Sean Lovelace is running right now, far. Other times he teaches at Ball State University. HOW SOME PEOPLE LIKE THEIR EGGS is his flash fiction collection by Rose Metal Press. His works have appeared in Crazyhorse, Diagram, Sonora Review, Willow Springs, and so on.
Hey guys and gals, help me out. I need your opinions. I have a new book coming out and the final decision on the cover is between this:
And this:
a poem written by a bear by Tao Lin.
Bear Costume by Steven Miller, with bonus baby carrot.
From “Obliterating Animal Carcasses with Explosives,” a pamphlet issued by the Technology and Development Program of the U.S. Forest Service.
There are times when it is important to remove or obliterate an animal carcass from locations such as recreation areas where a carcass might attract bears, at a popular picnic area where the public might object, or along the sides of roads or trails. Explosives have successfully been used by qualified blasters to partially or totally obliterate large animal carcasses (horses, mules, moose, etc.). It is important to consider location, time of year, and size of the carcass when selecting the quantity and type of explosive to accomplish the obliteration task. The following instructions pertain to partial obliteration (dispersion) for a horse that weighs about 1,100 pounds. In this first example, urgency is not a factor-perhaps the public is not expected to visit the area for a few days, or perhaps bears will not be attracted to the carcass. In any case, in this example, dispersion is acceptable. Place three pounds of explosives under the carcass in four locations. The carcass can then be rolled onto the explosives if necessary. Place one pound of explosives in two locations on each leg. Use detonator cord to tie the explosives’ charges together. Horseshoes should be removed to minimize dangerous flying debris. In situations where total animal obliteration is necessary, it is advisable to double the amount of explosives used in the first example. Total obliteration might be preferred in situations where the public is expected in the area the next day, or where bears are particularly prolific. Carcasses that have been dispersed will generally be totally gone within a few days. Carcasses that have been obliterated will generally not show any trace of existence the next day.
The Bear (Jim Harrison)
When my propane ran out
when I was gone and the food
thawed in the freezer I grieved
over the five pounds of melted squid,
but then a big gaunt bear arrived
and feasted on the garbage, a few tentacles
left in the grass, purplish white worms.
O bear, now that you’ve tasted the ocean
I hope your dreamlife contains the whales
I’ve seen, that the one in the Humboldt current
basking on the surface who seemed to watch
the seabirds wheeling around her head.
Dumb fact guy
Brings 6 of beer has one left and takes it home with him guy
Has to phone girlfriend every four minutes guy
Guy who brings cheap jug of wine guy
Guy who gets pet drunk guy
Guy who turns everything into a bet guy
Doesn’t really want to go then dominates all conversations guy
Brings cheap 6 pack and you see him all night drinking Heinekens and Guinness guy
Let’s go out back and get high guy
Bum a smoke guy
Is this an open bar? guy
Way too old for this scene guy
Guy who just whips out his junk guy
Guy with hot, bored wife guy
Steal the silverware guy
Check the weather on phone and tell us the weather guy
Carries a gun to the party guy
Guy with guitar guy
Constantly gets laid guy
Profoundly depressed over break-up mopey guy
“When I was in Spain…” guy
2. What you want is reliable quality. Like a Glock. The new Diagram is up. I enjoyed Scott McFarland’s “Teenagers with Glocks,” a take/homage on We Real Cool, a poem Gwendolyn Brooks grew to detest, to not want to read, to not want as her “one hit.” But come on, Gwen. Most poets have zero hits.
1. Rather than trimming their sails, a number of independent booksellers are taking a page from Amazon by producing titles themselves.
3. NANO fiction winter sale all that.
12. How to tie the 5 best fishing knots:
5. I see maybe (emphasize maybe) 2 films a year, as in going to actual movies. I saw Dragon Tattoo thingy. I did not leave depressed. Plot (and this is a plot heavy film) pretty much held together. Acting was passable by today’s standards (Rooney Mara very strong). Cinematography didn’t utilize the setting as it could/should have, but it wasn’t weak or distracting/jarring. So then I stumbled on Nordic Noir. Why would Nordic Noir be so literate/popular? Because:
Norway remains, in most people’s consciousnesses, the most imposing of the Nordic countries, with the ancient legacy of the Vikings still casting a shadow over the country (and foreign perceptions of it).
