Thank you for your kind letter,

It is so rarely that The Foundation is on the end of getting gotten one that makes good use of politeness, even as careful as The Foundation is to write with positivity. Uncommon is the received letter that does not end with “you b*st*rds,” “rot in h*ll” or other such rudeness. It is silly really, what good would it do anyone to have The Foundation rotting in h*ll? Very little. None. How could The Foundation “award a chosen Fouled with the gene therapy necessary to normalize” each year? It couldn’t. It could not.

And how does The Foundation respond to this abuse? With love, love always, and hope! “Sorry you feel so slighted,” The Foundation writes, “better luck next year, think of this reply as big warm hug, unless, of course, you are one of The Fouled with no arms, if so then think of it as an encouraging pat on the head.” It is hard to love The Fouled but The Foundation does! It is evident Message Writer recognizes how hard it is: for this you are thanked.

Some criticize The Foundation for not doing more. This is understood. It is no secret that high profits were reaped from the industries that caused The Misfortune, including by many firms who provide The Foundation with its funding, but this is, as they say, neither here nor there. It is not The Foundation that left tens of thousands with no eyes or webbed legs or an extra nose. Given enough years, it is indeed the hope of The Foundation to cure all its wretched ones. The Foundation will need many, many years though, and asks The Fouled to remain patient.

It may bore you to hear so much that does not address the immediate concerns of Message Writer. “What good are your words,” it is asked, “when armless I cannot even open doors or guide straws into the juice boxes of my children?” The Foundation sympathizes with how difficult juice boxes can be. Do not despair: The Foundation will take Your Message into consideration before making its final decision. It pains The Foundation to make such difficult choices, but alas it must make them anyway. Perhaps this is what makes The Foundation different from Message Writer? Ha-ha: It is it not The Foundation’s position to speculate.

In future times maybe things could be different, maybe The Foundation would not have to say “no” to so many and “yes” to so few, maybe The Foundation could raise every Applicant like a favored son in its two thick arms (made thick by chopping wood and other such outdoorsness) and say, “yes you, yes beautiful you, I love you so you are loved.”

The Foundation must be going now. The Foundation will stay in touch.

Until then, here are some developments since we last met proper:

Back in December I got tapped by Barnes & Noble to write material for their nook e-reader, resulting in the deeply helpful “Meatless Alternatives for Your Solstice Ritual.“

Then in February,  the Shit Creek Review picked up my poem “Plague Bird” for their War and Rumors of War Issue.

Most recently, however, I had my story “Hands” appear in the spring issue of Crosscurrents (alongside a photo by the multi-talented Michelle Leung) and won the University’s Barry Bauska Award, recognizing “the most outstanding senior English major with an emphasis in creative writing” each year.

All pretty nice considering I haven’t written anything new in about six months. Oh well, better get to it.

You’re replacing the bandage for the night, and she’s dragging a finger across her eye, pinching out a contact lens. You wince for her, and she reminds you how brave it was to get the tag.

“Think of what a pioneer you are, like Shackleton, like the Curies. Didn’t you want to be a pioneer?”

It’s true, you agree, you just didn’t have the grades.

“Forget about the grades. Those belong to the ugly past with the rest of this country. Ugly, ugly. Past, past. We’re in the future now.”

The future itches on warm days, though, and near power lines it buzzes in your arm.

“It’s adjusting,” she says, “you’ll adjust.”

In bed you try to think of anything but the stitches, and you remember when you first moved here. ‘Adjusting’ was what your folks called it when your stomach made knots that kept you home from school. You had your own word of course, convinced the kids who called you names were adulterating your lunches. You turn to tell her what an imagination you used to have, but she’s already asleep.

It’s easy to trust the judgment of someone like her, someone who just lies down and sleeps without thinking about stupid kids stuff, even if it gives you an itchy arm sometimes. That might sound wrong, but with the tag she’ll know what you meant. In the morning she can see all the Devotion Points the tag recorded, and won’t have to hear your clumsy words, which sound wrong mostly, you both admit. You guess that’s what it means to be in love, to lose yourself a little for someone else, so you can be better or at least closer to right, but the stitches still hurt and you want to tell someone, and you’re not sure how you’re going to sleep, or if you ever can.

If you didn’t catch it, Bygone Bureau ran some of my humor last Monday: I See That You’ve Noticed My Cape.

I’ve also started writing for Oregon Music News, a resource that promises to solve your boredom needs more comprehensively. If you’ve ever found yourself flipping through three different papers looking for shows, I’d suggest you check OMN out.

