Abusive parents everywhere commented, “You know, I just wasn’t aware of my behavior until those people twatted about it.”

“Twitter can do everything,” said Twitter users.

A internet user who uses only Facebook, however, pointed out that Twitter didn’t do as much as people are claiming. “Uh, hello. Our effort last year to post pictures from our favorite childhood cartoons totally cut child abuse by, like, 70%. So how much did they really have to do on Twitter? It’s like when I loosen up the jar and then my wife finishes opening it. And she’s all like ‘Ha! You suck!’ And then I have to teach her a lesson.”

After eradicating child abuse via Twitter, there are plans to cure AIDs with FourSquare check-ins.

Remember last year’s post, “A Whole Latke Loving Going On“? I told you all about NYCNosh’s awesome damn recipe and wanted to link to them but they had disappeared from the web, so I basically just copied their recipe out of my notebook? Well, I’m happy to report that the Noshers are back–well the site is. And so is the recipe. If you have a love for latkes, use this recipe.

This summer I turned in a manuscript to an agent. She sent it off to a reader. A couple of weeks later, I received an email saying, “Here’s the report. Take some time to digest it.”

“Take some time to digest it.” That simple phrase told me everything I needed to know. That simple phrase should also be stamped on the hand of everyone aspiring to be a writer. It’s not easy. But it’s necessary. If you think writing is a realm of inspiration, positive-feelings and pure artistic expression with little regard for the reader, you should stick to posting your free verse to LiveJournal.

Read the whole thing here.

See what the cats have driven me to!

Look, like I said, I’m joking. I don’t have a problem with cats. I’m a big fan of cats. Used to feed my mom’s cat ice cream off the spoon I was using. And who knows where that cat’s tongue had been. Actually, we all have a pretty good idea: shoved in a dead mouse, aiding in the murder of a bird, nosing around in another cat’s ass. But, hey, that cat–his name was Tiger–that cat and me had a bond. I like cats. And don’t even get me started on kittens. Or LOLcats. Cats are great. They’re furry, graceful, mischievous, stand-offish, bitchy, nice to touch–kind of like a woman who’s forgotten to shave, and one who thinks a great date is a can of tuna fish and half a spoonful of ice cream. (And I swear if you tell me cats aren’t supposed to eat ice cream I will come to your house and slap you. Cats eat dead animals; a little ice cream isn’t going to kill them.)

But, yeah, I’m on board with cats. I’m fine with cats.

What I’m not fine with is cat rape, which seems to be an issue in the back lots of Brooklyn this winter season. Feral cats are just prowling around behind my apartment and raping each other like crazy.

I’ll admit, I don’t know much about the sexual habits of cats. Maybe they aren’t raping each other. And even if they are, do I really care about the actual fact of potential cat rape?

Honestly–and this may make me sound like a bad person–I do not care about the actual fact–or non-fact–of cat rape.

I care about the sound. Have you heard the sound that cats make when doves cry? I haven’t either. But I have heard the sound they make when they’re fucking. Or fighting. Or raping. Or whatever the hell it is they choose to do outside my window at three in the morning.

You’ll get a long, drawn-out: MWWWWWOOoooooooOOOWOOWWWWWWWOOOOWOOWWWWWWEERRRRRRRR!

Then a sharp: mreeEEEEER!

Then what sounds like some scratching and hair pulling and then two bodies falling off of a table or a roof or god knows what. Now, on paper, all this screaming and scratching and hair pulling probably sounds like a good time to some you people–a night of wild monkey sex.

But this is not wild monkey sex. It is feral-cat sex and it sounds like the wails of the damned. The only thing missing is the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.

I’ve got to imagine feral-cat sex, like feral-cat life, is short and brutal. And, to be honest, if it were just me, I’d likely wake up at the sound then fall back to sleep. I can do that. Unless I’m stressed out about something else. And, hey, who would be stressed when you’re approaching 40, thinking about mortality and Christmas is around the corner? Well, not me. That’s for sure.

But you know who else the cat rape wakes up? The dogs, that’s who! And boy do they not like it! Or, hell, maybe they do like it. We don’t have bark-to-English translators on their collars.

