Help us! We’ve been on this island for weeks! We’re out of food! If you don’t stop for us, we’re going to eat the striped-shirt dude in the back with his arms raised! He is especially interested in your help! But all of us are too!

Things are happening:

I’ve got a story that I wrote this summer, “Bucket Day,” coming out in the next issue of The Normal School.

On the Fun Camp front: A short called “Peek Here, Progeny” is coming out in Dogzplot, and two others, “Speak Up for a Treat” and “Thank You, Brother Dave,” are coming out in Everyday Genius.

Excited for these. Much to look forward to.

Abandon Love Records is giving away all of Jon Rooney’s Virgin of the Birds recordings via zip file. I’m especially excited about this fall’s EP, Dear Furies. These five songs are Jon’s most direct and yet varied recordings to date, and his voice has never sounded better. It feels like a breakthrough.

Will you, or will you not, quit me?

I’d never read Melville’s Bartelby the Scrivener until this weekend. The story/novella’s wiki says he wrote it to cheer himself up in the midst of Moby Dick’s commercial failure.

It’s so playful in how often it strays from its story, and in how much unnecessary wind-up the narrator takes to get us there. A comedy of “let’s see how long I can string this out,” and Melville riffs more than well enough to get away with it. Here’s the narrator, who just found out that the man he’s fired has never left the office:

I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood like the man who, pipe in mouth, was killed one cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia, by summer lightning; at his own warm open window he was killed, and remained leaning out there upon the dreamy afternoon, till some one touched him, when he fell.

Pretty great. It’s free here.

Items, Numbered

1. Jack Christian and I are going to read poems at the Green Street Cafe on February 18. I’ll remind you again.

2. There is a Sufjan Stevens-themed remix album that is getting a lot of attention. It sounds good. I like it. Three years ago, I did a Sufjan Stevens-themed remix album. Mine is different than Tor’s–not a strict Sufjan + rapper combo but instead an album built around his songs/instrumental pieces arranged to feel like one of his albums, silly long song titles and all. If you like my new remix album and haven’t heard the Sufjan one, give it a try.

3. I’ve got some morsels from my book-in-progress, Fun Camp, coming out in the next Notnostrums. Basics is also from Fun Camp.

4. Mike Czyz gave a great interview with Nik Perring this week, and gave me a kind and hard-to-live-up-to shout-out. Thanks, Mike! It means a lot.

5. The variety show went wonderfully: The performers brought their A-game. They also brought action figures, amps, oboes, and a “House of the Rising Sun” cover. Thanks to everyone who came. Let’s do it again.

This Nun

My story, “This Nun,” is coming out in Keyhole 9. Very exciting to make it into a magazine I subscribe to and enjoy so much.

Ancient Wikis of the Future

Are you ready for some adventure, Barry?

The Sun

From the wiki: “Once regarded as a small and relatively insignificant star, the Sun is now presumed to be brighter than 85% of the stars in the galaxy, most of which are red dwarfs.”

From the discussion:”I found myself having to pull out the calculator repeatedly to make sense of the units in this article. The worst offender is the description of the core whose units are given in solar radii!!! That’s self referential!”

Further clicking: Faint young Sun paradox

Potential band name: Faint Young Son

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John Cheever

From the wiki: “At the joint session, however, Dr. Hays claimed (as Cheever noted in his journal) that Cheever himself was the problem: “a neurotic man, narcissistic, egocentric, friendless, and so deeply involved in [his] own defensive illusions that [he has] invented a manic-depressive wife.” Cheever soon terminated therapy.”

From the discussion: “I’ll say it again. I know the definition of plagiarism, sir, but it is you who are making the accusations and it is you who has failed to provide the adequate evidence and substantiation for that accusation. Do so, or cease criticizing the article.”

Further clicking: The Swimmer

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Advance-fee fraud

From the wiki: “The essential fact in all advance-fee fraud operations is that the promised money transfer never happens because the money or gold does not exist.”

