transmissions from a compromised antenna

Please check out my new article that's up on the website of the CUNY Advocate. It raises questions about graduate school and presents current students with some questions that might help them determine whether the academic path is the right one for them. Feel free to distribute widely and wildly!

—James

I'm going through sort of a dark phase right now... And I don't mean dark in a good, sexy way with pounding electronic bass, either. I just can't seem to motivate myself to do all the stuff I should be doing. Finding it very hard to write, although I'm trying to force myself to. In a really sick way I miss working for the various groups who tell me what to do and then I follow orders. What I want to develop is the ability to follow my own orders. 

One of the interesting things about magazine/newspaper journalism that's different from the fiction world is that you almost never write the title of your piece. I really like the one that the Indypendent came up with for my recent article on the dilemmas of fundraising at what they called "ABC No Rico." I'm liking the humor of that.

In other news, I'm too busy these days to eat or sleep so please forgive my absence in the usual circles. I'm working full day shifts at the upcoming Left Forum, where I'm the art director, and then late nights at a freelance gig. I'll be back in a week or two.

Great time in Philly as usual this weekend, although things went a little different than I expected. One of the most fun and exciting things was just going to the Digital Ferret store. The whole record shop is dedicated to dark electronic stuff with a bit of old-school industrial, neo-Celtic, ambient, power noise, and so on. Also great selection of t-shirts, magazines and DVDs. New York City, for some reason (and I do have my theories as to what that reason might be), just can't support subcultural institutions like Digital Ferret, Relapse Records, and the rest of the Philly scene. There's plenty of jazz shops and weird old record shops, but they don't cater so much to weird, marginalized cultural forms.

 

In Philly tomorrow for Dracula's Ball and then, later, the Philadelphia Experiment party. Should be totally amazing. I'll let you know.

For those in NYC, my friend Jessica Ryan has organized a benefit for the Brooklyn Young Mothers' Collective this Wednesday. Benefit will take place at 7:30 pm at the Cake Shop. That's 152 Ludlow in the Lower East Side.

As Jessica writes: "Raffles could win you a fake chocolate cake autographed by Amy Sedaris and other sweet prizes or get your Valentine a real cake at the bake sale. Enjoy musicians, comedians, poets & a ventriloquist all performing to honor the Love of the Single Mom."




I have a class so you won't see me there until a little later but I hope some of you can make it.

Hey All,

This came out in print a few days ago but just appeared on the Web today. Unlike some of the other things I've put in print lately, I really slaved over this one, which tells the history of ABC No Rio through the imprints that remain in the grimy details of the building on 156 Rivington. Comments welcome as always.

So my first real piece of reportage on the election is now up here.

There were some interesting elements of the reporting process that didn't make it into the story. The one that most sticks with me is that the Obama people resisted the category of "Latino," which my editor had pretty much told me to run with, saying "We don't put a label on everyone." The guy at the Obama office was also proud to tell me one of his primary Latina organizers had also worked for Pataki, a Republican. All the people in the Clinton camp were much more comfortable with the categories: Yes we're out canvassing Latinos, and yes we're all Democrats.

It's snowing outside today. Beautiful but a little inconvenient. In other news, my story "How Lonesome a Life Without Nerve Gas" just appeared on the Israeli science-fiction site Bli Panika (Don't Panic). It's the first time my work's been published in translation.

Had my last class with Sam Tanenhaus of The New York Times yesterday and seeing him straighten out myriad tiny flaws and errors in my classmates' writing really brought home the obsessive attention to grammar, sound, and narrative one has to bring to bear if you want your writing to hold up. It's so easy to relax and let weaknesses slip though.

I went home and looked over a couple of my recent published works, desperately wishing that I could have one more go-around on them. But then, even Ballard says he never reads over any of his own books or stories because he finds too many mistakes. So at least I'm in decent company.

I'll be at the big Evolver party at Jivamukti yoga tomorrow night. If anyone's planning on going drop me a line

Is up here.

Feel free to argue or add your own thoughts in the comments.

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/pwl/james_trimarco.php

I was leafing through the new Harpers last night and came across something that really threw me for a loop. A set of little vignettes about Russian soldiers stationed outside of Grozny in Chechnia. Harpers titled the section "The Things They Ate," in dark allusion to Tim O'Brien's Vietnam memoir "The Things They Carried" and each of the three sections details an incident of eating something you wouldn't have wanted to eat unless you had to. If you thought the U.S. treated its soldiers like shit, just have a look at this.

The work has a combination of hardness and sensitivity that can only come from experience. But he takes control of the material by off on key bits of information until just the right time, sculpting the stories into the shape of jokes, although the horror of the scene transmutes the humor into a more existential sort of sensation. Memorable sentence: "He was well fed, but not as well fed as the other Grozny dogs that went out of their minds as they gnawed on corpses in the ruins."

