Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Notable Stories + New Shits

Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2007 are now up. Congrats to Andrea Fitzpatrick, whose story 'DOLLFACE' from Lamination Colony made the list. Other friends including Shane Jones, Andrew Ervin, Lee Klein, Daniel Spinks, Nick Antosca, Corey Mesler, Jimmy Chen and Matt Bell were in the house, as was I for 'TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME'. Notable. Or something.

I am often confused how the journal of the year at Million Writers is one I have never heard of, and not heard of most any of the authors they have published. Is that a good thing? I think I pay pretty good attention.

Editing novel is about 1/3rd through. Hope to finish 1/3rd tonight into tomorrow. A first published piece of the novel will be at WIGLEAF next week or something. Also, Wigleaf is about to start running their own version of the Notable Stories of 2007, though this focusing on work less than 1000 words. I like this idea.

Read Tao Lin's new book COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY on Sunday evening. This is a whole other blog post, which I will write later this week, but let's just say that the book has a kind of presence reminiscent of the monolith in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, only if that monolith were made out of neutral facial expressions and lined in soft fake black fur from a fake marmot who curls around you in the evening in place of who might have been there once before or not at all.

Now reading Joy Williams's rereleased book THE CHANGELING from Fairy Tale Review Press (the presence of which as a press overall I am very stoked about), which is already becoming unlike most any other books. More on that later also.

One final bit of related news: Lamination Colony will be releasing its next eBook from an author who also has a novel forthcoming from Fairy Tale Review press. It is a backfucker of an eBook. I will tell you later. Other ebooks pending still consideration promise. I am up to my neck.

ALSO: I am selling a bunch of LPs and a pedal on ebay.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

INLAND EMPIRE dream

In hotel in Boston. Corner of room has huge long window that fits down both walls. In my sleep I saw a missing scene from INLAND EMPIRE playing through the windows. It was a panning shot across a strip of land from far away on which long minimal houses were sitting with long paned windows I could see into. could see deep into the houses. Deep focus. Through the windows in some rooms there were people laying naked passed out on the bed at strange angles. The rooms were dark and sparse and many other rooms were empty. There was no sound. The panning shot kept moving over the houses. There were other short frames of things I can't remember. In my sleeping after I saw the scene I could not stop myself from shitting. Shit was falling out of me. I was trying to keep from getting myself all over the floor in the hotel room. Something else was going on at the window. In not sleeping someone came into the room as I was sleepshitting and I came out of sleeping as I began to notice something else.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

AVERY ANTHOLOGY 3

I have a story in AVERY 3. There are five stories in the issue. You can now preorder the issue from their site and read the first few graphs of my story and the 4 others by Sherrill Alesiak, Malcolm Dixon, Tom Whalen and Rob Roensch.

My story is from SCORCH ATLAS.

The cover is bitchin.



I have both of the other issues of Avery and have read every story in both. I like the stories they put together.

Please preorder Avery and support this excellent young magazine.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Final: 10 days 39k+ words

Day 10 @ 9:38 pm finished draft 1 of book. There are 39281 words. There will likely be another 500-800 in an appendix that I will create in the next week, and maybe also a second appendix that I have not fully gotten a hold of yet. I still have about a page of notes to apply and things to add or rearrange and edit.

I feel 'cleared' somewhat. I feel a lot better than I did 10 days ago when I started the book. I think I worked 8-10 hours a day nonstop at desk for 8 out of the 10 days and 5 hours on the other two. I feel exhausted but good.

Now I have to figure out what I want to 'do' with it.

I will think about this later.

Here is a pretty awesome article on the house in LOST HIGHWAY and Euripedes 'Medea', which actually jarred a lot of my thinking during the middle part of the novel, and is also where I stole the title I am still trying to convince myself to run with: THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT IS COMPLETELY UNABLE TO BE COMMUNICATED.

