When squirrels attack (and farfel confuses)

Dani Couture and I launched the Patchy Squirrel Lit-serv today! Well, we sent out our first announcements. Patchy won't start delivering till April 2.

Patchy is a free weekly mailout with detailed listings of literary events in Toronto. Details are available on Patchy's page, beautifully designed by Dana Samuel.

A little note on my Friday reading. During the Q&A, Rod talked at length about Flarf, a very weird and intriguing poetic "school." Like an idiot, I began riffing on farfel, a Jewish side dish made of little egg noodles. So there I was babbling about the mysteries of farfel and it never occurred to me that just about nobody in the audience would have any idea what farfel was.

At one point, though, I mentioned that it does well with matzah-ball soup. I then kept hearing murmurs of the word "Jewish" from the audience.

This morning, I sent off what I hope are my final corrections for the I Cut My Finger page proofs. I don't really know how Anvil is going to get the book done in time for the April 22 launch, but I have faith in Brian. Last night I was going through some of the pages and thought, "Gawd, this is awful." Today, though, it all sounded pretty good: a book of poetry I'd like to read, which is, I guess, a good goal.

My sigh of relief to get that out of my hands was shortlived: the doorbell rang and the proofs for McFadden's Selected — Why Are You So Sad? — arrived. I thought it was going to be a 250-page book, but typeset it comes out to about 330 pages! Damn, it's gonna be a good book.

Over and out.