Life’s kinda cool sometimes…
No, really…
“He enjoys acrobatics and working with computers.”
America is my home.
Other places are not my home, yet.
[vid2 via clusterflock]
or 
or 
?Philo$ophy and the Mirror of Nurture
Many years ago, my fiancee attempted to lend me a bit of responsibility by introducing me to my would-be mother-in-law as a future PhD in literature. “From Columbia,” I added, polishing the apple of my prospects. She wasn’t buying it. “A doctor of philosophy,” she said. “What’re you going to do, open an philosophy store?”
— Mark Slouka
Molly Ringwald NYT Op-Ed: Remembering John Hughes
My friend, Jacob, at a bar tonight in Hong Kong (I’m back stateside this Sunday, if anyone’s keeping track) told me I had to go look this up. I’m drunk now, and my belly is full of spicy lamb kebab, but I did it anyway, and I’ve got to say, it’s a pretty beautiful, heartfelt, honest remembrance. If you’re only going to read one John Hughes memorial, make it this one.
is “yinzer” the Pittsburgh word for “river” ?
There’s a new issue of The New Yinzer out. TNY is a Pittsburgh-based online lit journal, and the summer edition is guest-edited by Claire Donato, a poet whom we’ve loved on here before. (1 love, 2 love.) It’s a very strong issue, featuring several essays and selections of visual art (see Matchbox Museum piece, above). Here’s a taste of what’s inside (the journal is designed as a split screen with the TOC on the left and content on the right, obviating the need for linking to individual pieces)-
Katy Henriksen (essay) – “Handmade Books: Or, My Answer to an Increasingly Digital and Mass-Manufactured World.” A good bookbinding awl has a rounded, wooden handle for cradling in the palm of your hand and a sharp point at the end of the metal rod for piercing. For the Cannibal stitch we needed four holes in each signature, two an inch apart an inch from the top, and two an inch apart an inch from the bottom, making the total of holes punched for the issue exactly 4,000.
Brian Foley (poem) – “Older at Night.” It could be a photograph / We both live in.
Claire Donato & Jeff T. Johnson (curated gallery) – “Matchbox Museum.” Being resolute against all others in going forward, being not the moss, being the mess side by side. We’re current.
Matthew Savoca (essay) – “A Zen Essay in Which Nothing is Accomplished.” I want to get as many online literature writers as possible to buy Powerball tickets together, in the same way that many business people who work at offices do.
Blake Butler (short-short) – “Accident.” Her gums and tongue were scorched with symbols.
Ryan Manning (photographs) – “Sky Polaroids.”
And, oh yeah, I’m in it too- a few erasure poems and a short “thesis statement” on the practice of erasure. But my favorite thing in the issue, at least thus far, are Ryan’s photos.
Uncategorized / 9 Comments
August 13th, 2009 / 9:12 am
August 13th, 2009 / 9:12 am
thinking about “flash fiction”
is there any definable characteristic that separates what is called “flash fiction” from what is called “short story” or “novella” or “novel.”
i read this story and wondered that.
Ryan Call—
Don’t know if we covered this already, but last Friday Starcherone Books announced that Alissa Nutting’s manuscript Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls won the 6th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction.
Jimmy Chen—
Greying Ghost/Corduroy Mtn. introduce Let Us Make a Story, a sprawling exquisite corpse experiment in which one anonymous sentence is added on to the former, without context or, it seems, editorial discretion. This just may be the perfect way to get published, but not credited. Maybe what’s more at stake is the ever manifesting story — let’s see, and see wide.
On “e”
e-cigarette
There’s something very strange and non-ironic about the Electronic Cigarette, a cigarette shaped device which mimics an actual cigarette using electronically vaporized liquid nicotine, rechargeable battery, and pressure sensors. (Check out these companies here, here, and here.) I can’t figure out if E-Cigarettes are supposed to help you quit smoking, or to exploit the gestural and oral flourishes of smoking, or simply to deliver nicotine without the other harsh elements to your body and/or environment. I won’t get into the culture of smoking — its hegemony of rebellion and corporately endorsed counter-culturalism — but rather, investigate the prevalence of this “e” prefix.