here. I know it sounds snobbish (as snobby as I can be considering I’m probably the only person actually reading this thing I had mostly abandoned) but it just felt crowded and desperate. This little place is a blank sheet of paper to me, a way to get my juices flowing if you will, and I do my best writing not crammed and slammed amongst others.

I don’t think I could handle living in a crowded city like New York or Los Angeles. My brain seems to require large tracts of land.

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Regarding my own tract of land, our basement is like many in New England today: waterlogged. To recycle a joke I wrote in a letter to my brother Bob and his wife Michele, I’ve always enjoyed fishing, and now I don’t even need to leave the house to do it. Hopefully the Weather Channel is correct and we’re in for eight days of no rain, so I can patch the holes and cracks in the floor and get someone who knows how to waterseal a basement and make it actually stay dry.

Side note: a 2.5 Gallon wet vacuum only actually takes in about a gallon of water before it starts puffing water out its side blowhole. Wish I had gotten the 16 Gallon…

My wife is worried about the water and all the other problems we’re having with the house, but I’ve seen worse, and really, what’s the worst that could happen?

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Yesterday I finished writing a submission to Shouts & Murmurs, the humor section of The New Yorker.

I expect to be rejected.

I’ve found that if I have a positive attitude going into a submission, it hurts to get rejected, whereas if I send it off, swear it off, and get on to the next thing that will be rejected, it dulls the pain. It’s like getting your finger caught in a door versus your dick slammed in a drawer. If/when it gets rejected, I’ll post the piece up here. I think it’s funny, which is half the battle. You’re supposed to be your first and harshest editor, and I’ve taken that to heart. I’ve shredded, deleted, burned, recycled much of my writing because it didn’t work for me. Do I regret it? Nah.

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Nah?

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Incidentally, if my piece is accepted by The New Yorker, I plan on running around the front lawn in my underwear, dousing myself with champagne. So New Yorker editors, if you catch drift of this, there could be a fun web weirdo video cross-promo in it for you…

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Checking Into Myself

I had/have largely abandoned this blog since January for several reasons, but I thought I would check in with myself now and then. I say check in with myself because I’m sure that no one actually reads this thing.

I’ve read several books since the last post, including Nick Hornby’s “Juliet, Naked”, Joshua Ferris’ “Then We Came To The End”, Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country For Old Men”. I’m taking to reading a lot of short stories by Dorothy Parker, John Updike, Harry Stephen Keeler, Ernest Hemingway, and others. I started writing one short story but it petered out, and I’ve mostly been working on a new novel. The novel I finished writing last year will be resting for some time, so when I go back I can be extremely depressed and critical and tear it apart and hopefully make it work (even?) better.

The novel I’m currently writing is just starting out, but I’ve got high hopes, not necessarily pie in the sky hopes, but so far I’m happy with what’s come of it. As a way to keep my brain operating despite the lack of sleep (3 month old twins don’t cotton to the newfangled idea of sleeping through the night) I’m doing a lot of research totally unrelated to this current novel, but pertaining to the next project I imagine I’ll be tackling later this year or even next year. It has to do with the nineteen-twenties, and it’ll be my first project not to be contemporary or almost-contemporary (the last novel I wrote took place in the early nineteen-nineties). At three o’clock yesterday morning I was calming a baby and watching Douglas Fairbanks Sr in “The Thief Of Bagdad” (not a misspelling, that’s how the film and the novel it was based upon spelled it).

I plan on getting back into the swing of this little blog a bit, so consider this a stretching out of the muscles. Today at noon I plan on getting a slice of pizza at a local place and working a bit on that short story that petered out, perhaps I can get it to unpeter, maybe even make it paul its way to completion.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Starting The New Year Reading

I’ve started out the year by reading about boys and men in trouble. First I read Mark Twain’s “The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer”, a classic I haven’t touched in over a decade. I was surprised at just how much I had forgotten or had thought was Tom Sawyer when it was in fact Huckleberry Finn (on my long list of planned Twain for 2010). It’s such a universal story of being young that even though I grew up in the north over a century after Twain’s characters I recognize many of the strange mannerisms and speech of youth that I hope Facebook and cell phones don’t destroy.

After Tom Sawyer I picked up “David Copperfield”, and am well into it. I debated the merits of either reading it straight through or breaking it up (it is rather long book) with another novel every few days. “Copperfield” was published over the course of nineteen months, from May 1849 to November 1850, so I justified taking my time reading. After sixteen chapters I put it aside for two days and picked up John Cheever’s “Falconer”.

Throughout my life I’ve found myself in trouble for various reasons, nothing too serious, and I’ve only seen the inside of a police station once, as a Cub Scout. We were shown around the booking area and had our mug shots and fingerprints taken. “Falconer” is a short novel about a man that has killed his brother and is sent to prison, where he falls in a deeper love than the one he seems to have ever shared with his wife, explores his memories in the long stretches of time he has, and finds freedom not only from the physical prison, it would seem, but from his own emotional captivity. It was fascinating seeing your typical upper-middle-class Cheever character transported into a place where everyone is equally (mostly) powerless.

