I'm fed up with the parking at UNL so I've decided fight it. I turned in my parking pass and am prepared to use a strategy that employs both the city and campus bus system and my trusted $3 bicycle (see blog archives for March 21, 2005). I set up an appointment with the Director of UNL's Parking Services to discuss my getting a full refund and not a pro-rated one. I only twice found a space. RiDONKulous.

Today was my first attempt at the bus and I failed miserably. After parking 15 blocks from campus in a quaint little neighborhood I mistook a city bus stop for a campus one. Twice I watched the campus bus pass me, half of full of students peering out at me. It was on the second pass that I figured I was standing on the wrong block. What made it somehow worse was that I was carrying my 1950's blue collar metal lunch box. There I was watching two buses go by without stopping for me while I stood still and helpless, metal lunchbox at my side. I was 7 again. I ended up just walking the whole damn way.

Today I'm going to see two films at the student theater for my 1950's Cold War Hysteria class: Red Planet Mars (1951) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

Starting a new chapbook manuscript this week. I'm determined to distance myself from The Man Suit. I'll just send it off with its little backpack on, give it a gentle few taps on the ass and let it go to be read by some presses this fall. If it makes it, I'll be proud of it. If it doesn't, I'll change the locks before it gets back. Anyway, I'm taking Thornburn's advice on this chapbook (never really wrote for a chapbook manny before) and building off a few displaced Man Suit poems and taking them in a new and bizarre direction.