Playing connect-the-dots with two dots just gets you a straight line
(1)
Most of the work in this world completely sucks balls and the only reward most people get for their work is just barely enough money to survive, if that. The 95% of people out there who spend all day long shoveling the dogshit of life for subsistence wages are basically keeping things running just well enough so that David Brooks, me and the rest of that lucky 5% of mostly college-educated yuppies can live embarrassingly rewarding and interesting lives in which society throws gobs of money at us for pushing ideas around on paper (frequently, not even good ideas) and taking mutual-admiration-society business lunches in London and Paris and Las Vegas with our overpaid peers.
(2)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-agl0pOQfs
Understanding Campaign
The wonderful Justin Sirois of Narrow House and his MLKNG SCKLS co-author Haneen Alshujairy have created a campaign to teach the world one word of Arabic. I think this is a great idea. Buy a button, some stickers, share the image here!
NYers: April 6, Rumpus Party!
If you live in NY, you should not miss this. Look at that! Also, just announced, there will also be a first ever reading from the Sam Lipsyte Creative Ensemble.
The Rumpus folks have offered to give away a pair of tickets to a random Giant reader. If you live in town and can make it, comment and we’ll draw at random someone on Friday evening to get the goods.
Otherwise, tickets can be gathered here: http://www.highlineballroom.com/bio.php?id=1403
4 crowbars eating fries
1. This Stephen King piece by William Walsh is exactly why I glow persona fiction. Not sure how I missed this. Maybe it was even noted here (I’m too lazy to look now). Anyway, enjoy. I think this piece is using the persona (King), its echoes, connotations, in a way I really admire and enjoy. Walsh is waltzing the term “Stephen King” in a technical manner. The King character is an object/emotion/thought process. It enacts a void and need and unspoken thing for this family. It…oh, I could go on, but why not read?
2. Sardine sandwiches do rock. (1:56 to end made me fly/why like a detail) I am serious now, go watch. Isn’t it what we like and need to live? Isn’t it a good story, or better a poem? If I could meet one sardine sandwich woman a day, this very life would be enough.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ872YZCPG8
3. Here are some crystals for sale at a reasonable price. They were found in Tao Lin, China.
4. I am sick, feverish, that somebody-stuffed-wet insulation-in-my-head-cavities thing, something, but just ignoring it because I have a lot of work to do. Does anyone like to write when ill? I have been writing the last two days and my fingers are large, like balloons (those party ones clowns make into dachshunds) floating over the keys, all tinnitus and forehead simmer. I’m not sure what it means to the words on the page. You?
Little House on the Bowery Reading
Dennis Cooper, James Greer, and Mark Gluth read at City Lights, March 16, 2010
Magic is tight
Winner of the Magic: The Designing Contest at Kitsune Noir, by Pedro Fernandes [via Clusterflock]
Any Magic freaks in the building? Wish I still had that shit. Like I wish I had my Dragonlance novels I sold in a lot on eBay. Worst move ever.
Three Seattle Things
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBsmdMCwZjE
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWs8PX2kHUc
Prose poems by Seattle treasure, John Olson, read at Pilot Books during Small Press Fest. Go here to see Brandon Downing introduce Mr. Olson. I missed this reading. I hate that I missed this reading.
Suggested John Olson books: The Night I Dropped Shakespeare on the Cat, Free Stream Velocity, Eggs and Mirrors.
***
In treasured writer slash treasure-hunting news, Ryan Boudinot’s geocaching story project “Found and Lost” continues. It appears that copies of the story “Juan” now exist in California and North Carolina. Fans of short fiction and fans of GPS device-based tracking games take note.
***
Another Seattle treasure is the producer Vitamin D. To celebrate his birthday, he gave away a free 9-song EP called Bornday, much of which he says was recorded on his birthday. Go here for a link and grab it.
Which reminds me: I started A Jello Horse on my birthday. Anyone else feel a creative urge on their born day? Anything of note come out of it?
This is a Formica table
1. @ The Guardian, Twin Peaks celebrates its 20th anniversary.
2. An excerpt from Johannes Göransson’s recently completed novel, Haute Surveillance (which is fucking incredible), presented by Andrew Lundwall.
3. A trailer for Ben Mirov’s Ghost Machine, forthcoming from Caketrain:
I love this woman.
UPDATE: Didn’t really do any research on this, and probably should have. Middle finger is photoshopped. The real image is this:
Let’s call the first image, then, an expression of collective desire.