Mortification with a K

Cleaning Debasement Foreign-Word-Learning-Joy

Mortification with a K

Back in October I did a reading as part of Lit Crawl on the topic “The First Time,” along with five fellow alum from LitCamp’s inaugural conference*. The reading was held at Laszlo’s Bar in the Mission, and the nonexistent lighting and hubbub of the overflow crowd meant that the video of the reading I’d hoped to be able to share with you guys didn’t materialize.

I thought about posting the piece here but, what with the long segment where I imitate German people speaking English, it’s really best heard rather than read on the page.

So I’ve recorded “The First Time” (now titled “Mortification with a K”) and posted it over on the website for the NPR program Snap Judgment, a themed, weekly storytelling show. Click through here if you’d like to listen (just scroll down and press the > button, although the text is there too if you’d prefer it.)

And if you like the story, would you consider leaving a comment over there saying so? Snap Judgment chooses pieces to include in its weekly show from submissions like mine, “based on community response and how much we love your work.” I can’t control whether they love my work and I’m not sure how they measure “community response,” but I’m sure having some comments over there is better than having no comments.

A warning: Snap Judgment’s CAPTCHA technology, designed to discourage spammy commenters, almost broke me. While reading other submissions and trying to leave comments, I apparently mistyped the string of letters and numbers every time; it took me three tries before the CAPTCHA system believed I was not a robot. Beep beep boop boop. So if you get a message that you typed it wrong, hang in there and try again. If you don’t have any problems at all, gee, that was easy, what are you talking about Nancy? then I don’t really want to know.

After you’ve listened to it, you may be amused to know that at the end of the LitQuake reading, a young man with a huge grin on his face approached me and said, “Hallo, my name is Simon and I’m from Chermany!” AWKWARD.

*The application deadline for LitCamp 2014 is January 15 – if you have ANY interest in applying, do it. I can’t recommend it highly enough.