Maybe they’re saying: “YOU FILTHY FUCKING CATS, WAKING US AND OUR PEOPLE. WE EVER GET OUT OF HERE WE’LL KILL YOU! DEAD! KAPUT! MURDERLIZE YOU! RIP YA LIMB FROM LIMB! SWALLOW YOU DOWN AND SHIT YOU OUT AND THEN EAT THE SHIT AND THEN START IT ALL OVER AGAIN! CUZ WE’RE DOGS AND THAT’S HOW HARDCORE WE ARE. ONE DAY WE’LL GET OUT! ONE DAY! YOU JUST WAIT!”

Or maybe they’re saying: “Ohhhhhhh, snap! Somebody’s getting lucky tonight. You go boy! Dannnnnnggggg. He’s knocking it out!”

But they’re both girl dogs, so I really doubt it on the second one. For all I know, they could be barking at ME to call the cops: “Dadddd. He’s killing her. Make it stop. Doooo something.”

At any rate, cats having sex wake the dogs up. The dogs, whatever they feel about this horrid noise going on in the backyard, are very, very vocal about it. Which, in turn, wakes up Cara, who’s then hissing at the dogs to shut up and threatening to deport them or some other nonsense that she doesn’t mean and would never enforce because she spoils these dogs. I swear, sometimes it’s like a Park Slope parent trying to reason with a child who’s having a hissy fit and punching another child. “Now look, Tanner, this is not how people behave. Could you stop pulling her hair? It’s obviously hurting her.” Except in this case it’s a woman talking to a dog who won’t stop barking or who’s pooped on the floor again.

Of course, I spoil the dogs, too. Maybe even more (which will be the subject of a separate 10,000 word post because I have become one of those people who has to talk about his fucking animals. All. The. Time). But I don’t try to reason with them. I mean they’re cute and all, but they’re dogs! And even if they were capable of rational thought, they’d know damn well neither of us would ever in a million years follow through on a threat. I mean, smacking a kid is one thing. He can grow up one day and get back at you. But a defenseless animal? That’s not cool.

Besides, for all Cara’s hissing and threatening, the dogs are probably thinking: “Yaaaaaayyy! Mom’s up and talking to us. She’s trying to grab us. She wants to play! And I totally think she’s psyched we warned her about the cat rape. Did she just say treat? I think she said treat. Or did she say walk? Whatever, she’s awake. Yaaaaayyyyy!”

And all of this is making it very hard to sleep. That’s all I’m trying to say.

Of course, I guess now I have to look forward to some well-meaning but humorless scold writing a comment about the ASPCA and spaying and neutering and the general plight of feral-cat populations. Sigh. Look people, it’s the Holiday season. Do us and yourselves a favor, get away from the internet and go hang out in PetSmart or something.

And so he stands in the mouth of his alley and waits as a megabyte of Internet gossip bloggers lurches by, the men in starlet-at-the-beach bikinis with celluloid-ravaged thighs and acid-seeping hard-ons, the women paunchy droopy naked but for Speedo trunks, weighed heavily about their necks with molten-hot gold pop-star bling, and all of them—a thousand or more—pass by in a long, dense gaggle, pinching and punching each other. Hatcher’s neighborhood has many journalists, and this gossip-blogger group lives at the very edge, at a distant turning of the Parkway where other denizens never actually go in person, where only this subset of bloggers huddle together over laptop screens, zinging each other.

From Robert Olen Butler’s novel, Hell, which is set in, well, Hell. But before you start developing strong feelings either way about the inclusion of gossip bloggers in Hell, in Butler’s version, EVERYONE goes to Hell. Every. One.

Well, two strange things about it.

1. I rarely notice other people doing this. Even that women who walks around with Purell in her pockets will just put the lid on a plain counter.

2. Why the hell do I do it? It’s not that I don’t follow basic sanitation practices. I wash my hands after going to the bathroom, after all. But thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever washed my hands after getting off the subway and before going to Popeyes–a food I not only eat with my hands, but that eventually leads to some hardcore finger licking. Hell, I’m the kind of guy who will lean his face against a subway pole (only if the car is mostly empty, because otherwise pole-leaning is rude). I’m also the sort who’s left food out of the fridge for an extended period of time and eaten it anyway. And, with the exception of dairy products, I tend to view expiration dates as a rough guideline — Hey, these eggs still SMELL fine.

Also, I don’t get a flu shot.

But, you know, that one piece of paper on the cafe counter will save me every time. Or something.