Working on one other project that should be pretty rad if it all pans out. Let’s keep it our little secret until then.

Narrowing it down to ten movies, albums, books, comics and television shows I can name as my favorite. No asterisks, no ties.

Movies:

1. The Third Man
2. Repo Man
3. Gummo
4. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
5. The Royal Tennenbaums
6. Robocop
7. Touch of Evil
8. Hana-bi
9. Paper Moon
10. Le Samouraï

Albums:

1. Apocalypse Dudes, Turbonegro
2. Shock Troops, Cock Sparrer
3. Pink Moon, Nick Drake
4. Crossing the Red Sea, The Adverts
5. Feel the Darkness, Poison Idea
6. In the Aeroplane over the Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel
7. The Harder They Come, Various
8. Dopethrone, Electric Wizard
9. Dr. Octagonecologyst, Dr. Octagon
10. The Boys, The Boys

Books:

1. Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey
2. The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. Dubliners by James Joyce
5. Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver
6. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
7. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
8. The Stranger by Albert Camus
9. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
10. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Comics:

1. The Death of Speedy Ortiz by Jaime Hernandez
2. Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes
3. Black Hole by Charles Burns
4. Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
5. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
6. Buddy Does Seattle by Peter Bagge
7. Tintin: Explorers on the Moon by Hergé
8. Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware
9. Good-Bye by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
10. Summer Blonde by Adrian Tomine

Television:

1. The Wire
2. Arrested Development
3. Seinfeld
4. Breaking Bad
5. Trailer Park Boys
6. Wonder Showzen
7. Curb Your Enthusiasm
8. Mr. Show
9. News Radio
10. Eastbound & Down

Humor I wrote on McSweeney’s today: Has Bell Invented a “Telegraph Killer”?

An epic doom odyssey for your earholes: Forever Heavy

]]> http://hudsonhongo.com/2009/11/19/mcsweeneys-and-slow-metal/feed/ 2 hudsonhongo http://hudsonhongo.com/2009/11/11/i-cannot-accept-this-award/ http://hudsonhongo.com/2009/11/11/i-cannot-accept-this-award/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:44:51 +0000 hudsonhongo http://hudsonhongo.wordpress.com/?p=501 ]]> Originally appeared on The Morning News

It’s a real surprise to be on stage here tonight, and I’d love to be able to tell all of you how much of an honor this is, but the truth is that I cannot accept this award. I cannot accept this award with so many equally deserving others out there doing good deeds more significant than my own. Most importantly perhaps, I cannot accept this award because I am not Danny Boyle and I did not direct Slumdog Millionaire.

I cannot accept this award because you are chasing me and I need both hands free to climb the scaffolding. I’d like to note that it’s workmanship like this scaffolding, built by the hundreds of set designers and electricians behind the scenes, that keeps the magic of movies alive, and me from falling. None of this would be possible without you guys or without Mr. Crenshaw, my fifth-grade PE teacher. Mr. Crenshaw, you’re the one who taught me how to believe in myself, and how to shimmy up a rope, and how to lead my shots when playing dodge ball, or in this case throwing stage lights into a crowd. Thank you, thank all of you.

I cannot accept this award because the shock from your Tasers has rendered my body incapable of doing anything more than flopping wildly and vomiting. It’s hard for me to admit it, but voltage like this will always be stronger than me or the hallucinogens I ingested before taking the stage. Praise for these violent spasms is almost certainly owed to you and not the PCP I so crudely synthesized in my bathtub. I cannot thank you enough, or at all, the electrical current being so powerful.

If there was one thing I could have done differently it would be lifting more weights or learning karate, but if there were two they would be learning karate and letting you know how important you’ve been to me along the way. It seems like it’s been years since I first used the press pass I stole from you, Ms. Times photographer, or cut a lock of hair from your head, Ted Danson, but that is probably part of my chemically induced fugue state. Even if it hasn’t been so long, you have still been extraordinarily helpful and I never could have made it this far without you, despite your best efforts and those of the L.A.P.D.

I cannot accept this award because these restraints are heavy and hinder movement, which I assume is how they were designed to fit. It makes my heart swell with joy to know that chains like these can still be devised, manufactured, and employed right here in America. Some people like to bad-mouth industry in this country, but I look to the law enforcement and correctional sectors and see not only good old American ingenuity, but also the majority of my next 10-20 years. To be in the company of such consummate professionals is an honor, even when you are beating me as savagely as you are now. You have my endless admiration and, now that I am being transferred into holding, my shoes and belt.