Probably it's the first time in years I've read a selection of someone's writing, looked at the writer's name, and known I would remember that name for the rest of my life.

Arkady Babchenko's novel One Soldier's War will be published in February by Grove Press.

So yeah... after seven years of invading, bombing, threatening, torturing, and detaining Muslims—fostering waves of anti-West sentiment unknown since the Crusades—our President decides that in his last year he's going to solve the Israel-Palestine problem. It's nice that he's calling for an end to the 1967 occupation, but can either side really take that seriously coming from him? You can just feel him reaching for the history books. Best of luck with that.

Are you hardcore enough?

Back in New York and everything is gray or brick brown. It took an hour and a half for the cab to get me home through endless BQE traffic. I came home and ate and passed out into a sort of coma and only now, some ten hours later, are the myriad things I need to do taking form and reality again. Things are good, though. New Years in New York should be amazing this time. Many friends will be here. Year of the snake, I hear. Auspicious...

Holy shit, peops!

Last night was a big whirlwind tour of old-school Florida fun. Bhall's family was having a little family get together, so my sister and I drove up to Largo to sip home-brewed beer and look at these hilarious glamour shot pics of Brian in high school, beaming at the camera from under a huge curly afro. Some old friends who I hadn't seen in ages came around from their digs in LA, and around 10 my sister went home and the rest of us went to visit a local artist who lives in St. Pete now. We picked up the gifted songwriter Alex Hooks and drank and talked some more, until around midnight when Merc and Syd came up and asked me if I still wanted to go to the Castle.

Yes I did yes I did yes I did. There is no club in New York like it. The people there are all about the culture and the music and the fetish stuff is wild and for real but anybody can feel accepted. I got up on that dance floor and shook it to the dark sounds with some graceful stranger in pigtails and black lipstick and hours went by in a state of pure techno-gothic bliss. It might have been nice to talk to more people but it was one of those nights when I communicate with movement and not with words. Alex had never been to the Castle before and it was awesome to see him get down too. Merc drove us home and we ate gnarly Taco Bell nachos with Alex's dog, which he says is 150 years old in dog years.

Fucking amazing night. Thanks to everybody who made it happen.

I encountered some drama this past week when, just as my sister and I were supposed to leave for Florida she was admitted to the hospital with what looked like spinal meningitis! My mom flew up the next day but told me to keep my flight so I could see my dad in New Tampa. They took a spinal tap and speculated that she might even have Lymes meningitis, which is when the Lymes disease pathogen infects the spine. Suffice it to say I was extremely worried. After the spinal tap she couldn't lift her head for a couple of days. My dad and I were calling my mom every couple of hours from the surreal, deeply Ballardian gated community where he lives.

Turns out she's pretty much okay though. She has the viral type of meningitis but they've treated it and declared it basically harmless. It's the bacterial sort that hits the brain and kills people. In other news she got a great job as an invertebrate zoologist at the Museum of Natural History. Spinal cords and un-spinal cords everywhere these days!

Flying in triangle formation over Williamsburg, Brooklyn. So weird.

In other news, I got drunk the other night and made a complete horse's ass of myself. Man, put the booze in the cabinet. M.I.A. was totally kick-ass on Saturday though. Like a cross between Madonna and Che Guevara. Then we had a great time in Philly driving around listening to Dulce Liquido and turning sharp corners. The next day, we went to the original Relapse Records store (independent metal) and to a goth fashion shop called "Armed and Dangerous." Between all the Christmas gifts I've picked up so far, it's looking to be a gothic, satanic, even fascist Christmas.

So little boys and girls, I hope you've all been very nice!

Because I MAY have a free second ticket to see the British-Sri Lankan rap phenomenon in Philadelphia on Saturday December first. I am trying to get a date, sort of, but it's really more important to me to go with someone who actually listens to and digs M.I.A. My roommate's an obvious choice but he'll be busy stocking shelves  at Wal-Mart in New Jersey Saturday night.

So if you live in Philly or NYC and you like the M.I.A thang, let me know.

In other news, current writing projects include:

1. A memoir of some adventures in Prague revisited through the lens of Google Earth, moving towards a concept of the "techno-memoir"
2. A New York Review of Books-style book review of two non-fic books about the near future, one of which is almost entirely about robot sex. Or I could review two recent books about Sputnik and the Cold War space race. My teachers have told me to try to write more concretely and avoid abstractions so I might pick the second and then write the first one later for a funkier audience.
3. A propaganda piece urging graduate students to consider a series of hard questions about whether staying in graduate school will bring them anything resembling happiness and satisfaction.
4. Also contributing research to a piece on political caucuses for the Huffington Post. I'll make a note here when the piece appears on OffTheBus.