Lindsay Lohan’s nth circle of hell
Mark Baumer pointed me towards this interesting post on the FSG blog in which Kevin Guilfoile selects Lindsay Lohan’s scrambled ad-libbed rants, and with a quick line break, proposes unlikely poetry authored by her. He compares these ‘collaborative’ poems (see related Rumsfeld poetry post) with Lohan’s lyrics, easily establishing the former’s more literary sensibilities — which gets me thinking: the inadvertent tongue, coked out or not, is often closer to one’s truth. The much inferior ‘utilitarian’ song lyric of hers may implicate how sometimes intent (commercial, aesthetic, whatever) in writing has nothing to do with it.
Of course, stream of consciousness is an old bag and Burroughs an old man. I’m not saying ‘let’s go crazy’ yada yada (dada dada?) I’m just saying there’s a lesson here — stop making sense (the name of this reference is the talking heads). Or,
The Burn Books of Hollywood
By Lindsay Lohan
Oh my God,
I’m not working,
And I have a house
To pay for now. And yes,
The web sites,
The gossip pages,
And all of that stuff
Have hurt my career—
They’re like the
Burn books of Hollywood.
“I am in the air right now”: A Review
Kathryn Regina’s I am in the air right now (see publisher details page, which includes a brilliant promo clip by the great Greg Lytle) concerns, for me, weightlessness induced by the heavy feelings we carry. This paradox Regina sets up is a great formal device. Through the collection of poems, we come to learn of the narrator and her ‘fall out’ (that’s my pun) with a boy named Pedro while in a hot air balloon.
I like Harper’s a lot
Harper’s is my favorite magazine, primarily because of their ‘index,’ ‘findings,’ and ‘readings’ sections. The editing is rather conceptual — in the way ‘objective’ journalistic facts are asserted rhetorically (even humorously) through their juxtaposition. It’s a weird mash of heady inquiry and stuffy sarcasm, and I often find myself laughing out loud.
In ‘findings,’ always the last page, new discoveries are presented and written with an aesthetic glint for the absurd evocative of the best surrealism. For example:
A Viennese chemist concluded that bellybutton fluff is a combination of clothing fibers, sweat, dust, and fat wicked into the navel by body hairs […]; Placentas were appearing in the sewers of Illinois […]; In Hawaii, a woman found a $5 bill inside a coconut […]; Americans were losing their religion.
I kind of screwed that up by picking out my favorite lines — which inadvertently implicates my point that the editing is awesome. If non-fiction is the launching pad for fiction, this is where it’s at.
storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2008
soldier fighting in the south exerts his democracy by reading printed out online story
Here’s the list. I may need to be corrected on this, but I think this is how it works: 1) editors and readers nominate stories via blog comments under their respective categories, 2) notable anonymous editors pick through the list and come up with the ‘notable stories’ list, and 3) finally, Jason Sanford, the editor of storySouth, picks the winners (forthcoming).
This is a gathering of diverse tastes, wherein anyone (as readers), can nominate their favorite stories. So at this point in the process, these stories have received praise from at least two entities. With all respect to Jason Sanford’s final decision, I’m always more interested in this list, as it is indicative of a greater population of sensibilities.
FRIGG n’ Microfiction
Frigg Magazine’s All Microfiction Issue is out, featuring Kim Chinquee, Lydia Copeland, Kathy Fish, Scott Garson, Barry Graham, Tiff Holland, Mary Miller, Kim Parko, Jennifer Pieroni, Meg Pokrass, Joseph Young, and Randall Brown — the latter two whom debate on “What is microfiction?” (Why argue? The purple-quilled ladies of Fiction Factor provide the answer here.)
I always like how each writer is given their own front page e-bookish thing. My only commentary is I don’t like the parenthetical word counts which precede each piece, kinda distracting. I also don’t like it when editors ask for word counts. It’s like — look. Just look at the story. Is it long or short? Do your eyes feel okay? What did you have for breakfast? Can you not do us the favor of doing a ‘word count’ in ‘tools’ in your ‘word document’ since you have ‘fingers’ and ‘volition’ and since you’re such a curious person.
