February 2011

MFA Applicant Waiting To Hear Back (c. 1615; Oil on canvas)

BEST CAPTION GETS INTO NYU NO QUESTIONS ASKED (WE GOT THE HOOK UP…)

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Contests / 67 Comments
February 14th, 2011 / 1:40 am

On hand jobs, AWP, the internet, truck drivers, and embodied living

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Behind the Scenes & Craft Notes & Events & Random / 39 Comments
February 13th, 2011 / 8:29 pm

Sunday movie

First the room was black, and it had been black for a while. You and your date were busy with an app, or lowering approximate jumbled tiers of popcorn with five buttered tips and a kernel up in your molar’s business. Then there is light, a green neon swamp light, a swamp from which we crawled a long time ago. And it’s not me getting biblical on your ass, which might have been at the movies today. There were stories, bad stories to be told, told, told, told, told — keep looking at told until it looks told; it’s not a word really. Told. I told you you and your date are twenty dollars and two hours down. And this is all we were able to come up with for one another, t-telling b-bad s-stories like some s-studdering re: tard. Regarding tards, it’s spelt turds.

You and your date I know what you d-do. You watch a “Cannes” movie and grab a fallafel or burrito, some aluminum bomb ’bout to pregnate your belly with someone else’s economically collapsed culture. I know what y-you g-guys do. You g-go back to your mutual or respective apartment(s) — depending on who said or didn’t say I love you first or last — and you two act out this life in front of you. There’s the fridge, go grab a beer to wash down the sodium and sole eyelash. There’s the cat comin’ round getting all slutty with the edge of the chair leg, preferring it over yours. You love something that shits in a box with an asshole that is always saying hello. Now someone please slip on a three-week old issue of The Economist and break their ankle. No ER for you you freelancing fuck. Fall asleep tonight the dreams behind the black behind your eyes is a green screen holding its breath for the CGI of a better life, once the executive producer says okay.

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Random / 9 Comments
February 13th, 2011 / 6:56 pm

Bachelard on the Miniature

From Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space:

Psychologists–and more especially philosophers–pay little attention to the play of miniature frequently introduced into fairy tales. In the eyes of the psychologist, the writer is merely amusing himself when he creates houses that can be set on a pea. But this is a basic absurdity that places the tale on a level with the merest fantasy. And fantasy precludes the writer from entering, really, into the domain of the fantastic. Indeed he himself, when he develops his facile inventions, often quite ponderously, would appear not to believe in a psychological reality that corresponds to these miniature features. He lacks that little particle of dream which could be handed on from writer to reader. To make others believe, we must believe ourselves. Is it worthwhile, then, for a philosopher to raise a phenomenological problem with regard to these literary “miniatures,” these objects that are so easily made smaller through literary means? Is it possible for the conscious–of both writer and reader–to play a sincere role in the very origin of images of this kind?

Random / 1 Comment
February 12th, 2011 / 4:02 pm

big press for a small press

What do Forbes Magazine and a super cool indie press have in common?

If a 21st Century equivalent of the Lost Generation’s Paris exists — a hotpoint where the novel is undergoing radical transformation to reflect its time — it seems to be lost in its own right. Maybe it doesn’t exist on a map, or maybe a site map.

[Warning: This is self-promotional, sure, but it’s also a pretty great interview.]

Go ahead. Agree. Disagree. Enjoy.

Presses / 3 Comments
February 12th, 2011 / 1:29 pm

The Funeral of Shelley

Author News / 3 Comments
February 12th, 2011 / 3:07 am

Tyler the Creator’s “Yonkers”

Shit’s spreading across the net like something else but too good not to post again here.

Music / 25 Comments
February 11th, 2011 / 7:39 pm

It is Friday: Go Write Ahead.

Brood, I do, on myself naked

She handed me a full glass and said, “This is the last drink you will ever take”

Are you equally unspectacular?

If you love me, as I love you

We’ll both be friendly and untrue

When you go. Go TV spots and skywriting. I mean it

I am surprised and pleased at the recent abundance of the nearly naked

I am not even going to drink. Only beer or brandy

We have reason to be afraid. This is a terrible place

Our friend the owl

Something has been said for sobriety but very little

Smears brandy on the trampling boot

Up to the bar on a donkey!

Blessings on thee, little man

Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan

But helicopters

Author Spotlight & Random / 2 Comments
February 11th, 2011 / 7:26 pm

This is so fucking ridiculous. There’s no deferens between men and women.

Web Hype / 9 Comments
February 11th, 2011 / 7:21 pm