I’m going to be reading a chapter or two of “Copperfield” a day, and for my other book (I like to juggle, keeps the reading fresh) I’ve picked up “Then We Came To The End” by Joshua Ferris. I’ve read a few of his short stories and liked them and I look forward to seeing how he works in long form.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Report On The Northern Stagecoach Club's Annual Holiday & New Years Party (Rejected by McSweeney's Internet Tendency)

(Two thoughts about this little piece: it could use a good amount of trimming, and it probably would have had a better chance if I submitted it earlier than after the new year [and cut about 200+ words])

Report On The Northern Stagecoach Club's Annual Holiday & New Years Party
by Sean-Patrick Burke

Mr. & Mrs. Galloway were the first to arrive at the clubhouse and immediately began preparing the main room for the festivities. After stringing lights, venting frustration at the absence of any additional assistance, and smoothing out tablecloths, they were joined by Mr. Fazzino, who apologized for Mrs. Fazzino's absence, as she was not feeling well, which was a lie, as she was feeling very well, lying underneath Mr. Peterson in Mr. and Mrs. Fazzino's bed, Mr. Peterson being their neighbor who had never even bothered to ask to join the Northern Stagecoach Club. Mrs. Galloway, having been aware of Mrs. Fazzino's infidelities, not just with Mr. Peterson, but also Messrs. Gersz and Cragle, proverbially and actually bit her tongue.

The early birds completed the majority of the preparations by the time fellow members Mr. and Mrs. Zipfel, Mr. and Mrs. Gschwind, and Mr. and Mrs. Hagan, along with Mr. Shongole, the homosexual, arrived, increasing the volume of the room if not the productivity. Mr. Shongole, an electrician, was given the task of putting whipping cream cans in ice baths, wiping out chowder bowls, and polishing candlestick holders, while Mr. Zipfel and Mr. Hagan attempted and yet failed to make the holiday lights around the room blink in a pleasant rhythm.

(Addendum: Mr. Hagan thought it ridiculous that the club used the term holiday instead of Christmas as, he estimated, the club had no blacks or Jews; however, he had only known Mr. and Mrs. Neubert since their membership began in August, and as their conversations had never ventured into the spiritual, and as Mr. Neubert had a big nose, and as Neubert struck Hagan as a Jewey sounding name, Mr. Hagan kept his frustration to himself, a constant refrain in his inner monologue that night.)

At just after seven o'clock, the party began, with the addition of Mr. Gustin (the Club President and a longtime widower), Ms. Wellington, Mr. and Mrs. Bell, Mr. and Mrs. Legere (and their son, who was not a member, but as he was of age Mr. Gustin, deemed his presence acceptable, even if the younger Legere had a thousand things he'd rather do that evening than fart around with his parents and their friends, even for free booze), Mr. and Mrs. Baxter-Jones, Mr. McLaughlin (whose wife was in Florida, and yet whose piercing eyes he still felt on his every move and thought), and Mr. and Mrs. Slattery.

Messrs. and Mesdames. Abbott, Ciervo, Cranford, Damboise, Hebert, LeDuc, Lenz, Mackiewicz, Maske, Mastroianni, Micucci, Murphy, Nadeau, O'Leary, O'Regan, Ososki, Peck, Pond, Ray, Raymond, Reed, Symmes, Thomas, Wilson, Yarochowicz, and Ziegler all had let their memberships expire throughout the year, as the recession caused them to rethink their priorities, the Club not making the cut.

The younger Legere discovered that a mixture of white wine, ice and ginger ale didn’t suck so bad, the ensuing drunk being better than the boilermakers his circle of friends abused themselves with most nights of most weeks. He also discovered that he just fucking loved strawberries, and that either Mr. Gschwind or Mr. Gustin (he couldn't remember afterwards) had been an attendee at the first Woodstock, which was, in Mr. Gschwind's or Mr. Gustin's mind, the only one.

Mr. and Mrs. Legere conversed with Mr. Gustin, the most memorable aspect of which being the subtle moves the Legeres took to remain upwind of Mr. Gustin's halitosis.

Mr. Hagan filled his stomach with food and wine, vomited like a Roman in the bathroom, rinsed his mouth out with water, tried to remember exactly if it was the Romans or Greeks that went all faggy like Shongole, attempted to Google the fact on his phone but couldn't quite get the hang of it, and spent the remainder of the night eating antacids, burping up wine gas, and concentrating on a spot on the wall in the distance so he wouldn't lose his balance.

Mr. Fazzino attempted several times to get his wife on the phone to check on how she was feeling, but it kept going to voice mail.

Mr. Galloway talked elections with Mr. Zipfel, baseball with Mr. Gschwind, and the television show Lost with Ms. Wellington, who had never been interested in the show but nonetheless listened, as she thought Mr. Galloway resembled a less inhibited Father Mulcahy.

Mr. Shongole sipped several club sodas with lime, rubbed the one-year medallion in his pocket, and repeatedly reminded himself over the course of the night that the jackasses in that room comprised a good third of his yearly business, thanks not only to their constant renovations, but more profitably their attempts to do the job themselves at first.

