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Secret Santa Ideas from Adam Robinson

If you can’t please Adam, you can’t please this V of me. See here now:

HTML GIANT is Secret Santa. What this means is you email htmlgiant@gmail.com and tell them you want to participate and they email you a person’s name and then you send them some indie lit present, like a subscription or a book. There are more details, too. Check it out: Secret Santa.

For the occasion PGP is offering Rupert Wondolowski’s book, THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES AS A HEATED MOLE SUIT, at a reduced price of $9, shipping included. Email adam@publishinggenius.com if you want to order internationally.

Other great Secret Santa ideas are:
a Keyhole subscription
Mud Luscious Press books
Verb Sap by M. Magnus from Narrow House Press
What are other awesome things I’ve bought in the last couple weeks
A long arm stapler I think is a good present for anyone who cares about indie lit
Abraham Lincoln book ends
Talk has begun re: No Colony 2, maybe you could buy your person a publication in pink
I finally read Altmann’s Tongue, that’d make a good gift
Preorder the book Ryan Call will be publishing someday I imagine; THIS IS THE ONE I WANT
Just get them Rupert Wondolowski’s book he’s been at this game for years and years

Random / 14 Comments
November 24th, 2008 / 4:26 pm

things that inspire me more than most literary journals

here is a short, halfway conceived list of things that inspire me more than most literary journals:

1. The Musicmart, State Street, Chicago, Illinois.  the music mart is sort of an indoor mall where symphonies play music during the fall and winter.  i like to go there and sit down at a table and listen to the music and write down things that will later be called juvenile or silly.  feel free to visit me anytime at the music mart and i will buy you a small fountain drink from sbarro.  later, i will ask you to have “dibs” on the refill.  email me in advance if you’d like to do this because finding me at the musicmart is a game of “where’s waldo” since i have been told numerous times, by different people, that i resemble a homeless man.

2.  Evander Holyfield and Boxing in General.  evander holyfield seems to have more power than anyone else on earth.  sometimes when i am writing something, i think, “would this beat up evander holyfield or would he bounce left then right and uppercut the shit out of me?”  also, i saw a match between lennox lewis and oliver mc call the other day in which mc call had a nervous breakdown in the middle of the fight.  i felt really weird watching it but also inspired.  find the video and watch it, he starts crying in the middle of the fight.  i feel like this is how i feel when i know i am writing something entertaining.  all i do lately is type and watch boxing.

3.    The Blue Line, Chicago, Illinois and The Surgeon.   sometimes i just ride the blue line around until it gets somewhere i don’t know and then i get out and walk around.  i do the same thing with the bus.  which brings me to The Surgeon.  The Surgeon is a man who rides the blue line.  i often see him sleeping in the back.  every once in a while he wakes up quickly and starts doing this sawing motion with his hand.  no one is going to cry when he dies.  i am at home with people who will not be remembered.

4.  A Video I Saw on Chicago Public TV Yesterday.  there was a video on public access tv yesterday where an old lady was sitting next to her son.  the son was in a wheelchair.  the old lady kept saying, “this is my maurice and he is not right because someone gave him a cigarette mixed with formaldehyde.  maurice wants you to never do drugs because drugs have ruined my maurice.”  then maurice would just groan and sigh and his mom would say, “yes maurice, i love you.”  i want a group hug between me, The Surgeon and Maurice.

this post will not receive 85 comments because it does not take a stance on a literary issue and then attempt to dismantle other arguments ultimately resulting in nothing.  i do not have any opinions on literary matters that extend beyond myself.  you are all silly.  j/k everyone, it’s mean monday.  i don’t mean any of this.

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November 24th, 2008 / 3:57 pm

David Lynch, annoyed

From the New York Times Magazine

From the New York Times Magazine

I completely envy and despise Deborah Solomon, who does the one-page interviews with influential people in the New York Times Magazine (I know, I know, it’s far from an Independent press; bear with me.) She interviewed David Lynch (ah, there’s the Independent spirit) this week and I loved to see how much he hated her interviewing style. His first answer was an insult to her question, but then again, her question was an ignorant insult to his work. Do you really think he wants someone to watch Blue Velvet on their iPod? I mean, have you seen anything he’s made? Click here to read the interview in full.

“I hear you’re getting married again.
In February. I’m marrying a girl named Emily Stofle.

Is she an actress? Was she in any of your films?
She was just in one, “Inland Empire.”

You’ve been married three times before?
Yeah, it’s real great.

