Things are better now

Here are links to the two stories I have in this week's Inlander, a review of The Machinist and a story about a local production company's new movie, and their attempt to drum up local talent for the soundtrack.

Machinist Review

North By Northwest Story [half-way down the page]

My Reader stuff, as usual, will be appearing here in full Baumgarti-media format throughout the next few days. In lieu of payment, last night, they bought me lots of alcohol and gave me a couch to sleep on. The new kid, unable to keep eye contact through the layers of microbrew and grey goose glaucoma that build up when it's late and it's dark and you've shut down a bar early so you and your friends can drink in the back, told me that I should pitch to Salon. That it was my duty.

In lieu of payment I got liquid and verbal self-confidence boosts.

I thank them for that.

Then, foot to the floor on some North Idahoan highway early this morning, frantically racing back to civilization for an early afternoon appointment [being a jetset mogul, now], I had to pull into some separatist's ranch house and unload the contents of my stomach onto their driveway.

I apologize for that.

Read the full thing here.

On this day in history

I started blogging a year ago today [1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th posts in one day, unbelievable]. God that was a depressing and optimistic time. . .

Over the year, it's been a thing I've needed it to be at different times. At first [painfully] it was a soap box for my disaffected [pseudo-]corporate foray. Then it was something of an intellectual [political, religious, philosophical, sociological et cetera, ad infinitum] revolt against it. Now it's a gallery showcase for whatever human being might want to pay me to write [it's worked twice now].

Since it's really no one thing the way other blogs are one thing, and probably because my writing is an acquired taste [that is, not very good or even comprehendable] and I no longer post very often, not many people read it. To those that do, though, thanks for being critical and kind as needed, helping and forcing me to become a better writer and--dare I say--earth citizen.

Give yourselves a round of applause.

As a reward [or punishment, you know which you deserve], here's my favorite snippet from that first day [fourth post, which also gave us the blog's original title "Cripplingly Narcissistic and a Horrible Speller", also crappy]:

The last entry was too snotty and punk rock. I'm not nearly that thoughtful or tortured a soul. It's a big goddamned front. I was playing at being overtly cynical because secretly I feel so giddily optimistic about where this blogging thing could take me. Artistically.

I imagine myself sitting down at a coffee shop somewhere while I pour over the constructive comments posted about my blog and, by extension, myself. The creative inspiration literally gushes out of me. This upwelling causes quite a commotion and I'm asked to leave. I cross the street to another coffee shop where I bravely churn out page after page of my novel, taking breaks only to finish my short stories and order more scones.

I'm immediately the talk of the goddamned town--all towns really. And then the imagining ends more or less and a blithe feeling of contentment takes it's place.

This is what blogging seems to do for me and it's awesome and I feel I'm definitely going places. Though once again in the interest of veracity, the delusions aren't new, just more frequent.

Gutwrenchingly transparent but also, in it's own way, fake. Almost seems like I was reflecting on months of writerly successes and failures, rather than 48 minutes worth [of failures].

Read the full thing here.

American Homoerotic

Your host for this evening

We never talk anymore, I know. I'm just slammed at work. You know that. My feelings haven't changed though, I swear. I feel about you now the way I felt last June, when this whole mad experiment began.

I swear.

Here, let me do something nice for you. A guest blogger. You'll like that. Truth told, he doesn't know I'm posting this, but I don't care. When he starts paying me, he can bitch. This is from my editor. The guy who's been keeping me busy and away from the blog. Blame him. He's not replacing you.

I swear.

For interactive fun, try and guess what he got his degree in:

( [Chuck] Palahniuk is suffering from the same over-sensualized mania that grips cultures in decline.

Notice the parentheses. what follows is a mere aside in a much longer tyrade, prompted by the statement "The Inlander is having me review the new Palahniuk, not his best work"

You do know that Caligula invited all the Roman senators to bring their wives and man-lovers to the Senate floor for orgies. You do know that nearly all the high-level Nazi leaders were raging sexual deviants. You do know that Mao Zedong bathed in the collected vaginal juices of young girls.

I see this nonesense in nearly every aspect of our popular culture. Whining pretty boys croaking and groaning about the fact that their penises are pencil thin and flaccid as liver flukes; silicone-pumped asses and calves (what the fuck is that all about?) on MTV; and my favorite, the Puritanical, prudish, maniacal anti-sexualism of the Evangelism that currently masquerades as "Moral Authority" in this country.

Ironically that is the greatest manifestation of this culture-wide belly-button gazing. That kind of rabid fear can only be one thing -- an emotionally maladjusted morbid curiosity with deviance. Lurking beneath the pious grimace of every televangelist is the leering, sweaty visage of sado-masochism; child molestation; fecal-philia; Asian children contorted in all manner of humiliating positions. It's all about power for these fucking people. It's prison eroticism. At these high levels it manifests secretly in $100,000 a plate private dinners (17-year-old Senate pages drunk on ruffies and wine coolers) and publicly as frothing denunciations of that great culture-threatening demon: "ho-muh-sexyooality."

Meanwhile, the military anally violates 10,000 prisoners a week at GITMO and in every rat-hole, shit pile prison from Kirkut to Basra. By the time this weird culture of power vs. powerlessness reaches those of us near the bottom (Palahniuk included) it's manifested inwardly.

Standing for seven hours in front of the mirror staring at your "nasty parts" is something little kids do before they're sexually developed. It's an attempt to identify self. Our culture has drifted so far from a mature understanding of identity it's reverted back to a stage at which we try to exert power over ourselves by constantly revisiting our own sexuality [emphasis mine], as if it held some key to unlocking our true nature.

NONSENSE I say.

This ridiculous obsession people have with sex -- Michael Jackson, Jim West, "ho-muh-sexyoo-uhls," R. Kelly -- is unproductive and frightening to me. Vladimir Lenin once kicked Emma Goldmann out of his office for even mentioning "abortion" to him. He said concepts like that should never be discussed at the national level. Sexuality and sexual decisions, in his mind, for a country to operate effectively and provide best for its people should never become the main preoccupation its people.

I say amen. . .

So this is why I put up with not getting paid: edifying conversation. That along with getting published, resume bolstering, total content freedom and having a bizarrely large fanbase in a little liberal enclave of Idaho's northerly panhandle.

That and he tells me that payday is just around the corner. And I believe him . . .

Read the full thing here.