arrBlogEntry[124] = new Array('2006.06.02', 'L and I going on a much needed mini-vacation to Texel, an island Northwest of Amsterdam, where we will eat seawolf and walk the dunes and, for the first time, rent (and successfully ride) a tandem bike.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[125] = new Array('2006.06.07', 'I wish I could remember all the fascinating things that make the Dutch subtly different than other cultures. I try to write these things down, without judgment. Like: you ask when you have to make your dinner reservation, and the woman says 5:00. And then you get back around five and you say you want to make a reservation and the woman tells you that there are no more tables. What\'s going on? Well, we only asked when we needed to make our reservation, but we didn\'t ask if there were any tables left.
We had a great time in Texel. A long sauna, a great bike ride on the tandem, and a wonderful Harley Davidson rider with his pride and joy dog airbrushed on the side. Enjoy the pix!', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[126] = new Array('2006.06.17', 'I am shocked that it has been 10 days since I last wrote. I am very bad. As bad as a combover. As bad as hippie hair, frizzy, parted in the middle.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[127] = new Array('2006.06.18', 'This article, written by Steve Almond, crystallizes the feeling I have about the new wave of what I will call popular American literary fiction. Writers in this group, although, of course, they would not see themselves as a cohesive unit, include Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer, and, to a lesser extent, Jonathan Franzen. Almond argues (this particular essay reviews JSF\'s new Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (nb: I haven\'t read it) that these writers are swapping out stylistic brilliance and wicked humor for emotional depth. What\'s worse, he argues (I, somewhat abashedly, agree with his argument, though it is hopelessly elitist) the American reading public tends to confuse the two.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[128] = new Array('2006.06.19', 'For those of you who don\'t know about my radical college days, the anarchist cooperative in Berkeley where I lived, Barrington Hall, now has its own Wiki entry:', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[129] = new Array('2006.06.19', 'There\'s a shortage of police dogs in the UK, so they have to import them from The Netherlands. This article details some of the troubles with language the UK cops have in talking to their new charges...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[130] = new Array('2006.06.21', 'I didn\'t think I\'d be able to attend the Tin House writing workshops in Portland next month, so I\'m doubly excited that I now have a confirmed place there. Writers at the workshop include Michael Ondaatje, Lorrie Moore, and Dorothy Allison. I\'m especially happy to be working with Antonya Nelson, whose work I have been lately admiring. This introductory essay written by Antonya sheds some new light on the differences between the short story and the novel, and why, marketing issues aside, most people tend towards the novel.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[131] = new Array('2006.07.19', 'Just got back from a killer, short trip to the US (family and writing conference), will start posting retroactively. Heat wave in Amsterdam, all the windows open, the cat (Goblin) leashed to the balcony so he doesn\'t jump.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[132] = new Array('2006.08.12', '

Okay, so I left for the US at the start of July. I think my parents are probably tiring of me using them to work through my jetlag issues. Nonetheless, I am getting along with them swell, and the beauty of jetlag in Los Angeles is that all the best shows are on at 3 in the morning: Buffy, Angel, Charmed, and so forth. Or classics: The Bridge over the River Kwai and stuff like that. And I needed it because the trip, via Detroit, took 23 hours door to door, and Detroit has these huge tv screens everywhere with CNN in total panic mode, not so nice to have some terrorist paranoia on a 40 ft high screen as you\'re waiting for your flight, and all the restaurants serve gorgeous looking hamburgers, but no veggie burgers, and you\'re left with Mozzarella fingers in some kind of red Italianesque sauce and a chocolate shake so think it won\'t slurp up through the straw. And you\'re phone is broken so you can\'t tell your ride what time you\'re arriving. Isn\'t second person annoying?

One highlight of the Los Angeles wing of the trip was going with mom and dad to a baseball game on July 4. What this means is nationalism upon nationalism; baseball at night with a fireworks display afterwards. And Mom, perhaps projecting??? asks me politely not to do anything stupid. What constitutes stupid? Not standing up for the National Anthem, singing the wrong words, booing the flag, making Satan hand-signs. She\'s already worried about what will happen to her brand-new Prius, it being indelibly marked as a BLUE car.

In the twenty years since I last was at a baseball game, not much has changed except there are more and more expensive food options (Margaritas!!!), a bit more security, a lot more advertisements that flip on and off between innings, the real organ has been replaced by a synthesized version, all the old baseball songs have karaoke accompaniments, and the seats are more plush so your butt doesn\'t hurt. Okay, the last part is definitely not true.

Right before the game, after the National Anthem, which went by without event, it is announced that it is time for the official Dodgers flyover. What does this mean? It means that this Gigantic military cargo plane comes deafeningly right over the stadium, so low I thought it was going to drop a bomb on us or send out parachutists or maybe just sell stocks on E-trade. It is so loud, definitely shock and awe, very physically uncomfortable, the engine at some kind of rumble frequency that makes your bones rattle. What\'s weird, of course, is that people love it, they\'re giving it a standing O, whooping it along until it banks the wing and flies over to Anaheim stadium for another flyover.

I have bought a sandwich from the supermarket, because I won\'t eat the Dodger dogs anymore. The advertisement says Dodger Dogs are the most famous in the world, but I\'m not sure.

Meanwhile Mom is cheering for her players and telling their batting averages and awwing and oohing and that was NOT a strike!!! yelling to the umpires who of course are like 5000 feet away and can\'t hear her. Mom has followed the Dodgers since she was a child in Brooklyn (Breukelen) in the 50\'s and then Sandy Koufax (Jew!) and the Dodgers moved to LA and won the world series.

It\'s a good day: the Dodgers win big: something like 11-3. Well, this is a special event. Why? Because when the Dodgers score 10 runs and win, then everyone in the crowd gets 10 free chicken wings at Hooters. You might wonder what Hooters is. Hooters is a restaurant chain where all the waitresses are wearing really short shorts and really short tops and have really big...that. Nominally Hooters refers to an owl, but even the owl is looking at the women. Hooters is somehow euphemistic for breasts, although I\'ve never derived the linguistics of it. I\'ve never tried. In any case, we have 48 hours to go to any Southland Hooters for our free chicken wings. We simply have to present our ticket stub.

Okay, so then the game is over and I have to say the fireworks are very cool, very synchronized, bright and shiny and dramatic. The accompanying music is typical, pop songs that have the word America in them, Proud To Be An American, American Girl, some John Cougar song, Born in the USA, and so forth. Earplugs are fast becoming indispensable to my world. And I don\'t get beaten up or killed or anything. I consider that a great success.

', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[133] = new Array('2006.08.13', 'A few links of interest:
', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[134] = new Array('2006.08.14', 'Graffitti on the bathroom wall at Reed College, July 15:

Handwashing Prevents Infection

with parts of the words crossed out becomes:

Brainwashing Prevents Insurrection', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[135] = new Array('2006.08.15', 'Sometimes, you just have no idea what people will like or dislike. Earlier this year, I sent Triplopia five poems, of which they accepted three. I was very happy, and spent a small bit of time wondering why they accepted the three they did accept. But now, in a piece of good news, they have nominated one of the poems (Extrapolating A Corpse) to the (Sundress \"Best of the Net\") online anthology. This is also very, very good, but to me, it is the weakest of the poems, or maybe I\'m just emotionally closest to it, but it goes to show you that you can never tell what will hit a nerve with other people, and you just have to keep putting stuff into the world...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[136] = new Array('2006.08.16', 'Jonathan Franzen will be at the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam on Sept 28 to promote his new memoir, which got me to thinking: okay, so you write a piece of fiction, as Franzen did, that is highly auto-biographical, and THEN you write a non-fiction memoir about the thing that you already fictionalized? As if you are slowly drawing closer and closer to the thing that haunts you...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[137] = new Array('2006.08.18', 'I have to give a special shout to Ron Hansen\'s Mariette in Ecstasy. This is one brilliant, beautiful, poetic novel, you should all go out and buy it today. I\'d also like to give props to Aimee Bender\'s The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. Her short stories contain a kind of surreal, delicate, but ultimately human humor about our lives and losses. I\'m not putting up Amazon links, support your local bookseller!', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[138] = new Array('2006.08.19', 'After a lot of grief given to me by my web developer colleagues, the home page, at least, is compliant (and validated!) with XHTML 1.0 strict guidelines. Sorry to those of you using IE on PCs with high resolution who still may have some areas that aren\'t perfectly aligned...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[139] = new Array('2006.08.21', 'Warning! Something dirty to follow!