Many of us do seem to be having an Ingmar Bergman moment right now. We love to slouch on our IKEA sofas watching the characters in “Mad Men” as they ruminate on the loneliness and impotence of their lives while staring silently off into darkened rooms filled with Danish modern furniture.
Three factors underpin the success of Nordic crime fiction: language, heroes and setting.
OK
6. The biggest obstacle to me publishing Wild Grass was finding the courage to self-publish. So many people told me it was a bad idea, but deep down I knew it was what I wanted to do.
7. Look, a Caitlin Horrocks story at the Paris Review. Read this.
8. Need a resolution? I suggest never leave “the house without a gun, a knife and a flashlight” Indeed. Lives saved. Or you could just tip properly.
9. Oliver Stone (yes, him) talking about writing in a way maybe we haven’t seen so much? You should probably go ahead and watch this (and the first part). Audience questions, sometimes conflict, a nuanced and, well, interesting Q & A. Be sure to check out the SPAZ “little boy” at 5 minute mark. Wow.
10. How about Amelia Gray rocking the LA Times? She has a ‘face to watch.’ I agree since her face is highly watchable and her prose is highly readable. Gray is actually my current most-given-book-to-promising-students book I give. And it always works. She rocks them. She is the “gateway drug” to better reading, me thinks.
1. Is it worth the money?
2. I feel guilty if I’m not reading at least three times a week because of all the money. Very tough to read everything you need to read. It’s depressing, like Christopher Hitchens dying or Schopenhauer or some of the things he said.
3. Schopenhauer:
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
4. The digital New Yorker keeps writing about Christopher Hitchens out of respect but you can tell the writing is a little guarded, still bitter about Hitchens Left-2-Right turn and his steadfast support for the War in Iraq.
5. Shouldn’t I be adding links? If you are going to talk about something digital, please add links, you miserable cur.
6. Will Blake Butler do one of those “Look at all these fucking books I read” list this year? That list always makes me angry and unsure of myself. Then I think, “Well shit, he has insomnia, maybe he’s reading a lot at night?”
7. I’m surprised no one has talked about James Franco yet. He hires his professors into Hollywood jobs. He maybe got a professor fired because of a D grade? I don’t know.
8. If you have any fucking sense, you’ll want to read Christopher Hitchens on James Joyce.
A century later, the literary world will celebrate the hundredth “Bloomsday,” in honor of the very first time the great James Joyce received a handjob from a woman who was not a prostitute.
Why? Because a student handed me the book and suggested I read it? No. Students routinely want me to read books and they are usually this one, or Neil Gaiman and I’m not reading any fucking Neil Gaiman. I’m an adult. I read it because so many of my students are writing Sci Fi lately. From a genre trickle to categorical gusher. Could be my doing this semester. I instructed them to write a QUEST. I think some of their brains went quest=genre, though I showed them many, many quests that were just like two dudes trying to get to Hollywood or the latest Jennifer Aniston Must-Get-A-Man flick or just some guy swimming away into cognitive dissonance or a newlywed couple needing to rob McDonald’s but no/no/no they go genre, fantasy or Sci Fi. That’s OK. I mean we had no zombies. (Best zombie film to show students about genre irrelevant—characters matter.) I could be like some in academia (and literary publishing) and say no to genre. OR…I could admit many literary works are indeed gestures of genre…OR I could/should meet the students half way and feel a need to increase my knowledge base on Sci Fi, admit I haven’t read Sci Fi in many years (is Vonnegut Sci Fi?) and so feel a pedagogical necessity to read something and Dune is on all the lists and I know Sting is in the movie version (though I’ve never seen it and have no plans to) and so here we go into the box, the hour glass, the sand.