Why would someone who feels so generally blissed out marry so many times?
Well, we live in the field of relativity. Things change.”

Random / 34 Comments
November 23rd, 2008 / 1:50 pm

Small Press Traffic and other local writing centers

I was clicking around the internet, looked at Beeswax Magazine‘s website and saw that they had a link to something called Small Press Traffic. The name sounded ‘neat’ so I clicked on it and read this:

Since 1974 SPT has been at the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area innovative writing scenes, bringing together independent readers, writers, and presses through publications, conferences, and our influential reading series.

For a lengthy history of the center, read this article by Nikki Thompson.

Small Press Traffic appears to be a literary center in San Francisco that focuses specifically on small presses and independent writing in the Bay area. Reading through their website, I was impressed with their commitment to small presses, to creating a local literary community, and to supporting ‘innovative’ writing. I know many city’s have centers like this, though their focus and mission probably vary from one to another; since moving away from Northern Virginia, I have missed my occasional trips to The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland to look through their pretty nice library of small literary journals and books by local authors. The Writer’s Center seemed specifically focused on DC-area authors. And I haven’t yet been to InPrint!, the writing center here in Houston, though I’ll probably have a look sometime now that the semester is nearly over to see what’s going on. Based on their website, InPrint! seems to focus on bringing national authors to the city for their reading series. Obviously, both centers do more than that, such as community outreach programs and literary festivals, etc; I think I’m trying to say that each center has a distinct flavor, if that makes sense.

Now, it seems to me that these writing centers tend to be overlooked as possible resources for the online community. I could be wrong on that; I’m basing this on my own experience. So that sentence should maybe be: It seems to me that these writing centers tend to be overlooked by Ryan Call as possible resources. Anyhow, this post is just to say that they might be worth checking out (where ever you live), if only to see how what they’re doing might appeal to you. They also might be good opportunities to do some volunteer work, to get some face-to-face community, something we don’t often have online.

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November 22nd, 2008 / 4:32 pm

news break: Nebraska Revises Child Safe Haven Law

The work of unruly teens.

The work of unruly teens?

ALL POINTS BULLETIN: To anyone who was thinking about writing a story “premised” on the uber-inclusive Safe Haven law of the state of Nebraska, be aware that your work has just become HISTORICAL FICTION. (all text leads to full NYT article)

Top Google Image result for Historical Fiction.

Top Google Image Search result for "historical fiction." Umm, okay.

>>Earlier this year, Nebraska was the last of the 50 states to adopt a so-called safe haven law, which was mainly intended to protect newborns from being abandoned to the elements or killed by panicked young mothers. But instead of specifying that the law only applied to infants up to a certain age, as in all other states, Nebraska’s version used the word “child,” opening the door to handovers of children up to age 18.

Since Sept. 1, to the shock of state officials and the public, 35 children, many of them teen-agers and including several from out-of-state, were left at hospitals under the law.<<

The law was revised during an emergency legislative session this week, is supposed to be signed today, and will go into effect at 12:01 AM Saturday, i.e. tonight. So if you’ve got a baby, child, tween, or teen you’ve been waffling about getting rid of, I advise you to put petal to the metal RIGHT NOW, and decide if you’re really serious while you’re en route. For reference, this where you’re headed:

Random & Web Hype / 16 Comments
November 21st, 2008 / 3:43 pm

HTML Giant is almost Gender Neutral!

According to Gender Analyzer HTML Giant is only 54% male!

As for your new X-chromosome representatives, Soffi’s blog is probably written by a woman, while mine is decidedly written by a man!

Random & Web Hype / 10 Comments
November 21st, 2008 / 1:00 pm

local news break: economics is politics by other means. politics is…

Dateline: New York City

CUSTOMER SERVICE.

I forwarded this piece from the NYT Cityroom blog, “M.T.A. Plans Steep Service Cuts and Fare Increases,” to my friend and co-editor (of The Agriculture Reader) Jeremy Schmall. It’s a short article, but if you want to know why I sent it to him in an email with the subject-line “like being fucked with a laser beam that is somehow also a rusty old knife,” this paragraph pretty much explains it:

>>For New York City Transit, the biggest component of the authority, the deficit-closing plan would eliminate the W and Z subway lines; eliminate service on the M line to Bay Parkway in Brooklyn; shorten the route of the G line, which will permanently stop at Court Square in Long Island City, Queens, instead of 71st and Continental Avenues in Forest Hills, Queens; lower the frequency of most letter-line trains to every 10 minutes from every 8 minutes on weekends; lower the frequency of all trains to every 30 minutes from every 20 minutes from 2 to 5 a.m.; eliminate overnight bus service on 25 routes; and eliminate the X27 and X28 express-bus lines.<<

