What I'm going to do after college

yesterday i was in barnes and nobles spending my 50 dollars in gift cards. (Got Antiquity by Norman Cantor, The Two Treatises of Locke, a bargain bin bio of Andrew Jackson and a bargain bin book on pandemics.)

My Algebra teacher from the summer semester was there. He is this weird middle aged black guy who wears home made knitted corn flower stocking caps, shirts that have skulls on them and smokes black and miles and is really weird.

He kept asking me what I was going to do with my political science degree.

While he is talking to me he is holding a papers covered in complex number arrangements full of letters and dashes that mean nothing to me.

I didn't feel like talking so i said "get a job"

he said i should i should go on CNN or write books or work in politics

i just stood there

it seriously has never occurred to me to work in politics

oh my major is poetical science(best typo of my life) with an Applied Sociology minor.

i don't know if that means anything.

I was eating an almond joy this morning and thought, "I want to pick coconuts."

I googled, "Jobs picking coconuts"

This came up. The article states that monkeys actually pick the coconuts.

I feel really jealous of those monkeys.

then I thought I might work at the Hersey Plant but then I found out it is in PA, and I hate PA.

I feel like if you live in PA you have to wear a Steeler's jersey even if you are a hipster.

Then I thought I wanted a job feeding reindeer, I googled it and nothing came up.

I feel like if I could feed reindeer for 40 to 50 hours a week I would be really happy. I think reindeer are really pretty animals.

For a moment I wanted to be like awesome, like a pirate or maybe a mercenary that works for Black Water, like a badass dude that carries a gun and shoots bad guys and makes tons of money and is like sexy with a six pack. But then I found out I'm a totally out of shape and suffering from back problems and have no will to travel the world and shoot people. In the end I'm just some guy who watches netflix with his girlfriend and smokes too many cigarettes.

Then I thought I wanted to be a writer and I googled that and it said I should become informed on teenage vampires or young children that ride broomsticks and play a game called quidditch. Then it said to get an MFA in creative writing and compete with forty million yahoos who also got MFAs in creative writing to get a job that pays less than a manager does at Panera Bread.

Then I went to the craiglist of Santa Fe New Mexico of where I want to move and I found something called "receptionist coordinator" which pays 13.25 an hour.

And then I was like DAMN!!!!

That's it

receptionist coordinator

now I can answer with pride what my future will be on this planet

next time someone asks I will answer with The Serious Face of Ambition

receptionist coordinator

Pop Serial Trailer

Pop Serial made a trailer.

Pop Serial features the biggest names in indie writing.

This is a serious moment in the history of literature.

email "Stephen Dierks" and ask him how to get a copy.

Salvia Christmas

Threw christmas eve party

for some reason somebody brought salvia

room starting pounding in on me

somebody spit and totally lost reality

two people are just staring weirdly now

i'm sitting here now

alone

next to a christmas tree

a glass of rum and coke

and a dvd of a fire burning with crackling sounds

my head is starting to pound

oh my god

the heating just kicked on

sounds really intense

have a headache

also feel really horny

i think if my girlfriend was here, i would jump on her naked and do many things

oh my god

this is a strange christmas

everybody left the party

i'm alone

i wish jordan castro was here

if jordan castro was here

i would know what to do

jordan castro would tell me to lay down and calm down

I've been doing buddhist breathing exercises trying to calm down

this is funny

my fingers feel like rubber gumbi like substances extending from my body

i feel like my sentences are all synthetic and not analytic

Review of Restrepo

watched the movie Restrepo while wrapping christmas presents.

Here is the trailer

You should watch it\

it is free on netflix

blog was gone for a day

my blog disappeared yesterday.

a lot of panic

guess some robot that destroys spam blogs cancelled out a fuck load of blogs yesterday morning.

Back on now

Christmas baby Jesus miracle

When People think you don't Exist

Several people in the online world have wondered if I even existed.

It is strange when people don't think you exist.

You are very sure and convinced of your existence.

At least I always have been.

I've never been into idea of the Maya, Idealism, solipsism, or I live in a crystal ball that a God is holding.

I've always been convinced that other people and things exist.

I've never entertained the idea that I can walk through a wall.

Never occurred to my dad was something in my imagination.

Or God's imagination that is reflected in my mind.

Hunger and physical pain always shows me the realness of things.

But why would people think I lack existence?

I think what the anon poster said clues me in, he said "blue collar"

In America white blue collar children, especially for blue collar men, writing is not endorsed.

Actually being artsy is not endorsed as a viable thing to do.

