Packed up most of the 2005 journals. Found a few I hadn't actually looked at yet, whoops. It turns out we have a coffee table. The living room is coming into its own, finally.

My new rationalization for reading every journal I can get my hands on, as opposed to those prepared and endorsed by what I used to think of as "my team": Index funds outperform managed funds over time. No monopoly on beauty or intelligence. The problem is, I'm already about four to six months behind on my projects! the show, The Hat, essays pledged to magazines. And now I have new ideas for projects rattling around my head. For example.

Pleasantly surprised by Alyssa Wolf's and Carrie McGath's books -- there is an essay waiting to be written about the new gothic, how it has takers from across what used to be thought of as a political spectrum of styles. Thinking back to the first remarks about Brenda Shaughnessy's book (I have the idea that's where the term new gothic was first floated) and on through the work of Glenum, Boyer, Odelius, etc. It is a big et cetera.

The essay ought to qualify this tendency from the otherwise baroque work of Zucker, Pafunda, Greenberg (the gurlesque?), the piercing the clarifying sententia of Susan Hutton and others. Ali's poems, J.H. Gailey's, Brenda Coultas's prose, where do these go? Are there men whose work fits the descriptions? David Dodd Lee takes dark turns but he's more of a naturalist (not to mention an optimist). Kasey and Drew are definitively flarfy, as is Katie, tho I could see a place for Katie in among...

Time's up. Talk to you later.