What's Coming Around the Ding-Dang

There are a number of people stopping by today to read yesterday's post, by the way. Hi. No one's saying much, though. If you were—ahem—interested in this sort of subject matter, as you seem to be, what kinds of discussions would you like to see here?

I've told you I'll be doing fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, reviews, and also general blog ephemera. Next week I'll have a review of Jayne Pupek's Tomato Girl, and in the weeks after a discussion of rednecks as portrayed by Hollywood and the media, in which we will have much to say of Deliverance and Kalifornia and Patrick Swayze and Billy Bob Thornton, and even the website (warning—NSFW—warning) Dixie Sluts, a site that inspired events in the novel I'm finishing (and yes, that's the last you'll see of me pimping my own stuff here; I have another site for that).

I'll update and publish a longish reading list I used for a honors course I taught several years ago that I called, in a bald attempt to get people to sign up, 'White Trash Literature.' I taught two sections of it eventually, as advanced composition courses. We read a deal of criticism and fiction, and watched films, in the process of analyzing how the world thinks of 'white trash' and what it believes it can deduce about you, just by the way you talk or the location of your birth or the fact that, heavens forfend, when you get excited, you may indeed lose your educated TV announcer voice and become. . . interesting to listen to. I'm not going to promise you all the posts will be pretty. I'd like to get some semi-scholarly material up here, too. At least semi-scholarly. It's nice to get off a rant once in a while, but some balance is good, so I can convince myself I'm considering every side of an argument. If you're interested in guesting here, hit me up. I have some stories to read later, too, when I'm not hacking up a lung. Thanks to everyone who's sent them to me.