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Stumpage Reports
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Monday, December 30, 2002 :::
At Home With the Advocate of the Southern Slave Power Conspiracy
On Sunday I returned to Charlotte from a trip to Charleston with the Lady I Can't Think of A Nickname For. We were able to visit the homesite of Charles Pinckney, known to regular readers as The Advocate of the Southern Slave Power Conspiracy. As I've said here before, I am not into crucifying these slave-owners based on our 21st century values, but lets have a little truth here. None of the interpretive material at the sight mentioned his defense of slavery at the constitutional convention nor his threats that South Carolina would leave the union of 13 states if some of their demands on slavery were not met. There was a lot of material on the other important things he was responsible for at the convention. It was a nice site, as National Park sites usually are, but it really didn't give a complete picture of a complex and interesting guy.
On a similiar note, I noticed they are a lot more obnoxious about the Civil War in South Carolina than other places in the south. We visited Christ Church, an old 18th century church down the road from Pinckney's homesite, and the plaque next to the door proclaimed that the church was "wantonly burned by negro yankee troops in 1865."
Trip also included a visit to Drayton Hall, an 18th century plantation home that has not been modernized at all and had very little restoration work done to it. Supposedly one of the purest 18th century buildings in the country. Also a drive around Sullivan's Island looking at the christmas lights, lots of good food, good company, and caught up on summer movies I missed: Spiderman, Attack of the Clones, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Now its back in Charlotte, lunch with Bookpimp and Big Ed, and tonight coffee with weird friends.
Life is good.
Quote of the Day: (blogging at a friend's house and there is a copy of Moby Dick six inches away, how nice.)
I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction the two orchard thieves entailed upon us.
-- Herman Melville, Moby Dick
::: posted by tom at 10:24 PM
Thursday, December 26, 2002 :::
A New Book to Read!: or, Satan's Minions of Colonial South Carolina
I have been a fan of Robert McCammon since the mid 1980's. He is definitely one of the better writers to emerge in the wake of Stephen King's popularization of the horror genre. In McCammon's last few books, such as Gone South, Boy's Life, and Mine, it was obvious he was moving beyond writing horror. He published his last book in 1992 and everybody's been wondering where he has been. When I worked at the library, I was "the guy who read horror novels," and staff members would direct McCammon-jonesing patrons to me. His web site explains his absence and unfortunately, he wrote this new book in 1999 and has since retired.
The new one is Speaks the Nightbird. It is set in South Carolina in 1699 and involves accusations of witchcraft and other skullduggery. I am only 159 pages into the 700+ page book but it looks good. The author has done his research (part of the reason it took so long to write the book) and he does a good job of conveying the language of the 17th century, but you don't feel like you are wading through Pilgrim's Progress or Robinson Crusoe. The author characterizes the people in the book through their action and their thoughts, not through direct description of them. Its something subtle I've noticed that authors do not always do. He gives a great sense of the filth and disease these people lived with, even the rich folks with their George Washington clothes on. Also the sense of this small outpost of civilization, perched on the edge of a forest the size of a continent. A forest these folks believed was filled with savage indians and satan's minions.
I am enjoying ever word of Speaks the Nightbird . I'm usually sad for a minute when a good book ends, but I'll mourn more than usual when this one is over, since there may not be anything else from McCammon.
Some of his earlier books were fun twists on the horror genre. For example, Wolf's Hour, always a guilty pleasure of mine, is about a werewolf who is a secret agent who fights Nazis in World War II, sounds silly but it works. In his next-to-latest book, Gone South, we mature into the sophistication of characters like a siamese twin bounty hunter and his Elvis impersonater sidekick on an allegorical journey into the heart of darkness of the Louisiana bayous.
I am off to Charleston, SC for a few days with the Lady I Can't Think of a Nickname For. Hopefully we will have time to visit the home of Charles Pinckney. Regular readers of Stumpage Reports know of him as The Advocate of the Southern Slave Power Conspiracy.
P.S. I saw Gangs of New York last night. Scorsese, the best living American film director, retains the crown. A great, sprawling, sometimes messy, vision. Daniel Day Lewis and Scorsese both deserve Oscars, but we all know the Oscars lost any credibility years ago, if they had any to begin with.
