Administrative Email to All You Secret Santas
Here’s the email I just sent out to you Secret Santas in case some of you have insane spam filters (if you’re not a Secret Santa, please disregard or something, I don’t know):
Hi Everyone,
Thank you for signing up for our Secret Santa thingy. I have finally gotten all of the Secret Santas assigned. I used a fancy random number sorting system in Excel. I typed random numbers very quickly into a column and then sorted everyone’s names by those random numbers in an ascending order and then pasted that list against the master list.
I will begin sending out those assignments later tonight.
So, the purpose of this email is to go over a few things. I will try to keep it as clear as possible.
1) Because the main idea behind this exchange was to support independent presses/journals/authors/etc, we strongly encourage you to choose a gift from that ‘world.’ If you’re unfamiliar with the small press world, then have a look at the links over at Newpages.com or check the HTMLGIANT archives for various presses/journals that we’ve spotlighted. Many of these presses/journals are also running holiday specials at this time. We’ll try to spotlight more of these in the coming weeks. Also, feel free to email me back (SECRET SANTA ??? in the subject field) if you have a question.
Yankee Pot Roast: Guest Editors
Fortunato Salazar, who is 19 and really funny, solicited the editors of Yankee Pot Roast asking if he and I (he volunteered my name) could guest edit YPR during their usual holiday down-time; basically run it. And run it we will, hopefully not into the ground. Fortunato is taking the reigns, though I will also be involved.
So this is a call for submissions, w/ the knowledge of recent editorial usurpation until January. Now is the time to submit — for indiscretion shall be rampant!
For those who don’t know, YPR is one of the oldest humor-satire type journals, back when the internet was this new crazy odd beautiful thing. It’s wonderfully designed, and the content always delivers. Here’s what I’ll be looking for: literary pop-satire, like a journal entry from Hemingway’s Mojito; Kafka’s guest appearance on The Office; or a transcript of e.e. cummings and Georges Perec on Wheel of Fortune — you know, pretentious brainy stuff that won’t get you laid.
We’ll be looking in their queue, but for good measure send to BOTH of us:
fortunatosalazar@gmail.com
jimmy.chen@ucsf.edu (My work email, so my supervisor thinks I’m doing work while reading your awesome submissions.)
Salazar and I will figure out the details, but basically, if you get rejected, it’s him. If you get accepted, it’s me. Toss my salad and I’ll supply the ranch (see that’s just gross, but that’s my taste — fuck, another pun!)
Thank you editors Josh Abraham & Geoff Wolinetz for such trust, graciousness, and possible negligence. Enjoy the holidays, and we’ll see you when you get subpoenaed.
(Oh, and if I’m on the HTMLGIANT down-low, you know what I’m doing.)
Uncategorized / 8 Comments
December 8th, 2008 / 9:40 pm
December 8th, 2008 / 9:40 pm
Winners of the Nick Antosca ‘Midnight Picnic’ Contest
Here are the winners of Nick Antosca’s Midnight Picnic Contest, as chosen by the author:
Winners:
Ben Spivey (points for picture) (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v719/truettdietz/MScontest.jpg)
Ken Baumann (chill of truth) (http://htmlgiant.com/?p=1936#comment-3436)
Honorable Mentions:
pr ( http://htmlgiant.com/?p=1936#comment-3470 )
barry ( http://htmlgiant.com/?p=1936#comment-3447 )
jereme ( http://htmlgiant.com/?p=1936#comment-3481 )
crispin ( http://htmlgiant.com/?p=1936#comment-3701 )
Honorable mentions winners can email me (brothercyst@gmail.com) their mailing address and whether they would like to receive a copy of FIRES or a randomly selected book off my bookshelf. (I will not be offended if they choose the randomly selected book. I will politely assume they already have FIRES.)
Thanks to all who participated, may they die peacefully in their sleep.
All else, you can pick up your copy from Word Riot Press, and really should: it’s a wild book.
Now, to counteract the psychic violence of the photo that accompanied the original contest post, here is a ‘compromise’ video accompaniment: cute meets curdled. It’s as far as I’m willing to go.
I Like Matthew “The Monk” G. Lewis A Lot
At the age of 33, the same age that Jesus was when he died, I had a physical and mental breakdown and became obsessed with Catholic literature. I read Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, (not Walker Percy…hmmm), Muriel Spark, St. Augustine and some others. I also went to Mass a few times at St. Vincent de Paul Church on 23rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenue at 12pm, but I never went to confession, so I couldn’t receive the Eucharist. I watched others taking it and cried in the back pew. I loved Mass and my favorite part was how all five or ten of us, straggled throughout that huge, dark Church in the middle of the bright bright day would turn to each other and bless each other. Strangers smiling and blessing each other? I shook and cried. That is what I did.
Over my thanksgiving break, I reread The Monk by Matthew G. Lewis. READ MORE >
Mean Mondays: Blake Butler hates your medulla oblongata
Blake Butler is the single most selfish individual on the face of this earth. Blake Butler often smells of fatty oils and spits when he talks. I don’t understand how any one finds value in his writing.