I was looking at a bookshelf and I saw the spines of The Multi-Orgasmic Couple and The Anatomy Coloring Book right next to each other. It was early in the morning, so by accident I read the single book title as The Multi-Orgasmic Coloring Book. I think it\'s contents might be interesting...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[140] = new Array('2006.08.23', 'It\'s not often that literature and tennis come together, but this long article by David Foster Wallace on the beauty of Roger Federer is just too much...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[141] = new Array('2006.08.24', 'Why I love Berlin...

Caption says: \"Even heroes have bad days...\"', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[142] = new Array('2006.08.29', 'Home from Budapest, will put up pix soon...
I haven\'t read any Dennis Cooper in a while, and I had forgotten how amazing a writer he is. Now, those of you who have read his work know that he is notoriously difficult to read, drugs and sex and guts, very direct, who Michael Cunningham calls perhaps \'the next Genet\', and it is really gorgeous stuff. I\'m reading My Loose Thread now.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[143] = new Array('2006.09.02', 'Are all those prodigies geniuses, or have they just worked real hard? Scientific American wants to know...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[144] = new Array('2006.09.05', 'On the heels of my previous entry about Japanese theme parks, this article describes a similar phenomena in China. But there\'s a twist: the German entry is built by none other than Albert Speer, the son of Albert Speer, Nazi minister of armaments and someone I have studied a lot...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[145] = new Array('2006.09.07', 'This best article ever details a researcher\'s published findings on \"The Biology of B-Movie Monsters\", including hard evidence disproving the biology of my current fave, Them!, E.T., and King Kong.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[146] = new Array('2006.09.08', '\"I hate books, darling, they give me the itchy eyes\"---Edina, Absolutely Fabulous
\"Een Hollandse roman is zoals een lusteloos coitus\"---seen in the Bijenkorf book section...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[147] = new Array('2006.09.09', 'Microsoft is attempting to patent the conjugation of verbs...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[148] = new Array('2006.09.10', 'Just wondering: if liquids are not allowed on airplanes and we are 80 percent water, are we by definition terrorists?', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[149] = new Array('2006.09.15', 'Budapest is almost three weeks past now, and I haven\'t really talked about it. I give it a big thumbs up. We stayed at the house of our host Oerzse, who treated us grandly, picking out cheese stuffed peppers and bringing us to both the greatest restaurants (Nancsi Neni), the coolest Jewish delis, and, at three in the morning, the most giant supermarket I have ever been to in my life. We went to what I thought would be the lucky adventure of my life, a Nick Cave concert, but it was only Nick Cave Karaoke night. We saw what we\'re now calling Vegas Judaism, all these cantors doing the religious version of, well, Karaoke night. We relaxed in a East European public pool, saw American expats picking up Hungarian women at trendy, trendy bars, and had a fab time. Budapest is beautiful, modern, and, well, Hungarian, still itself. Added on to this, when we were wandering in a new hotel, a lovely woman named Juhi decided to give us an architecture tour which was simply dazzling. If I could pick a city in which to get fat, it would be Budapest!', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[150] = new Array('2006.09.16', 'And then Berlin last weekend for the wordsinhere reading. So much fun. There are few things I love more than going for a row boat ride with my god-daughter and her family; I feel very lucky to have family in so many places.
There was a bit of worlds-colliding this weekend, as the editors of wordsinhere came with me, and I felt personally responsible for showing them a good time. Luckily, I had help from Y- and A-, the most wondrous hosts ever.
The reading was, well, curious. I think we did fabulously, in the Trodel (umlaut missing), a funky bar in Kreuzberg. The organization was a little less than stellar, however, and a 9:00 start became a 10:15 start, and the evening pulled on until 2, the very unhappy band going on at 1:30, their second and final tune not much more than brilliant noise. It reminds me of the Boredoms concert I went to in SF where the lead singer pulled out an air horn that was so loud, everyone had to leave Bimbo\'s, and then, when everyone had left, did they start playing again.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[151] = new Array('2006.09.18', 'Most people seem to have a clear predisposition against the confessional in the blog space. It reads by turns as sappy or impersonal, simply by virtue of its virtual-ness. At the same time, it\'s difficult to be absolutely honest, given that you have no control over who reads what. Most people who know me know that it has been a best of times/worst of times kind of year, with the wonderful and the extremely frustrating in close connection. The world is good, the world is bad, the world is your god-daughter asking for your hand to climb down the U-bahn stairs.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[152] = new Array('2006.09.21', 'I just think this is so crystal-clear and so honest. It\'s taken from an interview in Gulf Coast, Spring 2006, from an interview with Richard Siken and James Hall:

JH: Can you talk about how you construct a poem\'s emotion without letting that emotion subsume the poem?

