THE GREAT GADFLY:

Magenta Verbena Placenta on Polenta

This Friday begins the National Write A Novel Month challenge, and I've already come up with, fallen in hate with, and discarded an entire story - plot, cast of characters, reason for writing the story, etc. - all gone, buh-bye, you go now stinky-stinky.

When I was a kid, my grandma used to get really upset when her bran muffins came out of the oven all funny-shaped. They were so amazingly tasty, and they weren't even remarkably misshapen. My dad and I used to beg my grandma not to throw the muffins away, that we'd take them home. Sometimes she'd cave in to our demands; sometimes she would stand her ground and say, "no, they're just too ugly, I can't let anyone eat these ugly muffins," and into the trash they'd go. Then she'd make more, and when the revised batch came out, she'd cluck and roll her eyes as if to say, well, these will do, I suppose... - followed by a defeated sigh.

I need to really listen to the new Saint Etienne album. They used to be up there with my all-time favorite bands of all favoriteness, though in the past couple of years I've fallen out of favoring dodderhood with them, feeling that they might have jumped the ol' shark somewhere or run out of bubbly fresh goodness or maybe I just grew out of my ability to appreciate that whole thing they do so well. They're just so la-de-da-de-da pleasant and jolly and cozy-happy-kittenish, and I've been more into ugly people making ugly music in the past few months...I'm not sure if I can make the switch from the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black to the Luxurious Glamour of Sarah Cracknell right now. I've talked to a few people who have just been screaming and cawwing and ululating and scraping their bloody knuckles into broken glass over how amazingly wonderfully good it is. I've only given it one listen so far. It's okay. Maybe I'll be ululating too after a few listens - that happens with me sometimes. Oftentimes. In fact, if I love an album on first listen, chances are I won't be crazy about it three months later; if I'm ambivalent about an album on first listen, more often than not I'm breathing, eating, sleeping and pooping that album in a few weeks' time.

Plus: Only fifteen bucks for next month's St.Et show next month. Dang. Fifteen measley bucks to see the band that made Tiger Bay, one of my most untouchably favoritest albums, ever-ever-ever. Hmmm. Who knows. We'll see.

Over the past week, I've been writing down every possibility for an idea that could go into a story. I want to make a big, long list of ideas and insert them all in this Novel Writing Month exercise. I promise not to talk about the story until it's done, if indeed I manage to finish it. I'm a bit excited. I never thought I'd consider writing a novel - it never occurred to me that it's absolutely legal to write a BAD novel, just for the sake of having pounded out 75,000 words. I'm trying to talk my friends Lizzard, Neener and Ms. Renay into joining me. They really should. So should you.

I think in the middle of the night last night, those one gay cowboy dancers from that Madonna "Don't Tell Me" video snuck into my apartment and line danced on my back. Oh, okay, nothing so bone-structurally aerodynamic could ever happen in my filthy little hag shack - it was probably just a clogging troupe doing some kind of hoedown business along my poor aching spine. My body is a Whitman's Sampler of aches and pain this week. I'm such a lucky little man.