LAS VEGAS, NV-

The Girls of Bromidrosis

The first night I arrived in Vegas I ate fried-chicken and drank beer. Under normal circumstances this is not a good combination. Hell, it doesn’t even sound good. Fried-chicken and beer. But these weren’t normal circumstances. I had just arrived home after living over three years in the South where nothing - and hardly anyone - made sense to me.

So, I wasn’t looking for harmony. I was looking to gorge myself and get drunk.

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DENVER, CO-

Rejection letters are always a drag; whether they are negative responses from job opportunities, university admissions boards or literary journals. However, there is nothing quite as spirit-crushing as a rejection letter received after submitting a poem. A short-story rejection slip is depressing, but not devastating. You manufacture a story in your head, create some characters and make them talk. Fine. So you didn’t like my characters. Their dialogue is unrealistic. Their motives are questionable. Fine. They aren’t me. But a rejection letter from a poem is, for me, the equivalent of standing out on a street corner naked and having passers-by hand you terse little notes reading, “Your penis is unconvincing,” or “You call those nipples?” or maybe, “You have an affected buttocks.” And that kind of stuff just breaks my heart. You pour it all into a poem: your skeleton, your bile, your oozing primordial remnant—your private parts. To be told that the fundamental you is not up to snuff—that’s hard murder.

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WEIRTON, WV-

I’ve developed a powerful addiction: auctions. On walking into any auction house or any home slated to go under the hammer, I feel my pulse quicken and my senses sharpen. I can sniff out a dealer from 500 yards and tell, by the high or low position of the glasses on his nose, what he’s there for and how much he’s willing to pay for it.

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SARASOTA, FL-

The global economy, like it or not, doesn’t like you. If you’ve acquired a job in a third world country, congratulations: You’re one step shy of a slave. If you’re an American, you can work, live and die at Walmart, which will soon offer funeral services next to the produce department. Are there, you Americans ask, no careers vouchsafed from the global suck? It depends. Do you possess sticktoitiveness and a can-do attitude? Are you a no-getter? Are you willing to take personal responsibility where you have none? Then the answer is, “Yes!.” Jobs await you, some already available, others waiting in the wings of hell. Love it or leave it, except you can’t afford to leave: Trust me, I tried. Here, then, is the future, and your opportunities within it. I have randomly numbered these jobs, for none are better than the others, though some are worse.

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SAN DIEGO, CA-

Time to pay.

That’s right. Time to pay for holiday gifts. (Or rather, time to buy
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GRAND BLANC, MI-

For years, now, socialism and communism have been declared dead and capitalism the winner of the economic systems lottery. Yet capitalism has abandoned its roots or, equally possible, returned to its roots of snake oil sales.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

I believe the state is engaged in the destruction of will.  It aims to limit will, if not eliminate it altogether.  It wants to leave people choiceless.  It wants to leave them choiceless and desperate.  The desperation leads to gullibility in a snake-oil market: those bearing down like sharks with their “easy credit” and “easy loans” and “easy school loans.”  If this administration agreed to lower school loans, it was only to bait more people into the endless trap of repaying school loans, knowing that the current economy requires such constant updating of knowledge that a college education is, for any but the most technologically “gifted,” a complete waste of time when it comes to employment.

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SAN DIEGO, CA-

The strangest thing someone said to me on Thursday was, “Excuse me, can you hand me a bacon?”

I did, in fact, hand her a bacon.

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GRAND BLANC, MICHIGAN-

The age of ownership is over. We don’t own our cars. We don’t own our houses. We don’t even own our country. Everything’s for rent and most of it, for a while, free of charge. In line with this semi-reality, I’ve schemed a scheme to make true my dream not only of not losing money on my novels but actually turning a profit. Go ahead, laugh: I know the idea sounds kind of funny, like a clown. Nevertheless, in the manner of Dale Carnegie, I am absolutely convinced without need of evidence that this plan will work. It’s all about positive thinking, but there’s negativity involved, too…more ying-yang for your buck or, to be precise, mine.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

First it was chick lit and now dad lit. Kill me twice in case I return from the dead. These categories, which I can only guess appeal to those who want to read about others with lives much like their own, gleefully reduce fiction to a mirror that doesn’t even offer an accurate reflection. If it did, why would anyone need to read it? No, this “lit” does not exist to illuminate; rather, it reinforces the reader’s sense of identity, like a bumpersticker that proclaims certain drivers’ worship of fish. It’s nothing of which to be proud, worshiping fish, and even worse to read or write what the bones have been or will be wrapped inside.

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WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND-

New Zealanders, who refer to themselves as “Kiwis” without giggling, speak with perfect diction.

They enunciate clearly.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

Although the trend seems thankfully to be receding, the onslaught of religiously-themed novels — not as probing but rather proselytizing works — has been disconcerting to those of us who do not believe a creator was necessary or, if one does exist, that she/he/it hasn’t been too busy sans Godzilla-like behavior. Yes, atheists can be mystic, too, though, assuming Van Morrison approves the use of his songs as the closing music to every “chick flick” produced, I hope he goes into the mystic ASAP.

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PARIS -

Before I moved to France someone told me:  Don’t expect American style customer service.

A French salesperson will never ask you how you are. But that doesn’t mean he’s rude, in France they just prefer a basic level of honest courtesy.

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CHARLOTTE, NC-

Toughskins, Baby

The mall, any mall, is probably one of my least favorite places to go. Just don’t like them. Too many cars in the parking lot. Too many people. Cheap food.

But in a desperate effort to get the writing juices flowing (and get pissed off somewhere along the way) I hopped in my car and took the 485 freeway east to the Pineville Mall.

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SAN DIEGO, CA-

My husband, Michael, grew up near Amish Country, PA (i.e. Lancaster County), so naturally whenever we visit the area I insist on a tiny road trip.

My reasons are twofold:

1) It’s Amish

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