::: posted by tom at 11:49 AM
Monday, December 23, 2002 :::
Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell, or: Tales of My Misspent Youth: Part 1
When I was in high school, a large part of mine and my friends� identity and leisure time was tied up in music. As brats of the late �70s, we went through our obligatory StyxKansasReoSpeedwagon phase. Later, we got into 60�s music. Then in 1978, our token British stoner friend brought home a copy of the Sex Pistol�s first album. Artists like Devo and Elvis Costello were appearing on Saturday Night Live. The television show Fridays brought us the Talking Heads and The Clash. My best friend Scott discovered his older brother�s MC5 albums. We got strange looks when we brought our boom box to the illegal drug supermarket courtyard outside school. But reigning above them all was the Godfather of Punk: Iggy Pop.
In late 1979 or early 1980, three of my friends and I journeyed to the Motor City Roller Rink at Nine Mile Road and Van Dyke Avenue in Warren, Michigan to see Iggy Pop. In those days, �getting ready� for the concert and making sure you had all of your �supplies� was 80% of the concert-going experience. We cut our last couple classes that day and started getting ready for the concert about noon. After four or five hours of getting ready, four snot-nosed, white, suburban, 16 or 17 year olds ventured into the nether regions of the motor city to skate on the razor edge of the burgeoning punk rock movement.
In this part of the world, at this time, you did not see people with mohawks and safety pins in their noses. But you saw them at the Motor City Roller Rink that night. We were easily the youngest people there, looking goggle-eyed at the parade of humanity and trying hard not to look like the rubes we were. I remember a guy with a pink jumpsuit and green hair posing against the building with his friend taking pictures. We shuddered at the exotic thrill of it all and fearfully wondered if those guys �might be gay.� Ambulances and other sirened vehicles were whipping by. After so much getting ready for the concert, I kept falling asleep on a stranger�s shoulder. Sharing a few sticks of mary jane revived me and placated the stranger.
The doors finally opened, we went into the venue, a roller rink with a temporary stage set up at one end. We hustled right up to the edge of the stage and gaped at the strangers we discovered copulating beneath it. The opening band was Coldcock, and they sounded about as good as you might imagine.
Iggy finally hit the stage, clad in blue jeans and a white dress shirt. He immediately hurled insults at the audience, left the stage, and the houselights came up. He returned a few minutes later, minus his shirt and already sweat-soaked. He was met by a barrage of popcorn, which stuck to his sweaty torso, an image seared in my mind. The band tore into �Search and Destroy,� we almost wet ourselves, and my whole idea of live music changed forever. We went to a lot of concerts after this, but nothing ever measured up to an Iggy show. A year or two later we left a Springsteen show early, we were going to see Iggy the next night, who needed anything else?
P.S. Just as I finished this post I learned that the Clash's Joe Strummer has died. I'm going to play their debut album The Clash really loud tonight.
::: posted by tom at 7:29 PM
Saturday, December 21, 2002 :::
Party, Party: or, The Hinterland, The Hinterland
Two days in the Queen City, two Christmas parties, which is two more parties than I've been to in a long time.
I hit the ground running when I got to The Person I Can't Think of Nickname For's condo about two hours before the party. I had been warned. I was handed a vaccum cleaner, a roll of paper towels and a bottle of 409. I can craft a footnote that cites a reprint of a multi-volume source with mulitple editors and two different places of publication, but that does not mean a damn thing when you are trying to hang curtains. The party was fine, kind of small and I got to see a bunch of folks I see about once a year, at this Christmas party. Several helpings of pumpkin soup, honey-baked ham, and cold bean salad later I was one happy refugee.
The party the next night was a big-ass potluck with tons of people and church lady food. I was able to say hello to whole swath of people I don't see very often any more. After that eggnog lattes, and a long cruise with Can't Think of a Nickname Lady looking at Christmas lights accompanied by The Ventures Christmas Album. That album has been my favorite Christmas album for several years. Before the internet it was pretty hard to find. Anyone that can combine "I Feel Fine" with "Rudolph," and morph the opening riff of "Wooly Bully" into "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" comes close to musical genius in my book.
Top it all off with saturday morning bagels and lox with Koko the Jewish Librarian and its a near perfect couple of days. I did not look at a television, see a newspaper or sit in front of a computer for two days. I was a little (hah) stressed out about the trip beforehand, but it ended up being the two of the most relaxing days I've had since last semester started.
I got my grades and did quite well, thank you.