2011 Louisiana Book Festival, Baton Rouge

One reason I didn’t write — aside from laziness — is that I didn’t want to ruin the picture I know you all have of me jet-setting around the country, arriving in limousines and reading to packed rooms. C’mon. I know that’s how you picture these things. And the reality was, my reading/panel with Lou Dischler was attended by a total of maybe 10 people — four of which who were related to me, one of which was Lou’s mom, and another of which was my good friend Jason’s mom. Thank god for moms. At first I blamed this on the fact that we’d been scheduled at 3:30 and stuck out in the hinterlands of the Welcome Center when almost all of the foot traffic was in the State Capitol. But I’d gone to an earlier panel in the State Capitol featuring Roy Blunt and James Wilcox and there were perhaps 20 people in that room. And I’d heard that other readings in the Capitol building were as thin as ours.

Thinking about it now, it’s not that surprising. Because the Festival was canceled last year, there were something like 200 writers and presenters this year.

Then again, having never been to a Book Festival other than the Brooklyn Book Festival, this could be par for the course. God knows I’ve been to other readings where three or four people showed up.

But reading, schmeading. Here are things I got to do at the Louisiana Book Festival

*Drink, eat and carry on in the State Library. (Yes, it felt oddly cool)
*Do so with my old teachers and friends Luis Urrea and Darrell Bourque. Also got spend a couple minutes with Ken Wells. And met Louisiana literary legend Tim Gautreaux.
*See a big replica of my book’s cover on the wall of the State Library. It was right in the center of the display, too. It’ll be there until Christmas. Who cares if it’s right next to two children’s titles and the cover of my book might — just maybe — erroneously lead some to think that it too is a kiddie book. “MERRY CHRISTMAS, LITTLE JIMMY!”
*Spend a beautiful Saturday morning traipsing around the grounds of the Louisiana State Capitol with my son. (I’d only ever been once).
*Meet fellow author Lou Dishler.
*Sell a few books.
*Sell one of those books to the high-school best friend of Father Paul Bergeron, who was actually the real priest using real altar girls who started the real Rabbit Festival back in the day. “Should I sign it to him?” I asked. “I don’t know, what do you think? He’s got a pretty good sense of humor,” she said. “Well, maybe I’ll just sign my name and you read it first before passing it on.”
*Sell one of those books — and sign it — to Tim Gautreaux.

Not a bad way to spend a couple of days in Baton Rouge. Which, of course, was followed by a week of gluttony in South Louisiana and then …

University of Louisiana Lafayette’s Mini Book Festival, Lafayette
Now this one I had very dim hopes for. As I’d explained in the post pimping these events, this particular reading was scheduled during the field-goal contest between Alabama and LSU for the title of No. 1 in the land and in the SEC. I couldn’t even count on relatives to attend this one.

And things were looking (to me) particularly grim when no one showed up to a panel discussion about the publishing industry. Though to be fair, ULL was playing a key football game at that exact time. And maybe the students or potential attendees were smart enough not to waste a beautiful Saturday afternoon listening to a bunch of writers tell them things they can read online or in Writer’s Market. It wasn’t like we were going to give them the phone numbers of agents or copies of publishing contracts. So, instead of panel members standing around and pouting, we retired to the home of Creative Writing Director Marthe Reed and had some wine and talked to each other rather than at some students — which is probably a better way to spend a Saturday for all involved.

After a quick run back to Mama’s house to load up on some gumbo and watch ULL pull off a last-minute victory against ULM, I headed back to the reading, held in the teacher’s lounge of ULL’s Griffin Hall, a place where I spent half my graduate school career sucking down Camel Lights, putting off writing, hiding from students and recovering from hangovers (bars were where I spent the other 50%).

And guess what. There were at least 20 people there! None of them related to me. And only two of them related to one of the other readers. There were four of us reading that night. Poets Micha Ballard, SunnyLyn Thibodeaux and Rob Carney. Rob, who I’d gone to grad school with, was in from Utah. Micha and Sunnylyn, who were undergrads when I was at USL, were in from San Francisco.

They were all slated to read before me. Did I mention they were poets? They’re good poets, too. But imagine sitting there listening to people who love words, caress them, create paintings with them knowing that you’re going to go up and read about a gas-huffing dude named Fudgeround. Like I said when it was my turn, it felt like showing up at a champagne party with a six-pack of Schlitz. But it worked out well.

