Hi. Stephen Tully Dierks here. The third issue of Pop Serial is being serialized online here. A print edition is forthcoming. The magazine also has a regularly updated tumblr with news and things concerning past, present, and maybe future contributors.

The third issue features writing and/or visual art by the following people: Tao Lin, Luna Miguel, Ben Brooks, Sam Pink, Steve Roggenbuck, Blaise Larmee, Frank Hinton, Timothy Willis Sanders, Richard Chiem, Ana Carrete, Crispin Best, Poncho Peligroso, Andrew James Weatherhead, Cameron Pierce, Shaun Gannon, Michael Inscoe, Cassandra Troyan, DJ Berndt, Madison Langston, Zachary Whalen, Liam Bjartrun Adams, Spencer Madsen, Elaine Sun, Jackson Nieuwland, Omar De Col, Stacey Teague, Meggie Green, James Duncan, Cassandra Nguyen, Marshall Mallicoat.

To celebrate, I asked random questions to friends of mine who were on gchat at the time. Omar De Col and I came up with some questions while intoxicated. I gave each person a choice of question. The vague topics/subjects from which to pick were: bloodthirsty Lappet-faced vultures; otters; poop; Omar De Col; fish butt-rape. Some people picked the same question as each other. Fish butt-rape was the most popular question. Below are the questions and responses.

Interviewer: If you were somewhere, lost, and a pack of bloodthirsty Lappet-faced vultures was pecking away at your flesh, and your death was definitely going to be achieved in two hours or less, and you had the choice to either: A) browse Pinterest at-will for the duration of your two-hour death (only Pinterest); or B) consume as many Taco Bell Dorito Locos Tacos as desired from an infinite supply for the duration, to weakly distract you from the flesh-ripping/blood-hemorrhaging, et al. leading, inevitably, in exactly two hours, to the point of fatal blood loss, permanent nonexistence for the rest of time–which would you pick? Unlimited Pinterest browsing or unlimited Taco Bell Doritos Locos Tacos?

Maggie Lee: Listen I don’t get Pinterest at all, my mom is obsessed with Pinterest, we talked about Pinterest so much at the table for Easter dinner and I still don’t get it, I barely participated in conversation, I straight up fell asleep at the table. Wtf is Pinterest really. One time my mom sent me an email with a link to a poem on Pinterest about ‘moms’ and how she loves me and will always be her baby or something. Ok SO, tacos, definitely. The one time I ate those, I felt very tired as a result, like immediately upon consumption, so it’d probably be really good, I would get very tired and then die, seems right.

Interviewer: OK so you’re accidentally placed in an aquatic-animal prison, and you have to share a cell/get butt-raped by either a Shovelnose sturgeon or fat-puffer blowfish? Which do you pick, and follow-up question, what did you want to be when you were a kid?

Mira Gonzalez: Holy shit. OK let me google those fish.

Interviewer: Lol.

Mira Gonzalez: I just googled those fish and I think I would pick a Shovelnose sturgeon even though it has a flat sharp looking face because puffer fish are round and covered in pointy spikes and that seems more painful. But that is assuming that I would get butt raped by the entire fish. I couldn’t figure out what their penises were like via Google.

I think I wanted to be a painter/astronaut when I was a kid. Like at the same time.

Interviewer: OK so you’re accidentally placed in an aquatic- animal prison, and you have to share a cell/get butt-raped by either a Shovelnose sturgeon or fat-puffer blowfish? Which do you pick, and follow-up question, what did you want to be when you were a kid?

Will Bechtold: Haha it looks like pufferfish have a lot of needles and Shovelnose sturgeon is the ‘smallest species of freshwater sturgeon’. I guess sturgeon then seems less painful maybe. I think when I was a kid I wanted to be a teacher.

Interviewer: If Omar De Col had already enthusiastically pleasured you for three continuous hours and was out-of-breath/visibly exhausted, would you: A) force him (you’re strong and intimidating) to give you another hour of pleasure; B) somehow reciprocate; or C) let him take a fifteen-minute break/nap?

Stacey Teague: Feel like if he pleasured me for 3 continuous hours I would bloody take that boy out to lunch, and then do a nap together afterwards.

Interviewer: If the ocean like had otters on the surface like an otter carpet on their backs opening clams and shit, and it was real difficult to go up for air cause you had to push otters out the way and they are violent sometimes, would you swim in the ocean?

Marshall Mallicoat: Do the otters come all the way up to the beach?

Interviewer: I think the otter carpet starts once you get out of the initial shallows if you’re entering via a beach. But the ocean is essentially full to the brim with otters.

Marshall Mallicoat: I might swim in the part without otters, but not in the rest.

Interviewer: OK so you’re accidentally placed in an aquatic-animal prison, and you have to share a cell/get butt-raped by either a Shovelnose sturgeon or fat-puffer blowfish? Which do you pick, and follow-up question, what did you want to be when you were a kid?

Carolyn DeCarlo: OK I am looking these fish up on Google Images.

Are these fish actually entering my butt?

I think for obvious reasons I will choose the Shovelnose sturgeon in case the fish themselves are actually going up my butt. Its snout seems like it might actually be pleasant, like, it might be like a dick or something. Is a dick in the butt good? Idk. I have never really had a dick in the butt.

When I was a kid I wanted to be an adult. I wasn’t really good at being a kid. My favorite summer activities were: 1) searching for things on the bottom of the swimming pool and 2) reading. Maybe it would have been nice to become a treasure hunter and not a writer. Maybe I would have already achieved sturgeon butt-rape if I were a deep-sea diver or something. Maybe Jacques Cousteau got fucked in the butt by fish.

Interviewer: If you felt like you had to poo but there were no toilets around however you have an empty Chinese food container but you’re in public so it might be weird and also in this reality there are no other options you basically have to poop in the Chinese food container or you will poop your pants in public on camera (yea you’re on camera lol), would you poop in the container?

Zoe Young: I would probably poop my pants and be discreet as possible. And go home. And just like pray probably idk I wouldn’t even really know what to ask God in that situation. “Please God let this bowel movement be imperceptible.”

Interviewer: If you were somewhere, lost, and a pack of bloodthirsty Lappet-faced vultures were pecking away at your flesh, and your death was definitely going to be achieved in two hours or less, and you had the choice to either: A) browse Pinterest at-will for the duration of your two-hour death (only Pinterest); or B) consume as many Taco Bell Dorito Loco Tacos as desired from an infinite supply for the duration, to weakly distract you from the flesh-ripping/blood-hemorrhaging, et al. leading, inevitably, in exactly two hours, to the point of fatal blood loss, permanent nonexistence for the rest of time—which would you pick? Unlimited Pinterest browsing or unlimited Taco Bell Doritos Locos Tacos?

Jennifer Fallingstar: I’ve never done either of those things in my whole life I just want to die like a real man.

As an animal lover I would consider what was in the vultures’ best interest. Vultures like dead things. Tacos are dead things that taste good.

Tacos definitely. I don’t even have a Pinterest account. But I have a taco account.

But I wouldn’t want to fuck up the natural ecosystem. Omg. By bringing in a foreign invasive species. But I just googled Pinterest and it looks really dreadful. I would eat all the tacos and make little origami vultures out of the wrappers. The
end.

Taco Bell Doritos Locos Tacos is my final answer.