Three things we know: 1. You can show all the patriotic commercials in the world, but Anheuser Busch is still a company owned by Belgium. 2. Women die when they get near August Anheuser Busch IV. 3. Budweiser is Ok to drink. Not great. Not absolutely bad. (Fuck off, beer snobs, we know how much you blar this beer and, honestly, it’s a little ridiculous.) But OK, an OK beer, in certain situations…
[Matchup #24 in Tournament of Bookshit]
Facebook-Based Political ‘Activism’
Active is a funny word. Also the word, Like. You know Flannery O’Connor never asked a damn person to be a Christian, she just wrote these badass stories where all the phonies got their fucking heads blown off and their families slaughtered and then maybe some “Agent of Grace” would go and seduce a fat ass and steal their fake leg. That’s the way to do it. Seems to me you got a mirror problem. Or you spent sixth grade with an eye-blinking tic. (They called you Blinky.) Or photos of your own head or your severe-or-doughy offspring’s head all J.C. Penny glossy on the beige-ass walls. I bet your palms smell hot and funky. You’re white. Tuck in your shirt and have one of those little cases on your belt for the cellphone and a little ripple, a little soft, soft, soft fish-belly over the top of the waist of the jeans. Keep four pill bottles in a neat, black case stuffed in a Nike shoe, in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator. But what do I know? Nothing, except that to ask if I’m happy every day is a goddamn insult to the other 98% wondering why the light bulb keeps flickering off…Hey Slaw-Cheeks, Facebook groups, Pages and Events are as helpful for your enemies as they are for you. Only James Bond villains tell everyone their plans, and see what happens? Sharks, de-railed trains, suffocated by octopi, shot by Bond/shot by Bond/shot by Bond, oh my. Or: I keep getting this vision of sweaty you in the Toys “R” Us parking lot masturbating to a conjured image of a yellow cats, smiling yellow cats running circles along a Go-Cart track in Rhode Island…You don’t tip bartenders for shit, do you? That nagging feeling, it’s your head rolling about a black cart rumbling and clanking iron-wheeled down a dark road, to the dump, all of this an honest image of the shadowworld, your soul, a knobby goat (most likely pulled the cart—that’s called honest work, you Enormous Fuck) gnawing at your eye socket, then to the elbow, the pale, calloused index finger of your Liking. You hose. You greasy hose. READ MORE >
1. That time travel/forum flash you saw once; it hit you like lobbed Pringles. You wondered where it was, something.
At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:
Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what’s the harm?
3. Yo, fantasy novel pitch: You ford the dawn. You have a ring and/or sword (naturally–all Fantasy is oddly derivative of Tolkien). You put the ring/sword down (finally). I unwrap you an Interesting Sandwich. Here it is: These Iraq photos were taken through Humvee windows and military-issue night vision goggles. Sort of green/glow/combustible clap/badass. Do eyeball:
2. Shopping? Well, think on this: I suggest a Scientific (wow, it’s scientific!) Talking Meat Thermometer. (It only speaks English, Spanish, German, French, and Danish. That’s sketchy.)
4. Largest collection of fish posters I’ve seen since noon-thirty.
5. Wonderful, wonderful essay by Jim Harrison, for those that worship wine.
I have long since publicly admitted that I seek spirituality through food and wine. In France, Italy, and Spain, I seem more drawn to markets and cafés than to churches and museums. Too many portraits of bleeding Jesus and his lachrymose Momma make me thirsty. The Lord himself said on the cross, “I thirst” and since our world itself has become a ubiquitous and prolonged crucifixion it is altogether logical that we are thirsty.
14. Does anyone here write by hand? I’d like to hear you talk about that, why, why it’s necessary to you, why brain to hand to actual felt page is a preferred—and essential—difference than tap, tap, tap, glowing, white pretty pixel monitor fat, white face. Tote me some knowledge.
1. This flash by Shellie Zacharia is one of the best I’ve read in a goodly while.
14. For you glazed and sootstreaked aspiring MFA/MA folks, Cathy Day writes some do’s and don’ts concerning the Statement of Purpose. Good stuff here, and made me realize (I read grad apps) most applications are very similar–they DO a lot of these DONT’S.
2. Hey, all you Slaw-Cheeks, you know what: The brouhaha over Markham’s wholesale cribbing of other writers’ work is an instructive reminder of how rarely ‘original writing’ actually is.
3. Have you experienced “Fire Island Sideshow” by Jon Cotner and Claire Hamilton?
- In Fair Harbor we hear a Yorkie growling frantically. Gary always holds Brutus’ leash because last summer Brutus was almost killed by the high tide. This gets difficult around New York City, where law requires that human beings walk dogs. But Gary won’t let people near Brutus.
4. Dude writes stories that are Facebook updates.
5. I know, why don’t we all comment about what we are thankful for?! Really? Me neither. Fuck off.