Comments on: Healing Heart, Drunken Pit Bull: Making Peace

By: jeanna-na

jeanna-na — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:34:28 +0000

i remember the house. i remember the furniture. i remember the collage/painting. i don’t think i was at the party, though. i would remember that.

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:19:34 +0000

I’ve got a knife, and it’s a pretty sharp one. We can make Jeff get all personal and stuff.

I slash like a ninja –a very slow, somewhat overweight, and mostly drunk ninja. In fact, I handle a knife like a ninja handles a bowling ball.

By: Lonnie Bruner

Lonnie Bruner — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:59:14 +0000

@Jeff,

Yea, you’re right. I overreacted. Sorry.

By: kib

kib — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:10:10 +0000

Got here from Fazed and liked the story. Short and snappy with great imagery and original phrasing.

The “… for aesthetic reasons” made me laugh for real and rothko is right about it being a good line to read live.

The first paragraph lead me to expect a story leading up to the break-up, and it didn’t click for a while that is was happening way after. When she said “are you following us” I thought it was the first time you spoke with her, not well after the last.

Further to the live reading angle, there is an opportunity for a nice object-switch in the para where you pick up the ax handle. Something like “a giant hairy drunken beast isn’t going to sit and stay at the sight of an ax handle, and I was sure the pit-bull wouldn’t think much of it either.”

All right, gimme the high hat

By: rothko

rothko — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:10:13 +0000

Jeff – I’ve toyed with the idea of recording my posts and posting them as a podcast, along with the written entries. But in doing that, I realized some of the same things you pointed out in your previous post – about how writing something to be read and writing something to be heard are two different things and I wound up wanting to make changes to the post to make it more “spoken-word-friendly” and that just got complicated because then it didn’t “read” as well.

Anyway, I still may try this, but I was thinking … it would be kinda cool if you posted these as audio so we could hear them, too. And it would give you practice. Just a thought …

As for the piece, I like this line, and think it will probably read well live: “In hindsight, I may have been dumped for aesthetic reasons.” Also, I agree with both of Sra’s comments. Overall, I like it.

By: JeffSimmermon

JeffSimmermon — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:43:49 +0000

@Lonnie — easy, now. I took Mo’s comment as a compliment, man, and it’s true — this has changed in tone, gotten less personal. It’s alright, man …

By: Lonnie Bruner

Lonnie Bruner — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:09:06 +0000

Dear mo,

You should write your own blog so you know what it’s like before you denigrate other blogger’s efforts and hard work.

Just sayin’.

By: mo

mo — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:12:30 +0000

This is a great article. It reminds me a lot of your writing before you got your own domain. Writing about Smashmouth tracks and ferrets is all well and good, but I really miss the more personal entries that were more common a couple years ago. I’m talking about Australia stories, or even that story you wrote about going back to your hometown and meeting those twins you hated in high school and how it was a revelatory experience. I miss that stuff, and hoping you’d get back to it is the reason I’ve stuck around.

By: JB

JB — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:12:10 +0000

he should have pushed the boyfriend into the pitbull and then beat him with the axe handle.

I did like the twist of the drunken dog and the horrible line of, “shaking it like a baby”.

good stuff

By: Sra

Sra — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:58:40 +0000

Oh, and I’d rework the title.