Published again!

Well, I wouldn’t know it if I wasn’t so vain as to google myself regularly, but apparently one of my sonnets was published online by Modern Drunkard magazine:

http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/md_poetry.htm

It’s “Whiskey Wisdom, #113,” and it’s sitting at the bottom of the page, about to disappear forever the next time they post new material. Yay, another pub(lication) credit! It would have been nice if the editors had emailed me to let me know it’d been accepted. I assumed weeks ago it was a no-go.

They probably meant to e-mail me, but they were too drunk. :)

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Tag, I'm It

Well, I've been tagged with a meme by my good friend ThatGreenyFlower, and since I haven't had much inspiration for anything to post here lately, I figured what the heck.

Here's the meme:

1. Grab the nearest book (that is at least 123 pages long).
2. Open to p. 123.
3. Go down to the 5th sentence.
4. Type in the following 3 sentences.
5. Tag five people.

I'm not going to tag anyone--partly b/c that's not how I roll, and mostly b/c I can't think of 5 people to tag that Greeny hasn't already. But here's my three sentences after the fifth sentence on page 123 of the nearest weird book I have around:

The pain in his stomach seemed to have dulled from the shock, but he knew he desperately needed to haul ass to a hospital.

He staggered forward.

A frightening numbness had crept into his body, and despite the fact he was still barefoot, he quickly waded through the mound of spilled viscera blocking the doorway.

Nice, eh? The book is The Undead, Vol. 3: Flesh Feast (buy it here!), but it's the electronic proof edition, so in the print edition page numbers might be different. Oh, and I've got a story in there, as I think I've mentioned before. This is not from my story, however--it's from "The Finger" by Matt Hults.

Well, that was fun.

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Parental PR

I don't know why I hadn't mentioned it, but my daughter, Thea, is currently a media star!

Thea's grandma (my mom) is an avid reader of Woman's World Magazine, and after reading their "beautiful baby photos" section for week after week finally decided that, as there was no baby in the world as beautiful as her one and only granddaughter, she would just send in a picture of Thea and show them what a real baby doll looked like.

Well, a few years later they've finally run the photo, and it's on stands now in this week's issue of Woman's World. It's the largest featured photo, too, so obviously Thea's beauty is totally objective. Also, the Democrat-Gazette's Wednesday, January 6 edition apparently has a blurb about it in the B section. Can a commercial/movie deal be far behind?

The picture is of Thea when she was 6 months old, on a background of roses (as her middle name is Rose). So get yourself a copy, and we'll get her to autograph it. (See, I'm already a stage-daddy!)

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Doin' Yer Duty

So I went and voted in the primaries on this Super Duper Fat Tuesday. Did you?

Now I'm as cynical as the next person when it comes to government and politicians and what have you, but there's still something about going to the polls and voting that gives me a strange feeling of happiness. Maybe it's all the Cold War propaganda I grew up with, or maybe I paid more attention in 9th Grade Civics than I strictly should have. But when I was walking in there, I just got this buoyant feeling of almost-joy, like I was doing something important, something that I not only should do, but must, and the fact that I was doing it made me glad.

I got the feeling that other voters--some of them, anyway--felt the same. Everyone I saw in the parking lot returned my unprovoked grin with one of their own. People were chatty in the line, striking up conversations with complete strangers--not about politics (that I heard), but just pleasantries, friendliness, good old-fashioned neighborliness. It's something you don't often see anymore (when was the last time you invited the fellow behind you in the Express Lane at Kroger into a conversation that didn't have to do with whether that bag of peanuts was yours or his?), and it was nice. And as I say, I think it bespoke a general feeling of being a part of something, however naive that may seem to some.

By a stroke of luck I arrived at my polling station at almost the same time as my wife. We hadn't planned it--I came during my lunch hour, and she just happened to be there--and the sight of my 3-year-old daughter wearing her mom's "I Voted!" sticker on her little pink hoodie just had me beaming. It was a lovely picture, and made me baselessly optimistic about the future--not only of my family, but of the country. Sappy, perhaps, but true.

I'm sure this good feeling will fade as the harsh realities of modern democracy make themselves more and more visible in the coming months. But for now I'm going to enjoy it, and you should too.

Go vote.

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