I cannot accept this award because you are a pigeon, there are bars separating us, and there is no award. None of these details, I must stress, are any fault of yours, but are circumstances we must nevertheless confront. Perhaps when I was younger and less incarcerated I could have taken such a prize with the graciousness and dignity demanded, but I do not have the time now, because I have some very specific instructions to give you and they must be followed precisely.

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/spoofs_satire/i_cannot_accept_this_award.php

I’ll begin by saying that I’m glad to see so many of you here today. I may not have been as kind or as loyal or as sexually exclusive as I could have been to all of you, and still you’ve come in my time of need. Many of you must have been quite shocked to learn that someone like me has cancer, someone who still looks as muscular and vital as on the day you last gave him birthday money or a loan or a bed to sleep in. Afterward you probably contemplated on how old you’ve become since then, how flabby and gray you look in the reflection of the 8 by 10 color glossy I enclosed with the letters.

It may shock you more still to learn that I don’t have cancer, that it was a printing error, and I am perfectly healthy, almost certainly healthier than any of you. I apologize for not correcting it sooner, but I sprang for Papyrus Elite, a card stock too fine for any correcting fluid available on the consumer market. And perhaps it isn’t the right time now, with all of you reflecting on your own inevitable mortality, but as long as you are all here I have some things I’d like to tell you.

To my family: I want you to know that I care for all of you deeply and despite how the memoir was titled I’ve never thought that “[You] Should All Be Sent Into Space and Remotely Detonated.” I chose that title at the insistence of my editor, who assured me it was a line from Yeats. This, I suppose, is what I get for wanting to sound literary. I’ve always thought you’d be more at home at the bottom of the sea than in the heavens anyway, and if I had a second chance I’d have the title reflect that.

I’d particularly like to apologize to my aunts, uncles and cousins for referring to you as “ants,” “uggos” and “turds” in the book. This was again the fault of my editor, a man so unwise as to trust my manuscript, margin notes and e-mails more than his own judgment. I’ve been informed that a revision is not possible for the paperback or translated editions, but I’m told that “turd” sounds quite beautiful in Urdu. If any of my immediate family was here I’d have some words for them too, but lacking that I will instead give you this gesture­– to reproduce at your leisure should you see them.

To my friends: I’d like to thank you for all the support you’ve given me over the years, some of you more than others. I’m talking to you Clark; you and your family, especially your sister, have done so much for me, especially your sister. Not just in my public life but in my home, and at your home, and at your family’s lake house, and even at school and behind the school. And I’m talking to you Steve, who was always there for me, even when people found your adoration of me “fawning” or “pathetic” and finally began to question your sexual orientation. I never questioned, Steve; I always knew exactly what you were.

And to my exes in the audience: I have loved all of you and could still love any of you, preferably simultaneously. You are the ones who always believed in me and not in each other, even when the evidence was conclusive. I have never called myself a clever man, leaving that task to many admirers, but I never needed to be one around any of you. I only lament the distance that has grown between us, though I can see many of you are doing your best to bridge it, inch by waist inch.

In closing, I’d like to thank you all again for coming, though I see many of you have already left, no doubt having to attend to the important business of beating your children or finding new applications for ranch dressing. You have all been as kind to me as I have to you, which reminds of a song I learned as a child about a magic penny. I can’t quite remember how the song goes but let me assure you now: the magic penny is mine and none of you can have it, none of you.

http://bygonebureau.com/2009/10/28/perhaps-this-isn’t-the-right-time/

When we met Julie couldn’t cook any better than I could. There was a contempt we had for corporal pleasures, not just eating but alcohol and smoking too. Even dancing and swimming; all those lower ecstasies. Our worst enemy was sleep, always threatening to keep us from each other, but most nights we’d win, giddy on ideas.

And after we finished school we felt a vindication, our peers tumbling elseways, lost and worn, while Julie and I were so close to something big, a new aesthetic that was ours. My grant bought a studio space and before I left each morning she’d make me toast and a coffee, timed to both be hot, even though I knew the coffee took longer.

I haven’t had anywhere to go early in awhile. Now it’s Julie who must get up, shower and put on that outfit that used to be funny but hasn’t been lately. And we don’t talk so much now, but exchange notes and papers. I dreamt that today I’d find one signed “Management,” but there’s no evidence of any human hand; the article doesn’t even name a reporter.

It says that humans didn’t rise from four limbs onto two to conserve energy like they’d thought, the hypothesis that said we needed more oxygen for our brains, but that we needed free hands to bring goods to mates. A scientist calls this “monogamy” under a bold line that says “Food for Sex,” and I’m rinsing my cup where Julie must have stood, after making coffee, before toasting bread.