I will probably, though, use: WHERE AM I WHERE HAVE I BEEN WHERE ARE YOU

I am going to find a way to get David Lynch to blurb this book.

I will do it.

I will do it.

I will corner the David Lynch literary market.

Big fuckin titties.

I am going to stop talking about that man.

I also just wrapped up an interview with J'Lyn Chapman, who, damn, is interesting and know how to talk about her work. That will be forthcoming soon. I'm digging for new venues that do good literary interviews. It seems like so few people do those anymore. Any suggestions?

Day 9:B

7pm on Thursday, May 22 @ 1818 Gallery at 1818 E Lafayette Ave in *Baltimore* I will be reading at the first ever celebration of the PDF Chapbook series with Michael Kimball, Chris Toll & Daniel Trask. Come.

6:00 pm yesterday there were 34689 words. Spent most of day moving, though now a part three added. Part three will be the final part. Plan to finish today and tomorrow in long sits.

Want to call novel now: THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT IS COMPLETELY UNABLE TO BE COMMUNICATED, which I stole.

Is that title good ridiculous or bad ridiculous. Think more later.

Watched FUNNY GAMES again last night, original version. Also watched the CRUMB documentary again.



I feel better now with all my shit out of my old place and reconstruction underway but I feel like I am living inside several boxes inside several boxes.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Blurbs & Blabs + Day 8 sidenote

BLAKE BUTLER ON MIKE YOUNG: "Mike Young's poetic teetaw caused a cosmic enjambment in my scrote, which once infected, defined a nation, and that nation was neon purple & made of email, and I left that nation with Mike Young's mother's mother, and Mike Young's mother's mother was the dude who scripted most of Legend of Zelda II."

MIKE YOUNG ON BLAKE BUTLER: "Blake Butler's synthesis of Lynchian hyperbole and didactic Wu-Tang skank tropes (in the Lacanian mode) causes readers to question anew our semiotic Dairy Queen panopticon. What Roland Barthes called "the grain of the voice" and Jeff Gordon called "I could've won if the other cars had just gotten out of my way" is embodied in Butler's spry, wedgie-tight narratives of American betrayal and disillusioned shopping cart races. Coming strong as dinosaur's breath from the Fugitive poet tradition, think of Butler as a modern day John Crowe Ransom with buck teeth, a penchant for "iced coffee" (in the Derridian sense of the phrase, more than a surface-level thirstiness and rather a concertedly diachronic poop-under-the-bridge aporia), and a finger up yo dirty brain nigguh."

FENCE nominated me for Best New Poets. They are allowed 2 nominations. That made me glow. Beyond an honor coming from such folks. TY, editors. Hot fuck action maximum. Titty licker.

Crunchy sumppump dicktease googoo.

Today is very good if filled with humming if a little rough around the edges if making me shake.

Still working on NOVEL for today. Results to post. (Late night update: There are now 33113 words. Figuring I will be done now around 40k.)

Did you know these things about LOST HIGHWAY:

- The Mystery Man never blinks during the entire film.
- In a recent interview, director Lynch confessed that Lost Highway and Twin Peaks take place in the same world.
- According to Lynch, the first scene in the film is based upon an incident which occurred in his own life. He says that early one morning, his intercom buzzed, and when he answered it a voice he didn't recognize said, "Dick Laurant is dead." However, by the time he got to the front of the house to look out the window, there was no-one outside.



Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon!

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Day 7: Beirueareadlij

Day 7 @ 7:24pm there are 28627 words. I feel slightly better than yesterday as the energy of PART TWO is rather different from the first and is birthing babies in my sternum or something. I realized last night I haven't remembered any dreams since I started this which is unusual for me and a strange kind of silence.

This book is very 'bleak,' probably in parts more bleak and evil than anything I have written, but also I think funny. My funny, which is not always others' funny.

I feel like I am writing the closest thing to a Lynchian novel that I've seen. I feel like I am getting out all the 'evil' in me in this writing and when it is done (hopefully by Friday, first draft anyway) I will be expunged and good things are going to happen. I have a lot of evil to get out.

Today I want to call the novel: I AM THE ONLY BLACK GOD, which is an ODB lyric.

I tend to like to shoot myself in the foot, at least in the eyes of industry-types, though I think a lot of people would buy I AM THE ONLY BLACK GOD with a picture of an enormous antbed inside a living room or a child covered in mold on the cover.

I would buy the fuck out of that.

I would also buy a book with this cover:



No title. The picture is the title.

No matter what else I say in the future, the title of my novel is that picture forever.

Other things are about to happen.

My stuff is being packed and moved for me by some company the HOA hired. I was not allowed to pack or move my own stuff because they had a contract. They said I could come watch them pack my stuff. Tuesday I get to go watch them put it on a truck. I can choose between them putting it in a cubicle where I have 5 days to get it out or I can bring a truck for them to put it on and take it somewhere myself. Somebody from FEMA wants to inspect the place for the 3rd time now. They are waiting to see something in the walls unfold. They are waiting for me burst.

Submit to

NO COLONY.

Day 6: P

Most of Saturday off. Wrote a little, edited a little. There are 24359 words. I feel sick. Something got inside me. Something. Tomorrow will wake up ready regardless of feel.

I'm not really aware of half of what I'm saying.

To those who have submitted Lamination Colony eBooks: I am behind on these and it might be a minute. I will read them all eventually without question, just please be patient. I will probably do next book as the summer is getting hottest. I've peeked at some. Many excellences. I am going to have to be decisive.

The story LYNETTE, YOUR UNIQUENESS in KISSED BY by Alexandra Chasin is one of the coolest stories I've read in a while.

Random sentence from today:

Across the street, the enormous box in the neighbor’s yard was changing shape.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Day 5: Bldsirue

Do a read on this story from Barrelhouse by Matt Bell. It fuses cultural object with mysticism in a new way, which is the kind of writing I've been most interested in lately. Excellent story. Matt's story from Caketrain 4 (I think it was 4) is also supremely killer.

Ryan Call sent me KISSED BY by Alexandra Chasin, which seems to have come like a key into a room at a perfect time in this time of Massive Heat.

At 4:50 pm today there are 22,698 words. Didn't crunch as many numbers today due to last night in the bath I figured out something important about the novel and its beginning and went back to adjust some things about the beginning and add on in certain places and delete/reword a couple key graphs. Then and this afternoon I finished what is now PART ONE of the novel. I will take a short breath tonight and maybe into tomorrow and then return at the door to PART TWO. There will be two parts and a brief introduction and maybe an appendix.

Sharon Tate and Krissy Taylor are in the book now. As is a girl who can see through other people's computer screens from her computer. As is a woman named Ribbit, Shawna, Santa, Ricky, Rick, Sandwich or Blake.

** Please read

PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE.

I would like that. It is different than most things I have written but I think in several ways connected to novel.

I am very fucking tired.

PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE

My ebook/chapbook is now online:

PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE.



You will be able to buy printed versions of the chapbook for $4 in the near future. Supposedly they look really nice.

The easiest way to read this on ISSUU is there's a little button on the screen when you first go there with a double arrow at a 45 degree angle. That pops the book out to full screen mode and makes it easier to zoom rather than dragging it around as it is in default.

Massive thanks to Adam Robinson @ Publishing Genius for all his hard work designing and tasteful edits and just being a bitchin dude in general.

Thanks to Heather for causing me the title and for being an awesome friend and person and girlfriend during these weird times.

The book has a little blurb by Josh Maday. Josh Maday wrote several blurbs. Here are some of the others:


"PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler is waking life broken into pieces and reassembled in a dream, an assemblage of tectonic plates with words and sentences smashing into each other, rubbing in a sexual way, and copulating with the reader’s mind. The aggregate of words and sentences vibrates at 8.6 on the Richter scale. This ebook is a seismic wave radiated by the earthquake that is Blake Butler."


"PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler:

grows inside your head.

fucks with fine motors skills.

is best commented on by itself.

is the leading cause of sexual pleasure.

produces a feeling like jalapeƱo eye drops.

creates and discloses waking life in the dream.

does with words what David Lynch does with film.

catches the eye like those pointy old fashioned breasts.

crawls inside the gut, circles around before lying down.

taps your mind and soul and lingers long after it has left.

takes your mother on a date and leaves her on the porch.

leaves you alongside the road, but it always comes back.

moves into and out of and back into your unconscious.

throws you off balance like a low-swinging belly.

wields language in ways that provoke envy.

leaves imperceptible scars on the eyes.

may cause swelling, bleeding, joy.

Results may vary.

Unlikely."


"This ebook made me feel excited, sad, and other feelings named by inadequate words. When I came to the end I wanted it to go on, probably forever. Blake Butler is an earthquake. I enjoyed PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE. It is not allowed to say it is good, but I still think it is good."


"This blurb is regarding PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler, Esq., Earthquake, Etc. PIATBVL features a narrator who I would have liked to talk forever, a dog with a festering tumor, and a girl named Emily who is a spambot. Blake Butler shatters waking life and reassembles the pieces into a dream; or he shatters a dream and reassembles it in waking life. The disjointed narrative slides seamlessly along in this waking dream, touching tendrils of happy, funny, sad, and lonely. Blake Butler writes out of a chocolate energy. His words rub together in provocative ways and come together like Diet Coke and Mentos."


"This ebook by Blake Butler, it made me feel like I had soaked my contact lenses in jalapeno juice. I felt like I had sprayed twelve bottles of Afrin up my nostrils. My hair felt shiny and powerful. My teeth felt scared and alone. My fingernails felt hard and tremendous. This ebook by Blake Butler wanted me to eat it. I would eat this ebook if I found it on my plate in a restaurant. The words, they got inside me, and they grew. I liked PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler very much. I liked it in a superlative way. The language in PIATBVL is chow mein. The sentences are teeth. I enjoyed living in this waking dream. It was strange, comforting, foreign, and familiar like a David Lynch film. I squirmed with anxiety and I liked it."


"PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE took me by the nose, held a gleaming straight razor to my neck, and looked me in the eye. When I walked away my neck was clean and my beard meticulously groomed. Inside, though, I was hemorrhaging."


Here are more blurbs other people wrote:


PRATHNA LOR: "reading this book made me feel itchy"


KEN BAUMANN: "PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE made me physically shake at times. I never felt scared, though. Something written in the book would seem too familiar, and I would shake. This happened many times. I really like this book."


BRADLEY SANDS: "Everybody likes stories about a boy and his dog, a girl who may only exist within the imagination of an email spammer, and a house with secret rooms that may not be real. I would doubt the existence of anyone who did not like these things. Therefore, I doubt there is anyone alive who would not like Blake Butler's Pretend I Am There But Very Little."


SHANE JONES: "PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE has everything I like in a story. It's funny, it's strange, the language snaps. It also has something that is hard to fit into a blurb and that I have found with most of Blake Butler's writing in that it fucks you up to a certain extent. I like this feeling very much and I'm thankful that Blake Butler has written this lovely little ebook."

That's a lot of words. Shit.

Thanks to everyone and thanks for reading the ebook when you can.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Day 4: Anthill

9:31 pm there are 20,042 words spread over 72 pages and I am beginning to feel destroyed. I drank 7-8 cups of black coffee and my head is throbbing and my body is sore and I am beginning to think inside the book and the book is starting to feel evil, both in the writing and what is written, and what is not written but still there. I wrote all day today and did not get around to any of the ideas I have appended to the bottom of the MS. The book I think for now is going to be called WHERE AM I WHERE HAVE I BEEN WHERE ARE YOU. In the book now there is a massive anthill. I did not watch anything last night or watch or reading anything today. I have now lost 6 pounds and run 10 miles. I did not really expect to find myself this absorbed in this project but now I am and now I am and now it's time to take a bath.

Announcing NO COLONY

NO COLONY

A new perfect-bound print fiction journal collaboration
between No Posit and Lamination Colony.

First issue to be released Sept 2008.

Submissions are now open.

Bring your shit.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Day 3: BUBBERESE

Day 3 @ 9:50 PM there are 15,676 words. I am now saving the document with the name WHICH HOUSE IS OURS?, which is one of 4 working titles, none of which will likely get used. The other working titles are

WHERE AM I WHERE HAVE I BEEN WHERE ARE YOU

and

SOMEONE CAME INTO THE HOUSE LAST NIGHT

and

KNOCK ONCE IF YOU ARE THERE.

Yeah okay. Got a late start today after getting up at 9:45 to meet with FEMA again, as there are more things I can apply for and now that I am going to be out of my place another 2-3 months other options have opened. Spent a long time trying to find a specific hall leading to a specific elevator to a specific tiny portion of a large room where I met with a man who refused to let me fill out my application paper because there was no one there and he was bored. He wrote very slow and asked for information I have given FEMA 3-4 times at this point. Whichever. I will feel blessed if something comes of it.

Last night girlfriend and I watched THE BIRDS, which I hadn't seen since I was little at a friend's birthday party. It was much different than I remembered. I like the ending though. The ending made me think about other endings to other things.

Finished reading A NEW QUARANTINE WILL TAKE MY PLACE and started reading ACTUAL AIR by David Berman which was recommended to me a while ago.

Strong news and motions underlying in several ways have me feeling very positive about things.

This 10-15 day novel may end up being much longer than my original aim of 30,000 words as on day 3 I'm already past the halfway mark on that number and the short list of notes I have for things forthcoming keeps getting longer and longer and longer and most of what I've written to this point is stripped and could be expanded with a lot of weird meat.

There is a couple in the book with a very thin man and a woman wearing a veil.

William Gass's THE TUNNEL is in the book, as is a magazine called ENORMOUS WOMEN.

As is Braille wallpaper and a very long hallway.

ENORMOUS WOMEN might be a good title.

I also thought about THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK PART 2, though Harmony Korine already made a short film with that title. MEIN KAMPF 2?

Couldn't sleep to save my life last night. Two nights in a row now. Massive insomnia return since I started this project. I've also lost 4 pounds.

Listened to IT TAKES A MILLION YEARS TO BECOME DIAMONDS SO LET'S JUST BURN LIKE COAL UNTIL THE SKY'S BLACK by Storm & Stress over and over for about an hour today while writing. It's hard to write to most music. That song is on the Lamination Colony mix that you can download from the site.

I am going to watch TOP CHEF and then keep writing or pass out.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Day 2 etc.

Today is the second day of my 10-15 day novel. Today at 6:11 PM I have 10,282 words. I started today at 11:00 and took a break to go running again. I drank a whole pot of coffee and ate some dried cranberries and bran cookies and a couple handfuls of oatmeal cereal. I am hungry now and feel very buzzed out. I am going to go eat four turkey dogs with a little Mexican cheese and hot sauce and then I may either stop for the day or keep going. I wrote more today in less time than yesterday.

This novel is beginning to take form. I feel energized writing each sentence. I do not feel like I am writing shit I will have to delete. I am finding things out while I am writing.

The novel is about a house. There is a family in the house and none of them know what is going on. The mother mows the lawn over and over again. The family members get lost in the house. The 8 year old son has a red cell phone that receives phone calls. The mailbox fills up with things and receives packages.

I think the house may be the same house as in the beginning of LOST HIGHWAY.

Last night I watched INLAND EMPIRE until the part where Laura Dern goes into the room full of women and they talk to her and then she goes through the window to Poland.

When she went to Poland I turned the movie off and tried to go to sleep but couldn't for several hours.

I am reading Johannes Goransson's A NEW QUARANTINE WILL TAKE MY PLACE. I like it a lot.

I think this novel is also connected to Ol Dirty Bastard's NIGGA PLEASE. I think NIGGA PLEASE was recorded in a very short time also.

The working title for NIGGA PLEASE was BLACK MAN IS GOD, THE WHITE MAN IS THE DEVIL.

I wish I could name my novel that.

People are very sensitive.

My ebook/chapbook PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE will be released this Friday. It looks really nice, I am very happy with it. Adam Robinson is doing some really awesome things with Publishing Genius which you can read about on his blog.

I will post links to it when it goes up and I think you will be able to order print copies for $4 or there will be an option to print them yourself. It will also feature original artwork by Lauren Bender.

There are other things coming up to talk about.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Day 1: Blubbbereser

I am going to see how fast I can write a novel. I had an idea while I was walking up a mountain this weekend. One sentence. I think the novel is stuck inside it. I am going to get it out. I am going to write nonstop on it until I am done. I started today at 12:30pm and now have 4500 words at 8:18. I stopped at one point to go running, which splintered the idea. Even though I am writing fast I think I am writing meticulously, so that editing won't take long. I am trying to get it right the first time but I am also figuring things out as I go.

Certain ideas about the writing were also stirred I think by reading one part of one story in STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN by Kelly Link and a certain section of FLET by Joyelle McSweeney and by certain shit stuck in my sleeping and from a certain room.

I think it also came a little from these videos by Martijn Hendriks called GIVE US TODAY OUR DAILY DREAD where he took the film THE BIRDS by Hitchcock and edited out the birds. It makes it even more fucked.



I hope to have a draft of a 30,000 word novel in 10-15 days.

I am going to try to blog about it while doing it as a form of motivation.

I am going to catalog the things I look at so I know what I was taking in.

I am going to minimize my eating and only drink coffee/water.

There are several books I admire that were written very quickly. Jesse Ball's SAMEDI THE DEAFNESS was supposedly written in three weeks. Daniel Brenner's THE STUPEFYING FLASHBULBS was supposedly written in less than that. I want to do something that fits in the energy of those books, even more so than things that I have written recently, most of which I've also finished very quickly, including most of SCORCH ATLAS. I want to go quicker, get even meaner.

What other books were written quickly?

Look at those video and comment or email me a sentence that they make you think and I might use it in the book, as there are sections of abstruse communication and I would like to not write them.

Tonight I am going to watch INLAND EMPIRE again if I stop writing long enough.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Back

I went out of town this weekend. I went to Gatlinburg TN. Mostly what they have there are pancake houses, Christmas supply stores, anti-liquor bills and novelty tourist-aimed recreation. Even restaurants can't sell liquor here, though it would help digest the casino-sized Jamboree dinner houses & weird putt putt venues.

They literally had 6-10 Christmas stores in a 4 mile stretch, some as large as WalMart.

I saw Dolly Parton in a very short parade and yelled something obscene and got glared at.

I climbed a mountain and took my clothes off so my dick could breathe.

I was glad to leave the fuckhole of Atlanta.

While I was gone, the new issue of Lamination Colony deleted itself. It reverted to its old index page and cleared many of the pieces on the new update. I have no idea how it did that.

It has also been editing itself occasionally. It stuck an extra line at the end of one of Jason Bredle's poems. It has changed versions of two of the Dick Palace sections twice.

Dick Palace is a co-editor at Lamination Colony and he lives inside the computer. He is a destructor.

I have fixed the site back to how it was for now.

Kemel Zalidvar blogged about Chris Killen's piece and the Lamination Colony submission guidelines.

This weekend I read Joyelle McSweeney's FLET. I read it mostly while going up the mountain by myself. I would walk a while and then stop in a spot that looked like a spot for stopping and then I would read one of the short sections. The book worked very well like that: completely alone on a mountain, in sections. I enjoyed it.

I have more to say later but right now I am very tired and I can't stop thinking about the two small shaking dogs I saw a woman at a flea market had stored inside a small aquarium. It was cold and they were clawed against one another trying to get warm. The woman running the booth was cockeyed and had acne and I am fairly certain had kissed relatives. She offered to let us hold the dogs. I couldn't look at her.

I feel sick.

Jesus christ: A VERY ANXIOUS FEELING

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Shit Talk Fest

Shit talking is funny. I talk shit mostly to myself. It is most fun when other people talk shit about people and then you get to talk shit about the way they talked shit and you can talk shit about them in a sarcastic way while they become defensive and look even more contorted for having shit talked someone.

Publicly I like to shit talk shittalkers more than I like to shit talk just stuff in general, just because I am naturally a contrarian. It's in my blood. I feel meaner inside than I am often on the outside. I have a lot of mean thoughts.

I can't help myself sometimes.

This guy probably really had no idea what he was opening when he opened his shit talk. What's mainly funny is the shit talk doesn't even really shit talk in a way that makes clear sense outside of the fact that he just seems upset that someone who he didn't think was working as hard as him achieved something. Still I like the conversation. I am in favor of shit talk, as long as you are ready for people.


Shit talking gets attention. It builds some kind of 'aura' around the thing being shit talked.

Bill Hicks was the king of all shit talkers.



This, I think, is funny and constructive.

There are lots of things I want to shit talk. On here I usually don't do it because it's pretty much impossible to not be misconstrued. Sometimes I like to shit talk privately to someone who will get it. There are lots of art shows in Atlanta that have really commonplace seeming art in them. Art that people could say looks like it didn't take any work. Art that people could say isn't art because it's just pictures of people having fun or little scratchy drawings that don't even look cool in a minimalist way.

I call these art shows 'show and tell'. I like the term 'show and tell.' It would probably be considered shit talk to tell those people I think they are participating in a show and tell.

I want to start an art show series in Atlanta that is a true show and tell.

I will bring my He Man lunchbox and tell about the time I got it taken away from me by a middle-aged man and bapped in the face with it. The man had come into the elementary school cafeteria. No adults saw him come in. He had on a yellow t-shirt tugged loose around the neck. He came up to me and took my lunchbox away and bapped me in the face with it. Then he just stood there.

My third grade teacher I remember being pretty at the time, though as I remember her now in my head I don't think I'd think she is pretty.

Tornado Update + Links

Randomly got called by my HOA tonight. It's been about a month out of my home now. I thought I'd be back by the end of this month. Now they estimate it will be another 2-3 months. They are going to rip out the drywall and cabinetry in 10 out of 12 units in my building. The cabinetry has to be imported from Canada for some unknown reason. There's nothing wrong with cabinetry. They say they afraid of water having sunk into it. They want me to sign a contract tomorrow releasing some company they hired to move my shit for me. I'm not 'allowed' to go in and move my shit by myself. I had to sneak onto the property (with some help from unnamed sources in security) to get some of the shit I didn't want stored. A lot more water damage has occurred in the past few weeks. A lot of water from my neighbor with the missing roof has spread through the wall into my place. It ruined more books than I realized. I got most of my stuff stuff out, though all my furniture and the rest of my stuff stuff is in the apartment and I guess these fuckers are going to move it. I don't know what will happen if I do not sign. They keep saying 'good as new.' People keep saying 'at least no one was hurt.' At least no one was hurt. At least no one was hurt. It's becoming like the Pledge of Allegiance, hearing that. I'm glad no one was hurt.

Thank you to everyone who keeps writing me about my status. It is appreciated.

- - -

Justin Dobbs interviewed me a while ago and now it's on Dogmatika.

