Novel Naming Contest No. 2
*Update* James Yeh won the contest on the first comment.
This picture describes 3 novels written by black authors. Keep in mind I’m using ‘black’ and not ‘African-American’ or ‘African’ to broaden the scope. The first person to correctly name all 3 novels in one comment wins. As mentioned before, the winning answers may simply be a collation of previous semi-correct answers, so judgment and imagination are both important.
pr and I are collaborating on this contest No. 2 (see contest No. 1 if you missed it). Basically, I’m moderating/officiating, and pr is graciously procuring the prize, and handling the logistics of its delivery.
To honor the theme, the prize are books written by black people. (I’d like to point out that I don’t know who any of these people are, because I’m somewhat ignorant, thus cannot comment on them.)
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
Hunting In Harlem by Mat Johnson
Dead Sexy by R.K. Byers
Salt by Earl Lovelace
The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta
homegirls and handgrenades by Sonia Sanchez
Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler by Thylias Moss
Thank you pr for such a generous donation (including postage!) to this contest.
Members Only (that means you)
My name is Woody Allen. This is the opening scene from Annie Hall where I tell some of my morbid stand-up jokes. If you’re curious about what I said, many years later there will be this thing called youtube so you can check it out here. As for the tan brown color behind me, you’ll notice both my hair and jacket are brown, and I’m just that subtle. Anyways, check out my jokes, I’m really funny. I’m really looking forward to the future.
storySouth Million Writers Award
storySouth‘s Million Writers Award has announced the top ten stories of the year:
- “The Whale Hunter” by Steinur Bell (Agni)
- “Intertropical Convergence Zone” by Nadia Bulkin (ChiZine)
- “No Bullets in the House” by Geronimo Madrid (Drunken Boat)
- “Fuckbuddy” by Roderic Crooks (Eyeshot)
- “The Fisherman’s Wife” by Jenny Williams (LitNImage)
- “Every Earth is Fit for Burial” by Cyn Kitchen (Menda City Review)
- “Interview With A Moron” by Elizabeth Stuckey-French (Narrative Magazine)
- “The Tale of Junko and Sayuri” by Peter S. Beagle (OSC’s Intergalactic Medicine Show)
- “Grief Mongers” by Sefi Atta (Per Contra Fiction)
- “Nine Sundays in a Row” by Kris Dikeman (Strange Horizons)
Congrats to all. You can vote for them here. The ‘notable stories’ from which the winning list was culled is here.
The Brandon Book Crisis: A review
The Brandon Book Crisis (Muumuu House, 2009) by Brandon Scott Gorrell and Tao Lin
A paperback “thriller” about book design published May 25, 2009 in a limited edition of 150 numbered copies. 152 pages, 5.5″ x 7″, © Creative Commons, No Rights Reserved. Features 140+ pages of unedited Gmail chats, text messages, voicemails, and emails between Brandon Scott Gorrell, Tao Lin, and others.
The Brandon Book Crisis is, put simply, a book about the making of a book, which is not an entirely new postmodern conceit, if one thinks about the self-referential Pale Fire (Nabokov), Coming Soon! (John Barthes), or Lunar Park (Bret Easton Ellis), to name a few. ‘Edited,’ or rather, compiled by Brandon Scott Gorrell and Tao Lin, it consists of gmail chats (already aestheticized by Muumuu House), emails, and the occasional frantic text concerning the printing of Brandon Scott Gorrell’s During my nervous breakdown I want to have a biographer present — specifically, its fonts, colors, and unworkable files.
Muumuu fantasy gmail chat
Tao Lin will never publish me, so I did it for him.
Novel naming contest
*Update* Contest is over, pr won. The answers are Under the Volcano, Lord of the Flies, On the Road, As I Lay Dying, and A Farewell to Arms. Congrats pr!
The drawing above depicts five titles of novels. These novels are all very well known. There are probably many other titles of novels inadvertently contained in the drawing, but the drawing was rendered with five specific novels in mind. The first person to guess all five correctly in the comment section wins. Multiple entrees allowed, but winning answers must be in one comment.
Keep in mind that the winner may be just someone who correctly collates other people’s semi-correct answers, so as important imagination is, so is judgement. The ‘first person’ will simply be assessed by the chronological comments. (If your comment does not link to your website/blog with your contact information accessible, please provide email in comment.)
PRIZE details (after the break):
Surrealism case studies: video game glitches
I’m fascinated with video game glitches, especially in POV games, given their inherent ‘narrative’ orientation. What makes video games so evocative is the pristine artifice and utilitarian rendering; and when transgressed by a coding glitch, is very unsettling. I find the inadvertent surrealism in the clips below uncanny, humorous, and ‘anti-brilliant.’ It begs the question: if accidents are where the really good ideas are — full of, strangely, more ‘natural’ logic — then what the hell is a writer supposed to do?
Case No. 1:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK9lS0rE0uY&feature=related
The little search engine that should
Allison Glock’s article “I Blame Blogs” at the Poetry Foundation says two things: 1) blogs are bad and people who blog are bad, and 2) poetry is good and people who write poetry are good. (Of course, she doesn’t really say ‘bad’ or ‘good,’ but you can tell from the derisive rhetoric this is some kind of ‘moral’ issue with her.) She says that poetry does for the world what blogs fail to do, which is fine an all, but she’s just so mean about it:
[…] blogs inevitably activate our baser human instincts—narcissism, vanity, schadenfreude. They offer the petty, cheap thrill of perceived superiority or released vitriol. How easy it is to tap tap tap your indignation and post, post, post into the universe, where it will velcro to the indignation of others, all fusing into a smug, sticky mess and not much else in the end.
Can somebody please either write or name their book “Teal this book” so that the cover could be this?
If I went to a bookstore and saw this book, I would buy it without even reading the blurbs. Seriously, this is an open call for any writers to do this. If your manuscript gets accepted, you may use the book cover idea — I don’t even need credits or royalties, I just want this book to exist. Thanks for your attention.
Context, if you’re confused.
Some people are retarded, and some people are sad
You’ve probably noticed there’s been more youtube clips than usual; contributors have recently been ‘granted access’ to post their own. I figure I’d do one too.
The following clip is beautiful — and as facetious my tone usually is, I swear I’m not trying to make fun of these people, or glorify their disabilities. I just found it mesmerizing to watch. They are remarkable human beings, and by ‘remarkable,’ I mean exactly that. They make me want to remark about them, which is what I’m semantically chasing my tail about. ***Please note that the person who uploaded/edited the clip is an asshole, and that the fake ad/sponsor ‘Fart Inhaler’ at the end is a sad and cruel attempt at being funny.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDa5G0czkTY