Web Hype

Tim Jones-Yelvington Reviews Dzanc’s Creative Writing Sessions

dcwslogoA few weeks ago, Dzanc books announced that they’d started a new program called the Dzanc Books Creative Writing Sessions. There was a lot of coverage of this announcement for about a week, and then news fell off. For a while, I didn’t read anything about the program, how it was doing, what it was like, etc., so when I saw that Tim had posted on his blog that he’d signed up for it, and because he’s a regular reader around here, I thought I’d ask for his thoughts.

READ MORE >

Presses & Web Hype / 16 Comments
May 1st, 2009 / 12:39 pm

Gene Morgan’s Twitter Feed Press

I’m sorry for spamming the site.

READ MORE >

Technology & Web Hype / 50 Comments
May 1st, 2009 / 11:04 am

HTMLGIANT Book Exchange

establishing-a-library

HTMLGIANT Book Exchange is a place to post lists of books you want or books you’d like to get rid of in return for other books.

It’s pretty simple: in the comments section, post your lists. Then if you see a book you want, nest your reply under the list you found it. Though it’s up to you and the other person to work out details of the trade, we will manage the lists and hopefully make a market of it, perhaps one more closely-knit and attentive to ‘good books’ over ‘just any old thing,’ in light of the now overrun book trade sites like Bookmooch and etc.

[In that mind, when you are listing books, please try to be selective in your ‘what I have’ lists, avoiding the common things that most anyone would have or could easily find, and instead try to focus on books that might not be as readily available for trade: i.e. less classics, more contemporary. If someone is looking for, say, Stephen King or Mark Twain, they can ask for it by name, and then you can follow up.]

[Also, if you post a list and want to go back and add more, make a note nested under your original and we can consolidate. Don’t make more than one node post of haves/wants, as that will get messy.]

This will be chaotic and wonderful to begin with. We’ll learn as we go, and if plans go as plans might, we plan on developing the thread into a page of its own. More on that later.

For now, a good way to search for a specific book you want once the list populates, use the Find command in your web browser, and hope it got spelled right.

Please post your lists, use some discretion (a compendium of every book you have in your attic is not necessary). Let’s do some sharing.

Web Hype / 36 Comments
April 30th, 2009 / 3:12 pm

Man tries to pay bill with spider drawing

spider

From: Jane Gilles
Date: Wednesday 8 Oct 2008 12.19pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Overdue account

Dear David,
Our records indicate that your account is overdue by the amount of $233.95. If you have already made this payment please contact us within the next 7 days to confirm payment has been applied to your account and is no longer outstanding.

Yours sincerely, Jane Gilles

From: David Thorne
Date: Wednesday 8 Oct 2008 12.37pm
To: Jane Gilles
Subject: Re: Overdue account

Dear Jane,
I do not have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead. I value the drawing at $233.95 so trust that this settles the matter.

Regards, David.
spider

READ MORE >

Web Hype / 44 Comments
April 30th, 2009 / 4:13 am

THUNK INTERVIEWS

i can’t remember if something about THUNK has already been posted. but it is an entertaining site. there are interviews from many many authors. barry graham is the latest interviewee. read all of the interviews.

Web Hype / 14 Comments
April 26th, 2009 / 3:13 pm

Lindsay Lohan’s nth circle of hell

lindsay-lohan-drunk-after-crash

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.

READ MORE >

Web Hype / 28 Comments
April 24th, 2009 / 11:04 pm

Christopher Cheney is one of the only people who has threatened to run me over with a red car

cheney1
New from Blue Hour Press is an e-book of poems by Christopher Cheney (featuring photographs by Estelle Srivijittakar) called They Kissed Their Homes. They’re really something, these poems and photos, apart and together. The whole thing is like a violin you left on the stove and spilled coffee grounds over, which you feel bad about, since it’s not even your violin: you’re just keeping it safe for a guy who showed up at your door late one night smelling half-fried eggs and half-chicory, asking if you would be a brother and hide his fiddle. You don’t really want to, but he keeps shoving the case at you in nervous little here, here‘s, so finally you take it and leave it in your kitchen. He never comes back. But after a while you can’t seem to get the moon out of your refrigerator, and you start to feel like a dog’s around, hiding, watching you, doing that sleek coat shiver, trapped and can’t stop.

Cheney’s one of my favorite poets of disquiet. He’s like a sharpened eyelash. The real deal. Here’s the official blurb from Blue Hour Press about the book, plus some excerpts after the break.

Christopher Cheney’s They Kissed Their Homes is an album of everyday landscapes foregrounded with disquiet. Like warm Polaroids, the poems develop clause by clause; their subjects—the mundane, extraordinary, savage—colorize and sharpen; a nameless, faceless population pulls into focus. Together with the work of photographer Estelle Srivijittakar, Cheney’s declarative snapshots gain collaborative energy, grow even more lucid. The result is a catalogue of the countless small oddities of our American quotidian.

cheney2

READ MORE >

Excerpts & Web Hype / 20 Comments
April 24th, 2009 / 2:31 pm

SWARM MENTALITY

i’m not sure i have a post for this. but i just thought to myself that “the internet and people writing on the internet seem like gangs and no one has the courage to like or dislike something anymore based on personal opinion without resorting to petty insults or the reverse, petty compliments.” i feel angry.

Web Hype / 117 Comments
April 23rd, 2009 / 2:19 pm

re: skill ping pong master – a response to Mark Baumer

bill_hillary_clinton

The other day, Mark Baumer wrote me an email, the subject line of which is the title of this post. He wrote:

My friends fred and fred have been playing ping pong against each other.  They are not very good.  Do you have any tips or suggestions or tutoring videos I could pass on to them?  They keep calling me coach, but I don’t really know too much.  Any tips would be appreciated.

Here is my response:

Hi Mark Baumer,

I appreciate your writing to ask me questions about ping pong. I want to help you out as best I can. I watched all five video recordings of Fred playing Fred over at Everyday Yeah.

(For those who don’t know, Everyday Yeah is a wonderful site. You should go look at it now).

Four table tennis tips after the break.

 

READ MORE >

Web Hype / 16 Comments
April 23rd, 2009 / 12:46 pm

Youtube teaches me something about America

I came to this video in the related videos YouTube attached to the one in Matthew’s post yesterday on tone and Diff’rent Strokes, and originally was interested in watching it mainly for the choice rap performance from Gary Coleman and his self-proclaimed “very different from Michael Jackson” buddy laying a hip-hop smackdown on the Will Shriner show. Dang.

It was in the interview after the performance, though, that the thing that really stood out about the video for me hit. Scroll to 5:08, right near the end, and observe the crowd and host’s reaction when the child star expresses his interest in becoming a short story writer.

He wants to write stories??? How funny! How absurd!

Will’s cheese-eating giggle quip, “Now Gary, all you gotta do is write a story…,” shaking his little hand like he’s got a pen.

Good job, America. Instead he turned into a crackhead or something, right?

Really, though, I can understand the punchline. Fucking writers. I’d laugh at a child too.

Gary, if you’re out there man, our submissions are closed right now, but you can consider yourself ‘solicited’ any day of any week.

Web Hype / 35 Comments
April 16th, 2009 / 3:14 pm