Quote of the Day:
I can't come up with anything, fuck it, here's an old standard:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson
::: posted by tom at 10:47 PM
Wednesday, December 18, 2002 :::
Santa Has Arrived: or, There's Always One Idiot
A phenomena I've noticed. Everywhere I work there is always one idiot that wears a Santa hat around Christmas time. I had my first sighting today at the NCSU library. This lady even had reindeer antlers on with the Santa hat. Look around your workplace today or next week, you'll see an idiot with a Santa hat and think of me. If you are the person wearing the Santa hat, then Big Ed would say:
You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel
To be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible"
As he hands you a bone
Quotes of the Day:
"I've been on the phone today with all kinds of bastards representing many different agencies."
-- The Pennyslvania Jew, dealing with insurance companies and storm damage.
"Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!" -- William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act IV, Scene vi, Line 192.
::: posted by tom at 12:19 PM
Tuesday, December 17, 2002 :::
Out Of The Cave and Over to Chapel Hill: or, Chavez Stirs
As my four regular readers have figured out, my life consists of school, work, and coffee with weird friends. So today was a little of an adventure, I drove over to Chapel Hill. For some reason, that place gives me the creeps. I always have trouble parking. I can park with aplomb in downtown Charlotte, Raleigh, and around NCSU, but whenever I got to Chapel Hill I always end up in the same overpriced municipal parking lot.
I made the drive OK, usual madness on I-40. I had planned ahead, found a visitors parking lot right across from where I wanted to go. But of course, that lot was temporarily permit only because of construction. I finally reached my destinations: Wilson Library and Davis Library. Most other people I go to school with have been to both places and seem to know all about them, but it was my first trip. At Davis Library I had to photocopy something real quick from The Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, a journal sadly lacking at the NCSU library. Then over to Wilson Library and the storied Southern Historical Collection. I was pretty frustrated by the time I got there due to the parking and the lack of photocopy facilities at Davis Library for those of us lacking a UNC copycard. I had checked out their rules and regs on the internet before going, and they looked a little picky so I was loaded for bear as I walked in the building. I was pleasantly surprised, they were not nearly as arrogant as their website suggested. I only have experience at two other archives, these folks struck a nice balance though, they made you fill out enough forms to make you feel like you were doing something special but not so many it made it more trouble than its worth.
So I spent a happy three hours reading annual reports of the Tungsten Mining Corporation and the monthly report for their chemical plant. More easy money for me. It was a pleasant experience, a great old domed Carnegie library-type building, marble floors, wood tables and only me. Now that I know where the place is, I look forward to going there after Christmas and reading little old ladies' mail from the 1910's about unveiling Confederate Monuments. That is gonna be fun.
I have to say, the students over at Chapel Hill dress a lot better than the State students.
Quote of the Day:
"Dreams age faster than dreamers, that is a fact of life. Yet the last ones often die surprisingly hard, screaming in low, miserable voices at the back of the brain." -- Stephen King, Dreamcatcher.
::: posted by tom at 11:06 PM
Monday, December 16, 2002 :::
I'm Done With School: or, Stop Picking on Jefferson Davis
I finished up with school today, handed in the last paper about 10:45 AM today. I feel like I am entitled to not do shit for the next couple weeks. However, I still have this part time job I have to show up at and have to go to Chapel Hill tomorrow to do some more mining research. Then a quick trip to the Queen City on Thursday and Friday for a couple holiday parties and back here for the weekend. This weekend will be sleeping, watching TV, and most exciting to me, doing research on Confederate monuments in North Carolina, thats what I really like doing for fun (seriously).
I've been following the Trent "Make 'em sit in the back of the bus" Lott fiasco. One of his quotes they've dredged up, in 1984 he said "the spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican Platform." This thing has been quoted to death. Ol' Jeff Davis has been mentioned more times on television in the last week than he has in the last five years. I enjoy it in a peverse way, lots of good old southern history stirring up, the Civil War is still with us. Davis has been getting slammed a bit with all this. From our twentieth century viewpoints those guys all look like whackos, but they didn't have our twentieth century viewpoints. Perhaps in 100 years when the ozone layer is gone people will have a hard time believing we could drive cars in the same way we wonder how people could justify slavery. I smell an essay for Michaelcosm coming on.
In that spirit, here's a few Quotes of the Day:
"Fugitive slaves in flight for more than a month will have their ears severed and marked with a Fluer-de-Lys branded on their shoulder. For absences of another month, he will have his hamstring severed, and branded on the other shoulder. On the third time he will be punished with death." -- Code Noir, Louisiana, 1685.
"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the must unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other." -- Thomas Jefferson.
"In short, North Carolina is now a white man's state and white men intend to govern it hereafter." -- The Charlotte Democrat, on the victory of the Democratic candidate for governor in 1876.