RS: ...Even if you don\'t believe in God, you have to believe in narrative. Things happen, one after another, world without end. Just because you\'re self-aware doesn\'t mean you can change what\'s happening. Eventually someone is going to break your heart. Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you\'re falling to the floor crying thinking \"I am falling to the floor crying\" but there\'s an element of the ridiculous to it-you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you\'re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn\'t paint it very well and when you\'re having sex with your next lover on this very floor they will also notice that you didn\'t paint it very well and they will think less of you for it. And then you think \"Is that sentence too long?\" And then you have to hold the contradictions of sobbing uncontrollably and wondering about grammar in your head at the same time.
I think if you are true to the entire experience, not just the sad part, you don\'t risk sentimentality because you\'re not overloading the experience with fake, melodramatic feeling. i also hear that whispering helps.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[153] = new Array('2006.09.23', 'Nick Cave, 20 Sept, Den Haag:

And us before the concert:
', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[154] = new Array('2006.09.26', 'By the cafe on Utrechtsestraat where I write in the mornings (De Koffie Salon), the bike rack is always filled, so I take my bike around the corner, into Frederiksplein, where, on the wall, is some very strange stencil graffitti. I looked at it for about a week until I realized it was an Irish Setter humping R2D2.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[155] = new Array('2006.09.29', 'sometimes i despise this country, doe je normaal and all, the people incapable of recognizing brilliance, stifling innovation. and sometimes i love this country, when my colleagues talk smack to the cops for trying to bother us about our jaywalking, or, standing on a balcony high above Huizen, watching the birds fly across the zuiderzee, the swarming of mosquitoes, thousands of them, a black, shimmering screen in front of one of the most spellbinding cloud-scattered sunsets i have ever seen. ', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[156] = new Array('2006.10.03', 'One more thing about Nick Cave: he was, contrary to all expectations, funny. When someone said \"you\'re the best, Nick!\", he replied: \"Thank you for confirming my suspicions.\" And what did he do for an encore? A cover of Joan Jett\'s Crimson and Clover.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[157] = new Array('2006.10.08', 'Here\'s something worth checking out: an organization devoted to making open source prosthetics.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[158] = new Array('2006.10.10', 'I\'m still trying to process the Jonathan Franzen reading last week. He read a section from his new memoir all about birding; yes, birding. It was fine, carrying on primary themes in his work of alienation and connection, isolation, community. It was tragic, pathetic, even funny, how he devoted himself to birding after his mother\'s death. The interview afterwards, however, was, to me, very odd. You can see how he rubs people the wrong way: he holds in him an odd combination of intellectual rigor, he\'s very well spoken and has clearly thought through his ideas, and often this comes across as snobbishness, arrogance, elitism. Perhaps it is, but I don\'t think so. I see a man who is profoundly uncomfortable in his own shoes, so uncomfortable that it makes everyone around him equally uneasy. And I see a man who has spent his writing life trying to make sense, trying to reconcile this deep queasiness and comfort within his own disconnection.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[159] = new Array('2006.10.11', 'Some of the funky social policies in our very progressive neighborhood---to prevent improper dumping, the local guv has created bright yellow stickers that say Fout! (Mistake!). It\'s like putting a scarlet A on your trash...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[160] = new Array('2006.10.16', 'On Saturday, I was going to buy some coffee at Brandmeesters when four American teenagers walked in, single file, holding their video cameras high in the air. By the time I reached the store entrance, they all walked out, shoulders slumped, distressed. I heard one of them say: \"I don\'t see any weed menu...\"', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[161] = new Array('2006.10.27', 'Downtown Salt Lake City, placard of the Central Christian Church:

PRAYER: THE TRUE WIRELESS NETWORK', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[162] = new Array('2006.10.28', 'Found in a news column (Straight Dope):

If you assume a vampire has the same caloric/nutritional requirements as us mortals, how much blood would they have to suck each day?

and wait, there\'s more:

If you have sex with a zombie are you at risk of becoming one?

