Welcome the New Giant Crew
Soffi and Catherine will kick yr ass
I know you hate to see us break up the 90% sausage party. The truth is we’ve been trying for a while now to bring a more feminine presence to this onslaught of often rude/crude dudism, but, well, girls don’t like us? Or if they do, they certainly don’t want to make it public. We each had to promise Kendra our first born before she came on board, but now those are all eaten up.
Thankfully, in the face of such dire straits, two lovely Female bloggers have now agreed to strap on their rubber suits and come swim in HTML Giant fun pool. It might be belated, but now Kendra has someone to whisper to behind her hand when we start acting like Jocks. Not that our women might not act like jocks sometimes. They’ll probably box our ears and rub our heads in the dirt. But only because they are both rad and excellent women. And they are here to help us keep it real.
So please welcome Soffi Stiassni and Catherine Lacey to the HTML Giant team.
We’re excited. Other things are going to keep changing and expanding. And no worries about us not being sassy or weird or ridiculous a lot of the time. That just comes naturally. But do look for the new sleek, ripped out 2.0 version of Giant coming hopefully before the year’s out. In the meantime, let’s have fun and spread some creation.
The Review Review
I don’t know if we’ve already mentioned this, but I’ll go ahead anyhow. The Review Review is a newish site that reviews literary journals. Pretty straightforward right? Sure. I like that they link to online essays by various editors of literary journals; sort of emphasizes the people behind these projects. I also like that they have organized their reviews into categories, such as “In The Grammar Gutter” and “Overwhelmingly Positive.” This seems funny to me; I mean this in a good way.
Becky Tuch started the project this past spring. Here’s her ‘manifesto’ or ‘editor’s note’ or whatever:
Wanting to get published in lit mags had started to feel like doing community service so that it would look good on your college application. That is to say, lit mags did not represent pleasure, engagement or intellectual growth, but merely a stepping stone toward recognition from book editors and maybe agents.
At first, this discovery was comforting. I’m not alone, I thought. No one reads these things! But the more I considered the situation, the worse I began to feel. How could we expect lit mags to care about our work, when we didn’t care about theirs? Why would anyone make time or pay money for our stories if we were unwilling to take a lit mag on our morning commute or shell out the twenty bucks a year for a subscription?
I like the idea of someone suggesting that we ought to care about the work that literary magazine editors do, the ‘discourse’ that literary magazines create. I like this idea. I haven’t had a chance to look through the reviews, so I can’t speak to the quality of writing on this site, but I like the idea. It seems similar to the kind of stuff going on at Newpages.com and Five Star Literary Stories.
Anyhow, have a look. Report back to us; I’ve done enough work today.
(Thanks, Cliff)
Faux-Democratizing Links Section * Opportunity Knoxxxxxx
In the spirit of broadening the Giant’s beholden link section (**SELF AGGRANDIZING CONTAINED** since our link taste is so badass), and because we already have established ourselves firmly in the elite anti-email response genre of outfits like Octopus, Action Yes, Pitchfork, Dump Tumumbulum, and etc., here is your opportunity to help us help ourselves so that we quit looking like secret handshakehandjob daddies (which we are).
The links section of the Giant (seen to the right here, and inclusive of only a small smattering of print presses and online journals, etc.) was constructed in about 8 minutes of ‘this is what I look at most’ from one editor’s head. The sole criterion, outside of being places often frequented, was that the aesthetic of the journal, or such places, is in its own way singular and tasty. That is, no ug pieces and no ga-ga. Beyond this short list, there are several many places I go at to do looks, but these are the ones I thought of in those 8 minutes.
Now, readers, I open it up to you: who should we be linking. All suggestions will be taken whole-heartedly, if then either ignored or scoffed at for their self-pointing, or just laziness, or just because the whole intentionally smarmy tone insists that we now ignore any fruits that are borne from it.
Really we like a lot of people, and we just haven’t felt the urge.
But yeah, let’s hear it. What should be linked? Should we include authors or just institutions? What deserves attention? How many people we aren’t already sucking on read this site anyway?
How far up my own ass should my fist fit?
Am I getting older too fast? Is the Sunn o))) discography a bunch of ass-palpitating bullshit or is the sound my refrigerator makes actually a deleted Steve Reich composition?
What happened to all the tits?
Dick and tit submissions are mailable to htmlgiant [at] gmail [dot] com 24/7/364 (fuck you, I sleep on Thanksgiving).