Mesdames. Bell, Baxter-Jones, and Slattery round about the wine table went, eating fingers of sliced carrots, crushing eyes of cherry tomatoes, wiping tartar sauce from their lips as they slowly destroyed their plastic cups, paper plates, and remaining good looks. When asked her opinion of the brinded brownies, Mrs. Bell declared them both firm and good.

Mr. McLaughlin inspected nearly every woman present from across the room and regretted not bringing his own beverages, as he had never been a wine guy.

At the turn of the new year, the couples (old and newly formed, including the younger Legere and either Mr. Gschwind or Mr. Gustin, the two being so close in name and appearance to the youth) kissed and celebrated with champagne, except for Mr. Shongole, who was sitting in his car in the parking lot of Woodsburn Package with the medallion burning in his pocket and a different burning in his throat.

Mr. and Mrs. Neubert had stayed at home, drinking merlot from coffee cups in their underwear, watching episodes of Cathouse from the DVR, and after nearly a half hour of foreplay and intercourse and the ball drop on ABC, left the television on The Weather Channel while Mr. Neubert read ten pages of The Monsters of Templeton and Mrs. Neubert finished writing out the addresses for their still-unsent Christmas cards.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Live Blogging Obama's West Point Speech

8:00: Speech begins.

8:00:30: “DADDY I A ROCK AND ROLLER!” Lily runs up to me with a Rock Band guitar on, performs a sort of dance. Being a modern father, I document this with my camcorder.

8:02: “MILK PLEASE! MILK PLEASE! MILK PLEASE! MILK PLEASE! MILK PLEASE!”

8:03: After giving her milk, she asks for a banana. We are out of bananas.

8:04: Seriously. No bananas. Offers of an orange and toast are spurned.

8:05: Crying about bananas subsides. I start listening to the speech.

8:08: “We will remove our combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next summer, and all of our troops by the end of 2011.“ Awesome. There would be a ! after that if it were 2010, but I’ll have to take it.

8:09: Lily comes up to me. Looks strange. I open her mouth. Inside is my Bluetooth earpiece. I take it out, put it in my pocket.

8:10: “PINK BINKY! PINK BINKY! PINK BINKY! PINK PINKY!”

8:11: I locate the pink binky, give it to her. Obama says he owes the soldiers a clear plan. I agree. I just happen to think that continuing the mistakes of the past eight years on a greater scale, while a clear plan, isn’t a good plan.

8:12: Lily gives me a bottle of water.

8:13: Lily gives me a bottle of water.

8:14: Lily begins stacking bottles of water onto her Barbie lunchbox.

8:19: I want Obama to pull a Farley and start screaming “I WANT HOLYFIELD! I WANT HOLYFIELD!” Not entirely a joke. I get why people are calling him Mr. Spock. Show some sort of flipping emotion. He sounds like he’s giving a PowerPoint presentation, except it’s the sort where people die.

8:23: “We are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action.“ OBAMA JUST CHANNELED BUSH! THIS IS A COALITION OF 43 NATIONS??!! THEN HOW COME IT’S ONLY AMERICANS GETTING KILLED??!! THAT’S LIKE SAYING THAT EVERYONE IN DIDDY’S POSSE IS A TALENTED MUSICIAN! Wait, bad analogy. THAT’S LIKE SAYING THAT ALL OF LED ZEPPELIN’S GROUPIES WERE TALENTED MUSICIANS! WHAT. THE. EFF.

8:24: Lily is reading Goldilocks in a very emphatic manner.

8:28: Holy shit, is that guy sleeping? Yep! Bad move, Cadet.

8:29: Tools of Mass Destruction? Because you can’t build a house without… PLUTONIUM!

8:29:30: Sounds weird for me so say this, but I’m getting pretty tired of hearing Obama bitch about the Bush Administration. Move on, sir. You’re almost done your first year. Bush is back in Texas, snorting coke off of a hooker’s gazongas for all we know. He’s not in charge anymore. You are.

8:32: Obama’s laying on the magic, and these Cadets and soldiers and people not in uniforms are looking like they’re at a really, really boring Econ 101 class.

8:33: He said something that made them clap. I missed it. Lily had something else in her mouth.

8:34: Oh man, he pulled out asunder. You’re on primetime TV, Mr. President. Tone down the two-dollar words. People have two choices tonight at 8pm: you, and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause on ABC Family. Don’t make them switch.

8:35: “As one nation. As one people.” He sounds like Matisyahu. That’s not a bad thing. But I’d suggest keeping with the shaven face. Fox News would go even more than their regularly scheduled bonkers if he grew a beard. Just imagine that.

8:36: Speech over. I see someone who doesn’t have a camera in their hands. No, wait, they’re taking it out. NOW this is a well documented event.

8:37: Olbermann is asking Maddow about the speech. I wonder if Chuck Norris is on Fox. Lily gives me her milk and I put it next to me.

8:37:15: Lily cuts off Chris Matthews, screaming for her milk while shoving a box of Reduced Fat Wheat Thins in my face. Time for her to go to bed. Time for me to turn the TV off.

9:10: Begin watching “The Man With The Golden Gun” from the DVR.