Of course, if you owned The Zombie Survival Handbook, you would know the answer to the second question...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[163] = new Array('2006.10.30', 'In Salt Lake, I went to the absolutely gorgeous public library to hear a question and answer session with Robert Hass, the ex-poet laureate of America, whom I had met last year in Berlin. Answering a question about whether he waited for inspiration before he wrote, he noted the only invaluable piece advice he ever received was from Frank O\'Connor: \"You can\'t revise nothing.\"', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[164] = new Array('2006.10.30', 'More on the horror theme: one of the pleasures of flying into Los Angeles on pre-Halloween weekend is that there are so many old (and bad) horror movies on cable. Unexpected pleasures: remembering that the skeptical, barely 14-year old boyfriend in the first Nightmare on Elm Street was none other than Johnny Depp.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[165] = new Array('2006.11.05', 'So in Los Angeles, out of nostalgia, I always turn on KROQ 106.7, despite the fact that I no longer like the music. And at first, when I heard it, I thought it was a joke, but after I heard it for the fourth or fifth time, I began to believe that all those radio advertisements recruiting people to the CIA were true. Can anyone help me with this? The ads want someone smart and patriotic for the NCS-the National Clandestine Service, a branch of the CIA. Can this really be real?

And on that note, here\'s a proposal by Homeland Security for the government to give us permission whenever we want to enter or exit the country.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[166] = new Array('2006.11.06', 'This article in The Guardian explores the reprehensible phenomenon of movie stars writing children\'s books.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[167] = new Array('2006.11.15', 'People talk about Chinese Jews as some admirable oddity, in the same way people fall in love with the idea that Inuits have umpteen words for snow (which isn\'t true anyway). Well, here\'s a migration of Jews even more remote...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[168] = new Array('2006.11.18', '', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[169] = new Array('2006.11.19', 'Almost Heaven by Marianne Wiggins is really, really good.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[170] = new Array('2006.11.30', 'This very amusing BBC article is about a guy who took a week off from work, but his doctor\'s note was a little off...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[171] = new Array('2006.12.01', 'I am pleased to announce that wordsinhere has been commissioned by the US Embassy in Croatia to do readings in Zagreb later this month. Megan, Cralan, and I will be reading as part of an exhibit of New York photography', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[172] = new Array('2006.12.16', 'Just back from Zagreb, where we had a great time and great reading. Met Croatian graffitti artist/breakdancers, ambassadors, and a few people who just couldn\'t stay standing. Learned the word for \'correct\', courtesy of the Croatian version of The Weakest Link. Zagreb seems like it has a lot going for it, quite slick, at least the center, although, as in many ex-Communist cities, the outskirts look a little dreary. Stayed at a trendy art hotel where my pillow had four portraits on it: Wittgenstein, Dante, Stravinsky, and Manu Chao. Which makes me thing of other weird combinations, like: Plato, Emma Goldman, T.S. Eliot, and Kris Kristofferson.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[173] = new Array('2006.12.17', 'Last week the Bad Sex Award went to Iain Hollingshead. This award is given each year to the worst sex scene in literary fiction. To give a taste of it, here\'s a link to the longlisted passages from 2005.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[174] = new Array('2006.12.18', 'But in more, uh, literary news, here\'s the NY Times list of 100 Notable Books of the Year.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[175] = new Array('2006.12.19', 'A piece of good news: my poem Extrapolating A Corpse has been nominated for inclusion in the Pushcart Anthology 2007.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[176] = new Array('2006.12.20', 'I just have to tell everyone about this fight in the Florida swamp between a 6 foot alligator and a 13 foot Burmese Python.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[177] = new Array('2006.12.21', 'The shortest day of the year means sunrise at 8:48, sunset at 4:30. Not going to see the sun today except through the office windows.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[178] = new Array('2006.12.28', 'The small differences in what is acceptable in US and Dutch marketing - this new ad in A\'dam for Pepsi Max: Zonder suiker - met ballen. I translate this as \"Without sugar - with balls\" And then, later, this ad promoting the museum at Rembrandt\'s old house: \"You\'ve seen his paintings, now see his pants\".', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[179] = new Array('2006.12.29', 'My friends, editors, and wonderful writers Jessie Sholl and Farley (see sidebar for links to their sites) have been living the past six months in a tiny village north of Rome. I had forgotten why, though I knew Farley had been working on a book. A book about what? Well, this teaser article in Slate explains it, and it\'s quite a shocker.', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[180] = new Array('2006.12.30', 'warholqueenbeapostalicon...', '','', ''); arrBlogEntry[181] = new Array('2006.12.31', 'how do marketing people find me...and how astute can they be? This, incidentally, for the Dutch production of Tarzan-the Musical...', '','', '');