I have several working excuses as to why this blog has not been updated in more than 3 months (feel free to pick one): A botched attempt at a novel, a writer’s workshop at NYU that has resulted in three newly completed short stories, and a completed studio album that I recorded with my band. Not to mention the myriad responsibilities of work (the magazine’s monthly page-count has gone up and so have my hours - in 2009 no less, who would’a thunk it?). Seriously, I’ve been busy.

Here’s where I hop onto today’s popular platitudes of change. I’ve updated the site, including the addition of all my previously published fiction for your unfettered perusal (just click on the ‘Fiction’ tab near the upper left for downloadable PDFs). I will also be injecting myself with the blogger’s cyber-equivalent of an infinity/super-soldier formula which will force me, via a series of Pavlovian shock responses (henceforth referred to as the “Protestant’s guilt”) to somehow return this site to its previous productivity standards. It is spring, after all. Stay tuned.

Obama’s war on special interest groups has received praise for its populist tenor and condemnation from those in the Washington influencer circuit. But it reached a boiling point on Jan. 21, when he imposed an executive order that seeks to remove all lobbyist influence from the White House.

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You know, some of you pussies might find that it will do wonders to your character if you braved the cold every once in a while and got out of the house. Seriously, life is too short.

We’re playing a show this Thursday at The Charleston (174 Bedford Ave between N. 7th Street and N. 8th Street) in Williamsburg with freakish Philadelphians Bubonic Bear and Monolith. Show starts at 9 p.m. or thereabouts. Cover is a cool $5.

This will be our last show for a while, as the following months will be spent writing new material and recording all the stuff we’ve written so far. Just how long we’ve waited to write such delightfully trite copy as the previous sentence will be our secret alone, but let it be known that if you miss this show, we don’t want to hear any whining.

A list of some of the best stuff I read, heard, saw and otherwise empirically ingested (voluntarily, or in some cases otherwise) in 2008.

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A last-minute story I penned the other week has somehow made its way into the pages of Litro, a free monthly literary magazine in London. If you live in the London area please pick one up (word has it the issue has hit ‘the streets’ as of today). Available locations are listed on their Website. Apparently this issue (#81) is their ‘special’ holiday edition, which no doubt has given me cause to be extra festive this season. At least that’s the excuse I’m telling everybody.

For the rest of you, an online version of this story is available here.

On a cursory glance, I’ve already found a typo. Shit.

Sound as they may be, Obama’s recent administrative picks make an easy target for conservative blowhards who claim that ’09 is shaping up to be revival of the Clinton years.

Read the rest of this article here.

In case you weren’t aware, change is the call of the times. Taking 52.3 percent of the popular vote, President-elect Barack Obama is the first Democrat since Carter to win the popular election by more than 50 percent. Debate its raison d’être until the cows come home, what’s not up for debate is the strong connect the parlance has found with the American people. However, it’s really the bold overhauls made in the House and Senate that will allow the new administration to usher in some serious changes next year.

Read the rest of this article here.

Now that we’ve had a week to let it sink in, I wanted to mull over some of the reasons why McCain et al. weren’t able to maintain the GOP’s eight-year grip on the White House. I wrote this for my friend Tom’s blog and you can check it out Here.

The Immediate post-election season can be a real bore. With my Obama euphoria now settling into what can only be described as a state of relaxed contentment, I’m slowly beginning to recover from the general anxiety and Pavlovian shock dealt to my fluttering eyelids from staring at poll figures for days on end (oh-drama!). In its stead, my attention span has turned to the dumber pleasures, and I spent an hour or so today constructing haikus from the hundreds of spam emails that fill my in-box. Pathetic, yes, but damned entertaining all the same. Check it out.

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