Reynard Seifert
Reynard sits in Austin, where he is busy not writing a couple few books.
A torrent search for “wikipedia” that returns nothing & everything
At some point in your life, you should probably chop off all your hair.
Twitter is the very best or worst thing that has ever happened to literature.
Blog comments as a close second, Facebook a far flung turd.
I stared at an abandoned, waterlogged, pink stuffed animal splayed ass-up on a rail for months, smoking cigarettes, trying to figure what it said.
For a couple of days a matching, stringless acoustic guitar stood watch over it.
What happens to music that isn’t recorded, or played. Is it?
Reynard Seifert—
“When he was nineteen, writing La Doublure . . . Roussel felt a literal brilliance running all throughout his person, his writing implements, and his room. The light was so dazzling he had to draw the curtains, afraid that anyone who saw him would be blinded by the rays streaming out of his face.” — Ben Marcus
ToBS R2: ‘magic realism’ vs. Alcoholism
[Matchup #33 in Tournament of Bookshit]
Gabriel Garcia Marquez dropped his iPhone on the sidewalk. A crack shot through the street sending fire hydrants blasting into the sky, splitting the 9/11 Memorial in two, setting the Wall Street Bull a-bucking after a bunch of shrieking schoolgirls in preppy outfits. No, wait. As Gabriel Garcia Marquez took an upskirt of himself on the base of the Statue of Liberty, Alcoholism stumbled over and sent his iPhone tracing a slow arc to the sea. When Marquez looked up Alcoholism held one of those Zack Morris phones to his face and said, “I’m at your house.” Gabriel paled as he reached for the phone. Alcoholism punched him in the nose with it. “Just kidding, jackass. I went to your house but you weren’t there. So I burned it down.” Gabriel held his bloody nose in both hands peering through a pair of watery almonds. “By the by, saw those penis enlargement pills in your medicine cabinet. Are those for your clit?” Before Marquez could stutter, Alcoholism reared a fist and hooked a hole through his face, which contorted into hyperbole. “L-O-L,” slurred Alcoholism. “Who do you think you are, Franz-fucking-Kafka? I think no.” READ MORE >
Gulogulo
Due to the recent turn of events in the Occupy movement — by which I mean it is turning into a movement, not only because of the fact it is literally moving but because the real test of a movement occurs when the opposition tries to purge it — I feel obliged to do my small part in suggesting a word for what the occupiers are against. Perhaps you think there are existing words to describe what is opposed; and this is true, of course, there are lots of words; among them: corporate greed, economic disparity, banking malfeasance, shady lending, bullshit, derivatives, the 1%, fat cats, motherfuckers, etc. But consider for a moment that prior to 1944 there was no word for genocide. The explanation for this is simple, genocide was not a word — no one had thought to make it up. There were some other words to describe what was going on, such as: holocaust, perfidy, atrocity, burning people alive, etc. But, as there was no word for genocide, this made it difficult to discuss or wrap one’s head around what it meant when one race wanted to destroy another; that’s why Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide, from the latin genus (a race) and -cide (to kill).
So I would like to offer up the term gulogulo. It’s a clunky word, I know, but so is the greasy sect it describes. It can easily be modified to wield as an adjective, e.g., “I just saw some gulogulous assclown punch a flower child in the face.” Gulogulo evokes the tyranny of the Gulag, the brutality of a masculinized Caligula, the monstrosity of the half-man, half-snake G.I. Joe villain Globulus (who gets his name from globule, a particle, often of fat, or, in astronomy, “a small dark cloud of gas and dust seen against a brighter background”); but most importantly it is a compound version of gulo gulo, a fun way to say wolverine. Gulo is latin for glutton, and in many parts of Europe wolverines are commonly known as gluttons — like fierce-ass war pigs.
What-a-dick
Little Chris on Writing
thx RAINBOW SATAN for the tweetip
“‘You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.’ – Gertrude Stein” — Hemingway
Georg Scholz, "Female Nude with Plaster Bust" (1927)
Writing is a matter of taste, criticism a manner of penetration.
“My mis-shapen head cracks through all the clichés.” – Jules Renard, on Writing
Years before Twitter and Robert Walser, Renard maximized the miniature. These are all from The Journal of Jules Renard, which Tin House reprinted in 2008, written between 1887 & 1910.
“You can recover from the writing malady only by falling mortally ill and dying.”
Reynard Seifert—
In which This Recording editor Alex Carnevale tells you everything you always suspected about Roald Dahl* (*but were afraid to have confirmed). What do you think of the last sentence? Please don’t answer this question unless you read the whole damn thing.
“A Mercedes Benz is class because it represents money. However, chili dogs have absolutely no class but a great deal of style.” – David Lee Roth
from The Magnetic Fields (1920)
Philippe Soupault & Andre Breton
The corridors of the big hotels are empty and the cigar smoke is hiding. A man comes down the stairway and notices that it’s raining; the windows are white. We sense the presence of a dog lying near him. All possible obstacles are present. There is a pink cup; an order is given and without haste the servants respond. The great curtains of the sky draw open. A buzzing protests this hasty departure. Who can run so softly? The names lose their faces. The street becomes a deserted track.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLH2k_qlxE8
The pink “Sugapuelffuns” in the room
Mr. Snuffleupagus was my favorite character on Sesame Street. When I was a kid my parents bought me the whole series on VHS (up to that point) so I watched it all the way through. Because of this I saw the saga of Snuffleupagus play itself out.
I love to tell people about my theory of Sesame Street (actually I stole it from Slacker but whatevs) which is that the characters are all the sorts of miscreants one might encounter on the streets of a city: Oscar is a junkie; Cookie Monster’s a crackhead; Elmo is a speed freak; Bert and Ernie are gay; etc. But when I get to the part about how Big Bird is on acid and that one of the proofs was his imaginary friend Snuffleupagus, people are like what?
What these people forget or don’t know, is that for years Big Bird was the only one who saw Snuffleupagus. He would have conversations with Snuffy, sometimes musing with existentialism, but by the time Big Bird could get adults to come and see for themselves, this amazing creature had vanished into thin air.