Anywho, Schmall wrote back the following cryptic musings, and I thought I would share them with all of you:

>>zizek writes that the atrocities of communism are easily identifiable, quantifiable, and well known; of capitalism, however, little is said.

nathanael West told his teacher he wanted to be a writer, and she advised that he would need to get used to being poor. the ensuing great depression made that easy: everyone was poor.<<

A PRIMER FOR THE UNINITIATED BUT CURIOUS.

LOOK FOR THE SILVER LINING.

LOOK FOR THE SILVER LINING.

HAPPY BRAVE NEW WORLD, EVERYBODY!

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November 20th, 2008 / 1:45 pm

Time Has Passed, Now Lets Get Some Love and Tenderness

In late December I’m going to redesign this site. I’m pretty sure we’re going to move towards a more magazine-type blog, mostly because I’ve found some good templates to steal and why the fuck not, but other than that I’d like to hear some suggestions from the fine people who visit the site.

Do we need a flash intro? Animated gif backgrounds? More pop-ups?

Also, there’s the whole issue of women and how we smell like hot trash to them. Can we fix this? Is it possible to save ourselves from becoming, as Mike Young put it in a very poignant email last night, “a boys’ yuk yuk fag joke club.” I mean, I love a tasteless joke as much as Sam Pink, but we’ve got to temper it with some sweet love and tenderness if we’re going to make this relationship work.

I think. You guys know better than I do, I just build the framework.

Random / 62 Comments
November 20th, 2008 / 10:35 am

Calvin Liu where r u?

This is not a Calvin Liu.

This is not a Calvin Liu.

To the old farts like me who ran shit in the olden days and submitted to their e-journals by carrier pigeon, I need your calling ears: What ever happened to Calvin Liu?

More people will remember Bullfight Media than will remember The Glut (which is sadly no longer archived by Google unless you go into one of those time machine databases, which are scary).

I wonder mainly because in retrospect I think Calvin was a freemason. I was looking back through a copy I think the first perfect bound thing I was ever in, Calvin’s MITOCHONDRIA: AN ANTHOLOGY OF LOOSE ENDS, which included stuff from his then several mini mags including The Glut (an online site with fiction about food), Sexy Stranger (a mini pamphlet that you could give to people in the street that you thought were hot, with flash fiction in it), and Mitochondria, another site of short weird shit.

I was pretty amazed to see a list of contributors who, at the time, to me were strangers, and now all seem to be some sort of Childbearer of Planet Cooch (I wanted to say they do good shit and have been successful in their work), including: Mike Topp, Tao Lin, Matthew Simmons, Ryan Boudinot, Darby Larson, Kevin Sampsell, Brandon Shimoda, Christopher Owens, James Grinwis, Jimmy Chen, David Gianatasio, Jensen Whelan, Jonathan Messinger, Mark Cunningham, and several other now widely present faces, including myself.

It was a real trip going through some of that old stuff, and surprising that it was actually mostly really good, even though this was in early 2005 that it came out, which means the work was 2004 or earlier.

I hadn’t even gotten my dick pierced yet back then.

After that he did the Bullfight Review, which managed to put out 3 really killer issues, as well as a mini book contest winner which happened to be Roy Kesey’s NOTHING IN THE WORLD. I still have that Bullfight mini version, before it got picked up by Dzanc and Roy blew up.

So, what I’m wondering is: where the fuck is Calvin Liu?

In like ’05, he and I had talked back then about starting another print mag that we never got around to launching, which he suggested me call Anthology A Trois. Come to think of it, we used the same image from Jodorowsky’s HOLY MOUNTAIN that Ken and I ended up using on the No Colony website 4 years later. I never get tired of repeating myself.

I think I found him on myspace once and sent him a message that never got answered.

I would love to know what he’s doing, if he’s writing, publishing, etc. He also had some great fiction and poetry of his own pen, I recall.

Anybody? Anything?

(All you dudes/dudettes who have that Mitochondria anthology could have a fine time flipping through it again, let me say.)

Random / 80 Comments
November 20th, 2008 / 1:36 am

Please remember

“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”

Random / 9 Comments
November 20th, 2008 / 12:05 am