Snippets

I love this manifestation mode developing, objects offered to be: Statement of Facts by Vanessa Place.

OK, if no one else is going to say it, I will:
Blake’s book.
4/5/11. I can’t think of a way to say how much I’m looking forward to this. I sincerely hope to hear a lot about it over the coming 9 months.

Everyone I’ve seen mention this has been told they write either like Stephen King or David Foster Wallace. Who do you write like?

Have you checked in with The Laughing Yeti lately? Shome Dasgupta’s archive of thoughts on reading is becoming epic, and if the Internet lasts after the aliens come and go, it will certainly prove to be a worthwhile resource for the future historians.

1. At n+1, Benjamin Kunkel offers yet another “take” on the future of the fucking book.
2. The Sot Weed Factor and To Kill a Mockingbird both just turned 50.
3. At Open Culture, all of Tarkovsky’s films are now available for free online.

So, New York City, tomorrow evening is this Bastille Day Soiree, hosted by NOON and Gigantic. Reading, you’ve got Josh Cohen (Witz), Diane Williams (It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature), and Rebecca Curtis (Twenty Grand). A dude from !!! will be DJing–those guys have such branchy legs. Custom Witz and Twenty Grand cocktails. Wednesday, 7PM, The Library Bar at Gild Hall. Holy shit! I know. I know. I’ll just see you there. Text me.

At BOMBLOG, a conversation between Shane Jones and me, with an intro by Tom Roberge, Penguin’s editor for Light Boxes.

A movie called Predators came out this weekend, involving a species of vicious aliens who drop a bunch of humans onto a “game preserve” jungle planet to hunt them.  On the same day, I published a story called “Predator Bait,” involving shlubby men who try to hook up with young girls on the internet.  I now realize both pieces could be improved by combining them, so that Adrien Brody and Laurence Fishbourne et al have to survive on a hostile jungle planet while fleeing shlubby men who want to molest them.

Just listened to Samuel “Chip” Delaney (of Hogg and Dhalgren) read a long, amiable, detail-rich story about a fellow who likes eat his own excrement and semen.  Feel sort of fatalistic, for some reason.