From the discussion: “Are there any references to back the claim that billions of dollars are made annually in such scams? Seems high to me.”

Further clicking: Confidence trick (see list of many confidence tricks)

GRC 4: The One Where Jono Fights the Russian

The Gather Round Children Variety Show

A Lively Evening of Music and Lit For Kids 18 and Up

Saturday, November 7 – 8:00 pm (One week from tonight.)

MEF Community Room – 60 Masonic St, Northampton, MA – Same building as the Woodstar Cafe

Featuring:

Hot oboe: Anne C. Holmes

Hot fiction: Adam Cogbill

Hot guitar n singin: Sarah Malone and Jono Tosch

Hot threats: Mike Young

Hot poems: Boomer Pinches and Lesley Yalen

Behind-the-scenes making it happen: Elizabeth Durham and Ben Kopel

From here one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold…

Guys, there’s no right or wrong way to worship Columbus. He hears your prayers as long as you mean them.

The Lifted Brow 6 AKA The Atlas Issue is available for pre-order. It’s got an excerpt from DFW’s The Pale King and two CDs of lyrically international music. My thematic contribution will either be Brazil or the Equator, depending.

Great new story at Annalemma: The Enormous St. Blog by Phil Christman

Heather Christle, new book, new poems, sad bunny.

Nic Sansone, new book, God as noir slickster, Sistine chapel.

Elliot Harmon, great reader/reciter, nice guy, ms. pac man.

The Last Book I Loved: I Remember

I have a short article on Joe Brainard’s I Remember up on the Rumpus blog.

It’s part of their The Last Book I Loved series. The “Last Book” archives are worth a look: Other contributors include Shane Jones, Catherine Lacey, Dave Eggers, Deb Olin Unferth, Aimee Bender, and many others.

Next Post

Rachel B. Book! Rachel’s stories delight me and many others. This will be a collection to own.

God, Jr., My Loose Thread, Sarah, footnote, spinning woman, Victory Lap

I’m off on a Dennis Cooper kick. Started with God, Jr., which I’m told is an odd introduction–depressed and high Dad who accidentally killed his son builds his son a monument based drawings of a mysterious building in his son’s favorite video game. I loved it. It’s another one of those short novels that, like The Living End, has three distinct parts that changes the rules as soon as you settle into what feels like a pace. It also has the best video game descriptions I’ve ever read in fiction.

I went from that to My Loose Thread, which is supposed to be more of Cooper’s thing–the car wreck you can’t turn away from. Confused, violent gay teens run amok. I loved this one too. Loved it and was terrified by it. Sharp dialogue, extremely interior yet with lots of plot, section breaks doing a lot of work. I read one awful review that spent most of its words repeating that the book is tough to follow–it’s not. Then I read this one, which had a lot of great things to say.

Both books have small subplots about hiring communicators with the dead–a guy with a typewriter in one, a pair with a digital recorder in the other–to try to get comforting messages from them, and in both books, surprise, the communicators fail to help. An interesting thread that I was surprised to see pop up in books otherwise so different from each other.

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My friend and neighbor Sarah Malone has a new blog about lit and news, ready for enjoying.

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I sought out one of my ML Press chapbooks to see what kind of length I might want to submit, and the one I picked up was “footnote” by Jimmy Chen. Maybe I read it when I got it (I ordered the first 3 on a lark because they were/are so cheap), but apparently not so carefully, and at the time I didn’t have the benefit of having read Jimmy’s Typewriter or Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

In the guise of a short story, “footnote” is one of the best-crafted DFW tributes I’ve read in the wake of his death. It’s an homage in the best way. Instead of imitating the chatty, overexplainy bits, Jimmy imitates the emotionally rich “this is how it feels in my head” bits that are more resistable to imitators because they are harder to do:

It hurts so much to be fleshy & whole, a mound of pizza dough unused by other hands

A brain can only host so many concerns, so many ants going back to the queen.

You can read the whole chapbook and many others if you get the annual book, MLP: First Year.

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Ryan MacDonald made this great video out of his own writing and Wonder Woman clips.

