Today the summer semester started. I've decided to write in full sentences. This morning I supported a fiction writing class. There were three students in the class who may or may not need my support services. Tomorrow is the beginning of teaching teaching for the semester. Trying to avoid the pronoun 'I' by changing the order of the words in the sentence. It's different to begin a sentence with the object rather than the subject. Or a verb, which only works in speech and in novels. Why am I writing in the blog? There were some reasons. Okay. Got it. The other day in the mail Cole sent me his latest mix. It's pop-ier than his last couple of mostly ambient mixes. Here's the link.

Speaking of Cole, he and a couple others started an ambient music group blog that posts good stuff called Field Mic. There is a link to it on the right. Lately I've been listening to the new Crystal Castles album. Lots of great punky poppy techno, though there is this track as well. It's a little harsh at first but settles into something I like a lot. Speaking of things I like a lot, the other day a small press offered to publish a manuscript of mine but I turned them down. They offered a kind of 'raw deal.' I won't go into the details but it's a good sign that after four years of arranging poems maybe I've found a winning combination. Maybe the next deal won't be so raw.

The last week before school started was pretty great, relaxing. Good weather with plenty of time to get ready for the semester, organize, comb my hair, meet people, computer music projects, read and take naps. Continuing my hipster list of consumption, I quite enjoyed reading "Out of My Skin" by John Haskell if you're looking for a short beautifully written story about illusory identity, and the other day I saw the movie "Winter's Bone" which is a really engaging suspense movie about crystal meth in rural Missouri. Highly recommended if you have time to see movies. In addition, please note my new hit single "You should be ashamed of yourself." on the music blog for this week. Oh, and do you like the new colors of the blog? Blogger had new options so I tried them (after reading something somewhere about the difficulty that people have reading gray text on black) but now can't go back to the old template so that's that. Please: