Moby Dick thing passed along without comment

This and this.

No need to thank me.

In Which I Admit I Don’t Understand this Chet Flippo Column

Here’s the column. Now, I think the point is that there aren’t any women (single female artists) on the Billboard country chart for systemic reasons. It’s not just that there aren’t any women with songs out right now, but that women have a harder time breaking into being the kind of radio-friendly industry-backed star that gets on the country charts than men do.

But then he ends it like this: “Tammy Wynette was once asked by a young artist why she — Tammy — didn’t move aside to give younger artists a chance to take her place. Tammy just looked at her and said, ‘Move me!'”

So… what? Is it an industry problem or are women just not trying hard enough?

Whew, This Week

I feel like, after only two tries, the Butcher and I have gotten a routine down with the cat–rinse her off in the sink, pat her dry, put her sticky ointment on, give her the antibiotics, release. It helps that she’s so mellow about it. She doesn’t even get mad. She’s just like, “Ugh.”

But I feel like my whole goal is to just make it through today so that I can crash. I plan on sleeping for about twelve hours. Ha ha ha. Maybe not that long, but a while.

The Butcher’s friend who is a girl is coming to visit. I haven’t met her yet, but I’m excited. He seems to really like her and I’m all for someone in this family finding romantic happiness. But rather than clean the house a little bit at a time over the course of the week, he attempted to cram it all in this morning. I had a good laugh at that. But I also respected the impulse. Why not put off the shitty crap?

My goal this weekend is to whoop “Frank” into shape and to submit it someplace. Like writers do.

I’m also working on a piece based loosely on Jack Macon, which I feel compelled to write, but I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day. Maybe I’m too liberal for my own good, but at some point, when you’re a white gal writing a story in which the white guy takes a kid away from his mom to raise him as if he’s the white guy’s son (he is the white guy’s son, but the “as if” is part of the central issue of the story) and the white guy simply cannot fathom that this would be in any way upsetting to the kid’s mom, you start to wonder about your own weird blindspots and whether, even if you feel compelled to put the story down–which I do–it’s necessary for you to tell it.

So, we’ll see.

Anyway, so that’s that.