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George Saunders keeps wowing. This should surprise no one, but still, wow. Victory Lap. Read it, please.

Thus, the decade toward the end you have already been nobody does not worry up to a new mashup, but to what it is now are, indeed, it does not.

I’m combining my last mini-post with some new developments. First, the old stuff:

A couple of nice blog posts about Rigid Rumors:

“absolutely rules” – Michael Ocean

“something for everyone” … “more musical chairs than mash-ups” – Dave, Planet Mondo

Thanks, also, to Hungarian music blog Quart for what I’m almost sure is a nice write-up of Rigid Rumors that, has, nice or nay, brought over some traffic. Not a fluent speaker of Hungarian, I put Google Translator to work and got this:

Towards the end of the decade, so you have no one turns me on a new mashup, but it is what I recommend, not the fact. Gabe Durham: Rigid Rumors say that’s here to download not just another album, they recorded a 4-11 (!) Condense with each other, but because it actually creates new songs from them. The song will say, but the rest have építőkockákként rakosgatja Gabe Durham side by side, often only one element highlighted in the eredetikből. And is also different from the average mashupoktól to a large extent not exhibitionist, feltűnősködő, but specifically fine (although it was decided húzású) pieces is amikből the strings, folk guitars, or even the Take Five or hanging out. The only bonus to the description of the list of speakers led to the fact that “roughly descending order of importance,” and then begins: Bjork, Biggie Smalls, Radiohead, Andrew Bird, Outkast, MIA., Josh Ritter, The Swell Season, Madonna, Glen Phillips, The National, TV on the Radio, LCD Soundsystem. (Yes, there are Paper Planes, but it we get a new one, and why, in this environment, the legelviselhetőbb Bjork). He is still The Beatles, Animal Collective, Beyonce, Kanye West, Daft Punk, Simon and Garfunkel, Arcade Fire, Ella Fitzgerald and Beck. The Gather Round Children download more remixes, more like the earlier ones in the usual mashups. Gather Round Children and on the “band” album is more free, but they consist of boys and girls that plays the guitar and stupid énekelgetnek and röhögcsélnek while.

I’ll give you “plays the guitar and stupid… while”! Undeterred by the fact that the untranslated words seem to be the really important ones, I let FreeTranslation.com confuse me further:

Thus, the decade toward the end you have already been nobody does not worry up to a new mashup, but to what it is now are, indeed, it does not. Gabe Durham: Rigid Rumors headed here can be downloaded from say that not only to other plate, because they are recorded a 4-11 bang other compress up, but because: it shall take a new numbers set up these. The song say remains, but the residue has already been építőkockákként rakosgatja side by side Gabe Durham, often only one element highlighting the eredetikből. And they also differs from the average mashupoktól, that does not also largely magamutogató, feltűnősködő, but specifically fine (although it has decided to húzású) darabokról is concerned, the vonósok-, folkos guitars, and even, whether or not the Take Five dawdle. The only have already been bonus, that the description of the list of artists should be introduced by, that “roughly descending order of priority”, and then he begins: Bjork, Biggie Smalls, Radiohead, Andrew bird, Outkast, MIA, Josh, a swell the season, Madam, Glen Phillips, the National, TV on the radio, LCD Soundsystem. (Yes, there is Paper Planes, but succeed him a new archive her; and I say, Björk in this context re) at a later date is still Beatles, animal Collective, Beyoncé, Kanye West, Daft Punk, and Simon and Garfunkel, Arcade Fire, Ella Fitzgerald and Beck. The gather round Children approach can be downloaded from even more “remix”, have rather than the normal are similar to those mashupokra. Or is the gather round Children “zenekarnak” of more plate free of charge, but they are, with a view to srácok and girls gitároznak and he énekelgetnek and while röhögcsélnek.

Easier? Harder? I’ll go with harder. Unfortunately, the internet is better at translation party than actual translation. Unless you want to pay money. Which I don’t. Thanks to Dave, Michael, and Quart!