"Why has the South become so toadyish and sycophantic? I think it is because the best and noblest were killed off during the war and that the scum element is now in ascendancy." -- D.H. Hill, former Confederate general
::: posted by tom at 11:12 PM
Friday, December 13, 2002 :::
You know you're really a reader when...
This morning after I took an exam, I schlepped across the courtyard at school in the cold rain to get a biscuit at the snack bar before I caught the bus for home. I had nothing to read with me, and nothing was available in the snack bar. So I walked an extra half a block and back in the rain to grab a copy of the local weekly alternative rag to read while I enjoyed a late breakfast. They were all out of that newspaper, so I grabbed a copy of The Nubian Message. Only a truly dedicated reader would walk in the rain rather than eat without something to read, and then me, whitest of the white boys, grab a black folk's newspaper to read. When I'm stuck waiting in a car I'll read the owner's manual in the glove compartment.
I'm getting too old for this...
Like I mentioned above, I took a final exam today. I showed up at class at about 7:50 AM and spent the next hour and 45 minutes filling up one blue book with my answers. By the time I was done, my back hurt, my neck hurt, my hand hurt, and I just wanted to go home and crawl back in bed. When I was an undergrad, I would fill up 10 - 12 full size pages with writing, walk out of there feeling on top of the world, and then go drink my face off for five hours. No more.
::: posted by tom at 2:37 PM
Wednesday, December 11, 2002 :::
The font of creativity seems to have dried up. Just finishing papers and preparing for a final, I have less of a life than usual.
I wonder who got to my site through typing the words "gluteal crack" into the aol search engine.
In lieu of me actually having anything to say, an extended Quote of the Day. It may be a bit more than you all want to wade through and might be a tad self-indulgent. Hell, this whole blog thing is kind of self-indulgent. This is author David M. Potter describing the debates that led to the Compromise of 1850. The book is called The Impending Crisis, and I wish I could write like this. Actually, I wish anybody could write like this...
The story of these deliberations, and of the great debate which ran through them, has become one of the classic and inevitable set pieces in American historical writing. The gravity of the crisis, the uncertainty as to the outcome, and the brilliant effects of oratory in the grand manner all combined to create scenes of stunning dramatic effect. The stage was the Old Senate Chamber. The theme was a heroic one -- the preservation of the Union...Here, for the last time together, appeared a truimvirate of old men, relics of a golden age, who still towered like giants above the creatures of a later time: Webster, the kind of senator that Richard Wagner might have created at the height of his powers; Calhoun, the most majestic champion of error since Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost; and Clay, the old Conciliator, who had already saved the Union twice and now came out of retirement to save it with his silver voice and his master touch once again before he died...Calhoun stood visibly in the shadow of death and spoke audibly in a voice from beyond the grave; they would bury him before they voted. The Jove-like Webster never seemed greater than when he launched into his classic speech of the seventh of March: "Mr. President, I wish to speak today not as a Massachusetts man, not as a Northern man, but as an American...I speak today for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause."
::: posted by tom at 9:03 PM
Tuesday, December 10, 2002 :::
A Day in the Life of a Grad Student: or My God, He Sure is Desperate For Material
8:00 AM Roll out of bed and start the coffee. Turn on the TV to see what Paula Zahn is wearing and to make sure George Bush isn't planning to blow up the world today.
8:15 to 10:00 AM Coffee, cigarettes, checking other folks blogs, reading Charlotte and Raleigh papers on the internet. I get curious exactly what Trent Lott said at a party for Strom "Don't Pass an Anti-Lynching Law" Thurmond that pissed so many people off. After checking both NC papers and the Washington Post, I finally found it in the Columbia, SC newspaper. I'm too lazy right now to link to all that, find your own racist republican remarks. I also read some pages from a mindless techno-thriller.
10:00 to 10:15 AM Brunch: toasted cheese sandwiches (2), a bowl o'honeydew melon balls, and the crumbs from the bottom of a bag of nacho chips.
11:00 AM to 2:30 PM Down at the State Archives, doing a little side research job some lawyers in Colorado are paying me for. Looking through such exciting government records as the Mine & Quarry Division: Annual Production Reports, 1956-1973 and N.C. Geological Survery: Quarterly Reports, 1949-1973. Pretty boring stuff but some of the easiest money I ever made since I stopped selling drugs. While waiting for lackeys to fetch the materials and make copies for me, I thumb through some different guides to the Colonial Records at the Archives. I was checking to see if they had original copies of some stuff I was going to have to quote secondhand in a paper for Colonial History class, no luck, but I love looking through stuff like that.