3 Sexy Links for Thurs
* Cover of Tyrant on bearotic.com: Tyrant wins.
* The Fireman and the Caper by Justin Dobbs: New strong strange short fiction live at zzzfish
* Quicksilver seeks submission: new online journal forthcoming from U of T at El Paso
Deal of the Week: Keyhole Magazine
Two news items from Keyhole Magazine:
1) The editors are offering a special discount this week only (November 10-17). You pay them $15 and they sign you up for a yearlong subscription. That’s four issues, if my math is correct. The subscription starts with Issue 6, so it looks like you’ll have to free up another $12 to purchase the nice-looking Handwritten Issue, but that shouldn’t be a problem, right?
2) And in week-old staff-related news, Molly Gaudry, of Willows Wept and Twelve Stories fame, has recently joined the Keyhole masthead as an editor (via Molly’s blog). Handshakes all around.
(sorry if this was already posted before – i have a headache)
Rauan Klassnik’s Ron Silliman Dreams
Silliman's eyes in Rauan's brain
In support of his excellent book of violent prose poems, Holy Land, Rauan Klassnik has been blogging from the Holy Land. There are lots of violent, strange drawings, weird rants, and recently, a series of dreams he’s had about Ron Silliman. They are quite fun.
Here’s the beginning of the first one:
I’m sitting on a rock with God. Below us in a field of cactus a naked Ron Silliman is scurrying after a rabbit.
Again and again it looks like Ron’s about to nab it but he either mistimes his final leap or the rabbit’s too slick and he ends up in cactus. Usually face-first.
But, a couple of times, tumbling over, it’s ass-first. All credit to Ron, though, he’s diligently and painstakingly removing all the needles (sometimes with the help of a mirror he’s produced from who knows where.)
I look over at God. He’s blank-faced.
Check out some more on the blog, and buy Rauan’s book. It is a quick and mind fucking read.
i’m drunk and it’s stupid how awesome this is
Except I might mean it’s awesome how stupid this is. But no promises.
He’s wrapped up so pretty
And I can unwind
His neat little ribbons,
And then I find –
His tummy comes open
And what do I see?
Special little organs that
Belong to you and me.
I wash them all off
So he can be clean
Then put them back in
And do up his seam.
Then just like a mummy,
I wrap him up tight
Then I cuddle him close
And hold him all night.
Bright Stupid Confetti – Change
Christopher Higgs astounds me. The content he posts over at Bright Stupid Confetti always gives me something to watch, look at, think about, etc. I am always amazed at the stuff he finds.
On October 28th, he wrote the following:
CHANGE: I’LL BE POSTING LARGER IMAGES & PERHAPS MORE CHANGE WILL COME, MAYBE, PROBABLY, YES, IT WILL, STAY TUNED…THINGS HAVE GOTTEN TOO STATIC…
And now he’s followed through. The site has changed. He’s reorganized the site. Everything is bigger, easier to look at. The emphasis is on the content much more so than before. The new layout forces you to look at one thing at a time, to sort of pause before moving on. I like the new change.
HTML GIANT MARKETING CAMPAIGN
In effort to increase unique daily visitors (and I’m not talking about in-call escort services), HTML GIANT will be employing tactics used by the following masters of marketing. It is our hope to usurp these kings of literature/publishing.
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[To do list]: Become vegan, get ‘severely depressed,’ attract ‘emotionally traumatized’ ‘females’ to make t-shirts and short ‘films,’ strive towards a ‘detached yet ultimately life-affirming’ philosophy, decrease pain and suffering, change font to ‘helvetica.’
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[To do list]: Use exclamation points to convey enthusiasm! Sometimes three!!! And fragmented sentences. Like this. Use quirky/informal language to describe institutional matters: “we really like the internet, we even use our server as a lunch table, and we spilled fanta on it.”
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[To do list]: Help shape Malcolm Gladwell’s fro, send writers to France or the Middle East, advertise Prada and Chevron on the back cover, incinerate slush-pile daily, publish anal instead of annal, insert subscription postcards every other page.
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[To do list]: Google ourselves every day hoping to be mentioned on some blog.
Day of Jubilee: Tao Lin offers free victory book to Barack Obama
with ‘obama’ as president my writing will increase in viability, i believe
Happy Actually Having a Future Maybe, Instead of Definitely Being Totally Fucked!
Here’s one for the road-