In black, latino and jewish culture being artsy is fine. No matter how poor you are, it is cool.

It is cool to be in a band when you are white and blue collar, if you play some kind of loud music.

I remember being young and my dad coming in my room and screaming that Led Zeppelin was a bunch of assholes. I received no positive reinforcement from even listening to Led Zeppelin. I pretty much only got positive reinforcement from learning how to fix things like motorcycles, car, and house things like putting a roof on the garage.

A blue collar man should have some talents, fixing things.

The key words to look at are 'fixing things.'

Not 'making things.'

'making things' were for other people. Blue Collar people do not 'make', they 'fix', they 'operate', but do not 'make.'

But I would say it comes from the type of life they live.

They go to work at a factory.

They don't design the machines, they don't design the products, they have no influence on the creative process.

They walk over to a machine and 'do what they are told.'

My dad was a butcher. He would go to work, the meat would come, he would cut it, package it and it was over.

They can have fun at work.

Make jokes, join fantasy football teams, talk about their kids. But they 'make nothing'.

It is a real 'do what you are told culture.'

When i think about some of the best creative minds from the youngstown white blue collar culture I've known, they've become like engineers and not poets. They got engineering degrees from YSU and went on to work at places helping to design products.

I would not say that the creative spirit did not live in blue collar people.

They are creative with their fantasy football picks, with their opinions on sports teams, with their opinions on movies and music. They have lots of opinions. And opinions are a form of creativity.

But 'making things' they do not consider their department.

I think it is like, growing up, in a nice little blue collar town, none of our parents did anything creative. None of them really read anything that surpassed Stephen King in complexity.

None of them had a stash of poetry hidden in the basement.

None of them as adults made little movies in the yard, made ceramic pots. My mother knitted blankets.

My mother also wrote for the union newspaper at her factory.

So maybe i got into writing because of my mother writing for the union newspaper.

And like all little boys I want to make my mother happy.

someone posted this on my wikipedia

Someone put this on my wikipedia, i took it off because I don't know how factual it is.

It is really funny.

I can't believe someone has heard of the drunk franciscan though


Noah has frequently denounced writers who use large, latinate, polysyllabic adjectives and adverbs as upper class frauds, and maintains that he himself was raised under extremely brutal circumstances, in which reading and writing were frowned upon by his horrible mother and father. His stories in The Drunk Franciscan, however, evince a very different set of literary sensiblities, and employ words like "manifest" correctly and grammatically. How could the same writer, after six years of dilligently reading and writing, actually demonstrate a marked deterioration in his linguistic abilities? Well, in one of two ways: (A) by making a conscious choice to write below his or her own abilities in the service of appearing more authentically "raw" (B) by suffering a minor stroke.

More Poems on The Lake Effect

The Lake Effect Poetry Blog presenting voices from The Great Lakes Region

i need to get his linked

somebody link that is famous

like Dennis Cooper or Bret Easton Ellis

Obama Concedes to Bush's Tax Cuts

This is idiotic

dumb

stupid

fucking retarded

a complete lack of focus

Barack Obama should tell everyone they need to learn how to share

and grow up

and stop living like self-indulgent animals

he should say fuck it to the American Empire

I didn't vote for this

I don't think people who voted for Barack Obama wanted this

I don't think we have a procedural problem, the structure of our government and constitution has survived a variety of problems.

I think the sociology of what it means to be an American politician is really, not fucked up, not stupid, but 'wacky.' I think to get into their great politics club you need to be an ass kissing douche bag.

Or maybe America has become a bunch of ass kissing douche bags.

Started a new blog

The blog is called The Lake Effect

It is here.

I've invited several people to join that live in The Great Lakes Region.

If you live near the The Great Lakes, you can join.

email me at noah.cicero@gmail.com

Hung out with Andrew Weatherhead and Jordan Castro last night

I wrote a poem about last night

POEM ABOUT LAST NIGHT

Lebron James,
Statistically done good
Need to leave at certain time
She went upstairs to sleep

Internet only works in specific locations
It doesn't work
Metaphor

"Ball don't lie"
Ball do not lie!
A strange command to give

"Make characters come alive"
Package of candy thrown into living room
from the sculptor major

stevie wasn't always in Fleetwood Mac
Have you read Moby Dick?
Pizza

woke up to snow and a long december

Now I can listen to a Long December.

I think empirically I had a pretty good year.

I've seen some other people fuck some shit up.

Which made me sad.

Woke up to snow though

a nice icy whiteness covering everything.

Can't wait to hear this song on the radio.