2:45 to 3:30 PM Stop at haircut place but the wait is 45 minutes, fuck it. I hate getting my haircut anyway. Off to the public library to print off a copy of a big ass project due tomorrow. At the library I see She Who Shall Not Be Named and catch up with her. I also run into University of Virginia Debutante Girl from school and catch up with her and trade a few Doc Smith stories.
3:45 to 4:00 PM On the phone with the N.C. Division of Mineral Resources, doing research for above job.
4:00 to 10:00 PM I get within one paragraph of finishing a five-paper due tomorrow and tweak the endnotes on my big ass project due tomorrow. Very painstaking and head and teeth ache inducing. All interrupted by a few cigarettes and some surfing.
Now: Blogging while some soup bubbles on the stove. I'm gonna get off this damn computer and read a mindless paperback techno-thriller until John Stewart comes on at 11:00 PM.
If I do posts like this one often I am in big trouble.
::: posted by tom at 10:11 PM
Monday, December 09, 2002 :::
I haven't posted for a few days and there are a few things running around in my brain that might be worth discussing here: the advantages of public transportation and finding web log material thereon with the related subject of diversity adding richness to our society. Or some random thoughts on the ice storm of '02, but instead, I bring you...
Hey, Your Ass Crack is Showing!, or Graduate School: Guts, Glory, and Gangrene
I was down on campus today, looking a few things up at the library and meeting with a professor. I was eating my lunch and noticed a young lady with very low-riding pants that very obviously exposed her ass crack when she sat down. Since I was eating, I didn't really feel like looking at anybody's ass crack, and don't know if I really would've eyed hers in any case. The fun part was watching her frantic attempts to cover up. She repeatedly tried to hike her pants up, but no go. She had on some kind of spaghetti strap top on underneath a sleeveless tank top kinda thing. She then tried to pull tank top down over the offending chasm but the shirt simply popped back up. My eyes wandered to an overhead television showing a rap video and didn't get much of a different view there. I returned to wardrobe-struggling-girl and saw she had pulled down the back of her underneath spaghetti-strap top thing in a final lame attempt. It did not work, and the fact that it was red and sticking out from under her top only added to the obviousness of her gluteal distress. I sighed, wished for the presence of an obnoxious, male, friend, to share this with, and hoped I could do this little scene justice on my web log.
Reading:
I have been trying to track down one final annotation for this big editing project I'm doing for one class. It had to do with identifying a specific disease this guy had, and I could find no authoritative reference to it. I finally struck gold in Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care During the American Civil War by Frank R. Freemon. There is a chapter in the book called "Maggots and Minie Balls."
::: posted by tom at 4:13 PM
Friday, December 06, 2002 :::
A Neo-Anarchist Post-Conservative Southern Dixiecrat Melange of Disaffected Labor Union Members
Blogging in public at the school library. Some of my three readers in Charlotte may have a tree through their roof so I won't whine about not having any cable.
I was reading about Reconstruction in preparation for my final exam, and ran across the following phrase and my brain completely locked up:
"The pro-Johnson, ex-Whig, antisecessionist but pro-Confederate Unionists who dominated...."
That might explain title of this entry and it definitely explains why I had to get the hell out of the house and come down here to the library.
::: posted by tom at 5:56 PM
Wednesday, December 04, 2002 :::
The Man in Black is Following Me
Its been a Johnny Cash couple of weeks. About two weeks ago I popped the CD Murder from the God, Love, and Murder Johnny Cash retrospective in my CD player in my car and listened to that for a few days. Then I saw an ad for a Johnny Cash interview on the Larry King show and watched that. Then Billy mentioned Cash on his website. Big Ed did a Johnny Cash blog entry. The day before yesterday my mother called and said, "We got a bunch of Johnny Cash CD's in the mail at our house, did you order them?" I didn't, it was probably my brother, hopefully he was in the role of Santa Claus when he ordered them. To wrap it up, a couple quotes from the Larry King interview:
KING: Why do we like it (country music)?
CASH: Well, I don't know why we like some of it.
and...
KING: Do you have a favorite?
CASH: I do, I have a favorite. My favorite female artist is Emmylou Harris.
Neatest Thing I've Seen on TV in Awhile and I Wished I Had a Videotape Ready:
While flipping through the Comedy Channel at 2 AM one morning, I caught an old episode of Fernwood Tonight. Martin Mull and Fred Willard were interviewing Tom Waits. Waits looked a lot younger and was smoking and drinking from what looked like a bottle of scotch. He bummed $20 off of Fred Willard.
