• NaNoWriMo starts in a few weeks. If you’re in the Cape Cod area, Laurie Higgins would like to hear from you.
• Gerald Hiken’s an actor in Palo Alto who performs as Proust, Auden, and Stein in his living room. The public is invited on Fridays and Saturdays.
• Alice Walker has received a Lifetime Literary Achievement Award from the Enoch Pratt library. Pratt could not attend, too busy passing the ball to Pratt, who kicked it back to Pratt, diving under Pratt and scoring, with Pratt held in low regard.
• This is a lame bulleted list of headlines. I apologize. The blog is vacated until next week.

‘Twere it possible to pluck
The grimy residue from recent oceans
Or to stand resolute with sturdy sea legs
Upon a foundation shaky in its firm conviction

Their woes were pedantic
They used their resilient muscles
To plant tumers that would not grow

Transparent tears stinging upon flesh
The hard work of nothingness
A void to ensnare defiant dreamers
Through the dull blue orb

But the yeoman
Surrounded by their poisonous tongues
Anthracite ventricles
Glutinous voices
Ended the vicious cycle
By striking the flint of his ambition

The yeoman walked alone
Through treacherous copses and corpses
Never abandoning the light
Just beyond the vale

Aging ungracefully
The yeoman steered his stead
To a cloudy clearing
Soaring rather than souring

Hunter S. Thompson weighs in on the current presidential race.

Don Paterson hopes to revive the aphorism: “More than anything, the aphorism tries desperately hard to be memorable. (Of course, this is the aim of all writing, but usually we make some attempt to conceal the desperation. Another reason why aphorisms, when they fall, fall very hard indeed.) But perhaps they also reflect our conviction that all the most important things we need to say must find a way of inhabiting the single breath, the instant, if they’re to shock awake our real, breathing, present moment – because if we don’t stay alive to that, we’re dead to everything.”

J-Fly has a cool concept she lifted from a film teacher.

Step One: Name your five favorite films off the top of your head and write brief summary.

1. O Lucky Man!: Guy hopes to make money as coffee salesman, engages in debauchery, wanders around English countryside, gets set up and booked, tries to proselytize, eventually smiles.

2. After Hours: Go nowhere word processor sees cute girl, starts talking, goes to Soho, gets involved in deranged New York universe, can’t get home, but is forced by unseen god to take charge.

3. The Wizard of Oz: Dislocated girl arrives in fantasy world, has adventures, meets friends, goes on quest, finds self, concludes “there’s no place like home.”

4. The General (1927): Go nowhere engineer can’t enlist, has his train stolen, pursues it like crazy, has adventures, proves himself hero, gets girl, finds inner self.

5. Brazil: Man stuck in drab bureaucratic job in totalitarian state dreams of girls, gets caught in plot, and finds escape in his own mind.

Step Two: “Chances are, those films will tell essentially the same story. And chances are, your films will tell that story too. Because that is your story.”

Yup. Common theme here is a passive human stuck in routine who goes through a series of incredible adventures and eventually finds self.

[UPDATE: This may have been accidentally pilfered from Cinetrix. Whatever the case, send some sugar her way.]