November 22nd, 2011 / 1:01 pm
 Random

14 hands at the neck of the creature

1. This flash by Shellie Zacharia is one of the best I’ve read in a goodly while.

14. For you glazed and sootstreaked aspiring MFA/MA folks, Cathy Day writes some do’s and don’ts concerning the Statement of Purpose. Good stuff here, and made me realize (I read grad apps) most applications are very similar–they DO a lot of these DONT’S.

2. Hey, all you Slaw-Cheeks, you know what: The brouhaha over Markham’s wholesale cribbing of other writers’ work is an instructive reminder of how rarely ‘original writing’ actually is.

3. Have you experienced “Fire Island Sideshow” by Jon Cotner and Claire Hamilton?

  1. In Fair Harbor we hear a Yorkie growling frantically. Gary always holds Brutus’ leash because last summer Brutus was almost killed by the high tide. This gets difficult around New York City, where law requires that human beings walk dogs. But Gary won’t let people near Brutus.

4. Dude writes stories that are Facebook updates.

5. In the first scene, Izzy (Hettienne Park) bares her breasts, and leaves them bared for a remarkably long time, as she explains that she is going to pose bare-breasted on the cover of her first book, and thereby get written about in New York Magazine.

5. I know, why don’t we all comment about what we are thankful for?! Really? Me neither. Fuck off.

Tags: , ,

8 Comments

  1. November 22nd, 2011 / 2:43 pm Frank Tas, the Raptor—

      Fuck, man! I’ve been writing stories in the comments section of my Facebook status updates for a couple of months now! Fuck!

  2. November 22nd, 2011 / 2:51 pm Leapsloth14—

      Now, now, I think we can have more than one artiste working in the medium.

  3. November 22nd, 2011 / 3:47 pm shaun gannon—

      i need something to compel me to go downstairs and microwave some food. what will do this. who will drive my life. make me your plaything. i will do whatever you demand of me and i will have no say over my actions and i will love it. what do you want. just tell me what you want. say money bring bitches, bitches bring lies. one nigga’s gettin jealous, and motherfuckers died.

  4. November 22nd, 2011 / 3:52 pm Ryan Call—
  5. November 22nd, 2011 / 4:04 pm deadgod—

      14.  Do BFA/BA programs offer classes in the Statement of Purpose genre?  –something more useful than ‘studying’ those stupid Shakespeare books.

      2.

      Part of the indignation […] seems […] to rest on the guilty suspicion that there is a degree of interchangeability in genre writing[.]

      Waiting for the indignation resting on learning that someone has this suspicion . . .

      5.

      Plateful of platitude.
      Fateful of flatulence.

      Hateful from hattitude.
      Mateful from matchitude.

      Pateful of satietude.
      Grateful for gratitude.

  6. November 22nd, 2011 / 4:09 pm Leapsloth14—

      I don’t know about every program. I try to set days aside for undergrads to talk about the publishing and grad school world, with advice. I also heavily qualify this by saying, “You can enjoy writing your whole life without any desire or need to publish” and “A small percentage of writers choose a degree, so if you are one of these…”

      Now, in grad school, they had lectures on professional aspects of writing, but not an entire class.

      The only class I taught with totally practical nature was a resume, office writing, memos, blah, blar type of stuff.

  7. November 22nd, 2011 / 5:13 pm Bobby Dixon—

      Ebay and Amazon have Markham’s Assassin of Secrets starting at fifty books. Just grabbed my copy from Powells for fifteen bucks. Powells fucking rules. 

  8. November 23rd, 2011 / 8:10 am Anonymous—