Johnny Cash and Tom Waits, think of the duet possibilities. I just typed "Johnny Cash and Tom Waits" into Google in case anybody tells me, "Hey, you moron, don't you know about their famous duet, blah blah..." I didn't find any evidence of a duet, but lots of quotes of people trying to describe vocal styles by using these two geniuses as barometers:
His vocals smack of Johnny Cash and Tom Waits.
...sounds like a cross between 'The End' by the Doors and a gothic Beach Boys fronted by a drunken hybrid of Johnny Cash and Tom Waits.
...but a closer listen also reveals echoes of Johnny Cash and Tom Waits.
The eerie opening cut, is what a collaboration of Johnny Cash and Tom Waits might sound like.
Like Johnny Cash and Tom Waits, he approaches religious themes not from moralizing stances of good and evil...
Imagine Johnny Cash and Tom Waits had a child together, and that child grew up listening to The Stooges and Joy Division.
Few can do stark, melancholic, wrenched-from-the-gut, sad songs from the heartland, and their names are Johnny Cash and Tom Waits.
This entry ended up being a lot longer than I planned, I didn't even try and seach "Tom Waits and Johnny Cash."
::: posted by tom at 6:13 PM
Monday, December 02, 2002 :::
We Don't Need No Steenkin' Power Point
I gave my presentation in my Civil War class today. It was on a battle. I roughed out an outline last night, walked up to the front of the class, sketched a quick map on the chalkboard, gave my spiel, answered a few questions and sat down. Fine. No problem, I don't mind speaking in front of crowds. One of the few things I'm not scared of.
The lady after me did her presentation on "Women on the Home Front in the South." Once at the front of the class, she announced, "I'm going to let someone else talk during my presentation." She then ducked down behind the lectern and came up with an old-timey dress on and said something like, "Hi, I'm Susan and live in Virginia and my husband joined the army in 1861, blah..blah..." It was pretty gay, but she is a girl. She's one of those education majors, she probably learned that in class. Damn education majors upstaging us over-the-hill Public History students.
Funny thing is, most days I show up to this 8 AM class looking like a Confederate soldier on his last leg. But since I was gonna be in front of the class I made a special effort to shave and wear some clothes with no holes or major stains. I like school.
Quote of the Day:
If men were not afraid to die it would simplify matters very much. They are afraid & fear makes them run. ---
Oliver O. Howard, union general.
::: posted by tom at 10:51 PM
Sunday, December 01, 2002 :::
The Joy of Writing: or Raw, Bleeding Nerve Endings in My Mouth
An online conversation with Bookpimp last night caused me to painfully reflect on my writing habits these last eighteen months. I love to write, there are few things I would rather do. If I could find someone to actually pay me to do it, it would be like having a license to steal. In the past when I was particularly excited about something I just wrote, I might hop up, light a cigarette and pace happily back and forth.
My current living conditions do not permit indoor smoking, so my current writing habits usually take this form. The bulk of the writing I do these days are 15 - 25 page papers for class. I usually actually start writing them about 2 - 3 weeks before they are due. It can be difficult at this point, with sometimes an hour or two of effort resulting in only a couple paragraphs. But usually, 2 or 3 days before deadline, I will hit on a magical zone. This zone is probably produced by a combination of deadline pressure and hopefully a better grasp on what I'm trying to say and how to say it. This has happened twice I can recall this semester, both times writing about Civil War battles, slinging adjectives (sparingly), flipping back and forth between secondary sources and the The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, I find several hours have passed and I've produced 3 - 5 pages of prose I'm pretty damn proud of.
I noticed the following phenomona once before and attributed it to stress. But talking with Bookpimp last night, right after a productive writing binge, I realized this is price I pay for my art. Apparently I grit my teeth when the writing is going really well and as I was chatting last night my jaws and the sides of my head were screaming. I could still feel the after effects this morning. If I ever write a book or an article for a scholarly journal you guys will know it when you see me because my mouth will have no teeth and only raw nerve endings poking out of my gums. If I cut my ear off and send it to an editor, I hope my friends stage an intervention.
Quote of the Day:
"the flower of southern manhood being reduced to atoms of bleeding flesh by the hot yankee lead" --
Me, slinging some bullshit at Bookpimp last night as an example of what I was writing. I'd never put something like that in a paper, but Pimp was really impressed and said "You gotta put that in your blog!" This is the only place I could think of to work it in.
::: posted by tom at 7:58 PM
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