I'm doing a reading in Sacramento on 20 September 2005. It's part of La Raza Bookstore's Third  Tuesday Poetry Series, and it starts at 8:00 p.m.

The U.S. government is reviewing 72,000 cases in which veterans have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, claiming that misdiagnosis and fraud have inflated the numbers. Outraged vets say the plan is a callous attempt to cut the costs of an increasingly expensive war.

This post starts out with some cursing in the first sentence, which is always a fabulous way to start any piece of writing. Seriously, the next time that you have to write a resume or an affidavit or a sermon, try to work a fuck in there somewhere. Parishioners will fall out of their pews, yes, but they will be falling out because of pure transgressive joy.

...in the end, beyond the metaphors
We  can't help loving life.
—C.G. Hanzlicek 

In the world as Bunnatine Greenhouse sees it, people do the right thing. They stand up for the greater good and they speak up when things go wrong

It’s post-screening, and I’m over by the buffet table, eating the free food, when a young lady who works for KVPT comes up and starts talking about how much she liked my reading, Finally, I think, here’s a poetry groupie. I knew writing poems was going to pay off eventually.

Or you’re out in the 'hood, scoring some weed and—never mind, I’ve said too much.

Now, I figured that they were hunting high and low for Fresno writers if they had somehow managed to track me down, me with my one little book that barely sold before it stopped selling at all.

So I'm sitting here at the local Starbucks (they have a T-Mobile Hotspot; get off my back), listening to some music on my iBook and trying to get some writing done, when it occurred to me that it had been a while since I listed the songs that currently make up, "Really Sad Fiction-Writing Songs," the playlist I listen to when I'm trying to write. Here they are, ordered by play count.

The president departed Tuesday for his longest stretch yet away from
the White House, arriving at his Crawford ranch in the evening to clear
brush, visit with family and friends, and tend to some
outside-the-Beltway politics. By historical standards, it is the
longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years.