Sorry about that. Here’s my point: read the new issue of Frigg, and good job everyone.
Uncategorized / 12 Comments
April 16th, 2009 / 7:40 pm
April 16th, 2009 / 7:40 pm
Of Etymology
*UPDATE* 1) I’m a moron, it already happened, and 2) [courtesy of Mark Baumer] “Going nuts” for Tea Bagging and “Teabag mouthpieces” on Fox News — with either a straight face or pun-laced implicit irony (I really can’t tell), both of which would be brilliant.
McSweeney’s (or is it McSweeney’s’s?) The Future Dictionary of America (2004) did it’s own wonderful thing, but what I really want to see is someone publish the ENTIRE Urban Dictionary, which is less self-conscious as being a cultural artifact and probably has more ‘street cred,’ because contributors are, um, completely teen ghetto. I’m always delighted, and in awe, of the creativity and organic etymology of the words. It’s a great resource for people concerned with ‘contemporary culture.’ Some examples after the break.
Open letter to the underemployed
Graduate school is fun huh? Or are you just ‘in between’ ‘real’ jobs with the economy n’ all? Or maybe you have 12 roommates, sleep in the pantry, and can afford this HTMLGIANT lifestyle. Coming here everyday and refreshing the browser every 20 seconds and gravitating towards arguments is not going to get you on the road to self-sufficiency. Maybe I’m gettin’ old, but sometimes I just want to scream get a real job, like the one I’m at right now, refreshing the browser every 20 seconds and gravitating towards arguments. Let’s just say I’m neglecting my work and boss is not happy. When HR/payroll pulls the rug, can that pantry fit two? I always feel like somebody’s watching me. Yah, my boss. Chapbooks are nice, but health insurance is better. Get a job jerkfaces.
“Inherent Vice” by Thomas Pynchon
Is Thomas Pynchon not cool anymore? Is literary relevance chronologically sensitive — meaning, certain things lose their importance depending on when they are published? Do interesting things become boring over time, or is the reading public simply fickle? I ask these questions because nobody seems that interested in Pynchon’s forthcoming (August 2009) Inherent Vice — kinda has a loopy-hippie Vineland feel to it. I must admit I fanned through his latest novel Against the Day like a telephone book with no one to call, sighed, and put it down; and Pynchon is one of my all time favorites.
Wordhustler is your pimp
“Submit to Over 4,000 Literary Markets Without Leaving Your Desk” is WordHustler‘s tag-line. Basically, from what I can gather without actually signing up for an account (scary!), this is the match.com of the literary world: you make yourself seem as unrealistically attractive as possible for daunting goals, give them your credit card number, and wait in desperation.
Hey I’m just a joker with a day-job, check out what the writer of freakin’ The Bourne Identity says:
“The only thing I don’t like about WordHustler is that it wasn’t around when I was getting started. I can only lament the countless hours I spent grappling with commerce when I could’ve been focusing on art.”
— William Blake Herron, Screenwriter of The Bourne Identity
Haha! You started saying one thing, but then switched it! That’s like when Jason Bourne says he’s going to Berlin but goes to Hamburg!
They also have this nifty diagram of a SASE citing attributes such as the stamps. Who is stupid? Us or them? Somebody is stupid and I demand to know who it is.
Mean monday (statistical interlude)
In an effort to reimplement the somewhat abandoned concept ‘mean Monday,’ I’ve decided to take the mean testicle count of our contributors. For you lit-freaks that blow at math, the ‘mean’ or ‘arithmetic mean’ of any given set is “the sum of all of the list divided by the number of items in the list.” ‘Average’ is too broad and generic a term, as it may mean (no pun intended) ‘median’ or ‘mode.’
Okay, here we go: there are 11 male contributors, all of whom (presumably) have two testicles, giving us a total of 22 testicles. There are 3 female contributors, giving us a total of 14 total contributors. Take 22 and divide by 14, and you have 1.57 — the number of testicles each contributor has. (Juxtapose this with 0.43 ovaries per contributor.)