Then we all retired to Marthe Reed’s house for wine. (Yes, again). There we all got to talk more writing and I got to catch up with Rob and a number of the professors I had while at ULL.

And LSU won.

By the way, see all those hyperlinked names above? Click the links. Buy the books. Christmas is coming up and everyone could use a little more fiction or poetry in their lives. (Also, ULL has a DOCTORATE program in Creative Writing if you’re into writing work shops, hard work AND being called Doctor.)

“I hate to turn up out of the blue, uninvited
But I couldn’t stay away, I couldn’t fight it
I had hoped that you would see my face and that you’d be reminded
That for me, it isn’t over”

Now, even if I were single and this was simply an ex-girlfriend showing up on my doorstep, I’d be tempted to call the damn police. But in the context of the song, the dude is married. MARRIED.

Man or woman, imagine that you’re at home and your ex showed up at your door uninvited and said, “Hey, I just couldn’t help it. I had this really fucked up, crazy urge to show up and remind you that, in my mind, we’re still the perfect couple.” I bet you can imagine how your spouse would react — or how you would react if you were the spouse.

Blah, blah, blah. Love. Heart-ache. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I get it. Pain lingers. And, especially when you’re the one who’s been dumped and haven’t found your own someone yet, you can remember that last relationship all through a hazy nostalgia in which everything seemed perfect (though it wasn’t). And even years later, you can be struck by an uncontrollable urge to go seek this person out at home, in a bar, on Facebook and say something like, “I STILL LOVE YOU” or “WE WERE MEANT TO BE.”

But you know what? You are not five years old. You are a grown-ass person and you should be able to control your urges. Especially ones as stupid as these. If you can’t do it for your own dignity, do it for this person who you supposedly love and who, trust me, will not give you a second chance and does not need your crazy ass showing up on the doorstep uninvited.

(Last week, I drove over 1,000 miles while in Louisiana, most of it listening to pop radio, so I may have some more over-thinking on the six songs I heard over and over and over again.)

Then more questions: ‘HOW DO I KNOW EVERYONE ELSE WASHES THEIR HAIR BEFORE MOVING ON! WHAT IF I’M THE ONLY ONE? WHAT IF I’VE BEEN DOING IT WRONG THIS WHOLE TIME?”

It’s because of exactly this sort of thinking that I’m tempted to limit showers to once a month.

Specifically, I’ll be joining Lou Dischler, author of the really damn awesome My Only Sunshine, for the following discussion:

Mining Cajun Country for Comedy
2:45 PM – 3:30 PM
Capitol Welcome Center, Glass Room

This will be followed by a book signing from 3:45 to 4:30 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble tent.

Obviously, it’s not just us. My home-boy Luis Alberto Urrea will be there (sadly, reading at the same time as me). And a couple of my literary heroes as well, James Wilcox (for writing straight-up craziness set in Louisiana) and James Ed Bradley (for showing that an Opelousas boy can get books published).

Schedule and other information can be found here.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!!

What are you doing the following weekend? I’ll tell you what you’re doing. You’re going to be freaking out about the LSU-Alabama game, that’s what. But on the off chance you aren’t, there is a Mini Book Festival at ULL — or as it was called when I went there, USL.

There will be readings Friday and Saturday night at 7:30, as well as a panel on publishing on Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m.

Guess what’s got two thumbs and is reading on Saturday night! This guy.

Actual conversation:

Me: I’m reading on Saturday night.
Mom: What?
Me: Saturday.
Mom: What time?
Me: 7:30
Mom: Well I’m not going.
Me: Didn’t think so.

(Hey, lay off. The woman’s read the book 18 times, sat through two readings and is driving all the way to Baton Rouge for the Louisiana Book Festival. That’s plenty)

At any rate, all readings will be held in HL Griffin Hall, Room 315.

FRIDAY readers: Chantel Langlinais, Nate Pritts, Rhonda dean Robison, Wynn Yarbrough
SATURDAY panel on publishing: Nate Pritts, Ken Wheaton, Micah Ballard, Sunnylyn Thibodeaux
SATURDAY readers: Rob Carney, Ken Wheaton, April Fallon, Micah Ballard, Sunnylyn Thibodeaux

So come on out. It’ll be great to see you.

Also: Sorry if I’m not showing enough respect to the UL Ragin Cajun football schedule. Geaux Cajuns!