There’s a new essay of mine up at PANK, another from the Sept 22 project. This one’s largely about the workday dread of me and my friends, but it also contains a scene in which a man does battle with a book of poetry:

A problem Matthew had with this book of poetry was that it seemed to just demonstrate the boredom-as-point idea in a way that could be conveyed in a single sentence. But where was the rest? The performance of it? There was a Mad Lib quality throughout in which even the “shocking” parts seemed mostly the pose of one saying, Look out: I am shocking you. Oh, but that was intentional pageantry and kitsch, which again played against Matthew’s middle class (middlebrow) expectations. Meaning if this was a tennis match, the book would be kicking his ass.

Others from the same series:

The Good Men Project: “Muffingate”

The Collagist: “All Our Pretty Songs”

Juked: “Don’t Be Evil, Don’t Be Inconvenient”

The Weeklings: “The BP Oil Spill of Fashion”

The Weeklings: “Why You Don’t Like My Mom”

The Weeklings: “Courtesy is Not a Word on the Road”