Babies eating each other is not good literature. Is it even literature?
He’s constantly writing nonsensical fluff like:
d;lk**346;d44OIIIOOOPP3ffd)
What the fuck am I supposed to do with this? It has no meaning.
Or he’ll misuse body parts in ridiculous sentence structures. “Sniff urethra farm sailing pie”
huh?
Let’s analyze why Blake is a douche.
THE INTERUPTION: “Ok… I understand.” :)
The 1st 3:00 minute scene in this montage from the Shining gives me such a mind erection: I think I am going to buy a blood red iPod with one button on its face which when you press it just plays this scene at damage volume inside the head of who I have handed it to to listen and to know. I would use it every day:
God, it makes me punch the air the air in joy to see to see to see Jack nail that shit so hard. That smile of exasperation. Days and days and days.
BUY THIS NOW: Oxford American 10th Anniversary Southern Music Issue
This past week, the mailman brought me a true and honest BOUNTY: my contributor copies of the Oxford American 10th Anniversary Southern Music issue. This thing is packed to and through the gills with goodies. The issue is oriented by TWO CDs of free music, boasting a whopping 28 tracks apiece. Some of them you may know very well; others you will be delighted and thrilled to discover. Pretty much every genre of music is represented, and the selections are impeccable. Inside the magazine itself, find stellar essays of all lengths and sizes about the artists on the CDs, plus new fiction by Clyde Edgerton and Matthew Pitt, Roy Blount Jr. on the documentary Shakespeare was a Big George Jones Fan: Cowboy Jack Clement’s Home Movies, and a whole lot more.
Ella Fitzgerald’s 1968 cover of “Sunshine of Your Love”? — CHECK.
Greil Marcus AND Jack Pendarvis BOTH writing about Neko Case? — CHECK.
Humongous cover story on Jerry Lee Lewis, including badass picture of same? — CHECK.
Cousin Emmy, “the first hilllbilly to own a Cadillac,” written about by yours truly? — CHECK.
Long-lost Louisville, KY greaser-cum-hippie band Elysian Field? — CHECK.
Um, Richard Hell and Elvis and Lucinda Williams and Doc Boggs and Betty White (yes, that Betty White) and Kevin Brockmeier and Big Star and Blind Willie McTell and Thomas Beller and Eartha Kitt and Little Walter and The Residents and JESUS IT JUST KEEPS GOING ON–
Seriously, friends, it’s not just this issue either. Oxford American is one of the few magazines I eagerly await every month. Their recent Katrina issue was excellent, and before that their HOMES issue featured cats like Chris Bachelder and Karen Russell. Pendarvis is in there a lot. There’s fiction in every issue. These guys are more than just on the level- they are the level. Time to get with the program. Once more, all you have to do is call 1-800-CLICK-HERE. Operators are standing by.
Uncategorized / 11 Comments
December 8th, 2008 / 11:53 am
December 8th, 2008 / 11:53 am
This post is mean spirited but only by semantic
I think I realized yesterday that all people really need in a forum is a placeholder under the illusion of an idea so that they have somewhere to argue and get their big O open.
Hmmm.
So, like, does Bret Easton Ellis suck ass or what?
Absent open for subs
This is not Leigh Stein, nor is it Absent Magazine.
from Absent:
We are now reading submissions of poetry for our next issue. Please spread the word! Send up to 10 pages of poetry, in the body of an email or as a .doc or .rtf attachment, to absentsubmissions [at] gmail [dot] com. Simultaneous submissions are fine, just let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere. We do not accept previously published poems. We will attempt to respond to all submissions within a month. If you would like to submit in another genre (prose, sound, image, etc.) please query.
Absent is a beautifully designed journal of poetry, some prose, essay, sound.
I like this poem by Leigh Stein from issue 3 (though I liked it even better before I found out Rattawut Lapcharoensap is a real person).
Uncategorized / 22 Comments
December 7th, 2008 / 10:48 pm
December 7th, 2008 / 10:48 pm
i like ARCHIE AMMONS a lot.
archie ammons is a dead guy who used to write poems. he doesn’t write poems anymore because he can’t move his limbs and i think he probably doesn’t have a mind anymore either. but when he was alive and still writing poems, he wrote book length poems, usually with each sentence separated by a colon. of his books, i have read, ‘Glare,’ ‘Tape for the Turn of the Year,’ ‘Garbage,’ ‘Bosh and Flapdoodle,’ ‘Sphere,’ ‘Ommateaum with Doxology’ and i think one other called something like ‘the northcarolina poems.’ he wrote on receipt paper scrolls using a typewriter. he did that because he wanted the experience of writing to seem unimportant. i remember reading something about how when he went on a drive to another state, he unrolled the receipt scroll for his current project and took it with him because he was afraid his house would burn down while he was gone. i understand being that paranoid but it’s usually over something like, a drawing of a horse on fire eating bacon or something unimportant.