I want to actually write the book I was talking about here:

"My book is about abortion practices in middle Taiwan, where young mothers are made to squat in public fruit stands with their pants down and yip like my neighbor's dog until they are rendered infertile by their own sound. It is a very brutal and disturbing practice. I saw it once while I was on a ski trip with me mims and pips. We were sold shoddy ski tickets by a charlatan in a bunny suit. My dad will buy anything if you smile. Anyway, the main character in the book is a nurse practitioner whose main job is to stand holding the middle finger of this one young lady subscribed to abort. His name is Chuck and he has never seen himself in a mirror and he hates his father for leaving him at the Taiwan Zoo when he was young, which, if you've never been to the Taiwan Zoo, believe me, you'd understand. The book rotates between exhaustive stream of consciousness excerpts from Chuck during the nine day stand it requires to help Akisha (that's the girl's name) abort. Chuck, perhaps surprisingly, does not think in words that include the letter 'B', which is a trick I stole from a rather famous Taiwanese tome I most admire, titled Dahm-Vana-Ana Wee-Womp. The other passages in the book are told from the perspective of the child inside Akisha as he/she is being aborted. It's all very difficult, obviously, and I expect to win several awards. The book is titled Dahm-Vana-Ana Bee-Bomp: A Sequel, and will follow the release of my other recently completed book, Scorch Atlas. I went through a long period of not being able to walk without my hands over my face after I wrote this book. I was not able to call my mother and I was not able to cry. It was very hard, this writing. Very hard. Please give me the award."

Justin Dobbs and I are writing some kind of thing together, sending short chapters back and forth. It is mostly written sporadically, high on coffee. I don't know what it is, but it is starting to scare me a little. I don't know what we'll do with it. I like it. I think about it while I'm driving.

- - -

Download the Lamination Colony Audio Suppository. I made it quickly but it's a good listen, I think. It sounds good with fat headphones.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

LAMINATION COLONY Spring 08

The new issue of LAMINATION COLONY is now up for Spring 08.

It contains new writing by Jason Bredle, Ian Davisson, Johannes Goransson, Jeremy James Thompson, Devin Bustin, Heather Anne Mullins, J.D. Mitchell-Lumsden, I. Fontana, Chris Killen, Bryan Coffelt, Ken Baumann, Matthew Savoca and Ryan Downey.

There are images, a video containing nudity, a song about Google, an epic-length poem about being tired, also things involving Iron Chef, Alec Baldwin and etc.

There is also a feature: DICK PALACE: which contains texts written somewhere and then channeled through Derek White, Heather Anne Mullins, Gene Morgan, Bradley Sands, Go-go Rasputin via Herman Melville, Josh Maday and then bumped in the ass by me. I might post more about these later. (If you sent an 'X' submission and don't see it here, please read the comments of this post.)

There is also a LAMINATION COLONY AUDIO SUPPOSITORY mixtape CD that you can download to your iTunes or what have you and listen to in audio enjoyment. The music is meant to reflect the issue somewhat, I think, a little. The mixtape contains 15 selected tracks. A download link is available on the site in one easy click.

Some images make take a smidge to load.

Do it up.

Please blog about this and/or tell your friends to spread maximum damage thank you.

If you blog about this I will send you something special sometime soon.

Monday, April 7, 2008

THE DISAPPEARED in New Ohio Review

The new issue of /nor is out. I have a story in it, the story that (as of now) opens my collection SCORCH ATLAS, called 'The Disappeared'. It is about disease and a lost mother and payperview porn and transference.



The issue is fucking stacked with crazy good people, including Carole Maso, K. Silem Mohammad, Ariana Reines, Tony Hoagland, Johannes Goransson & Joyelle McSweeney, and many others.

This is one of the best looking journals I've been in. I would order it even if I weren't. It has a nice ink smell. Holding it makes me feel good.

They have also 'featured' my story on their website as a PDF: here.

Thank you to John Bullock and the rest of /nor.

To receive this publication, I gave up 13 weeks of coffee, rendering myself incapable of coherent sentence, during which time I sat at my desk without blinking and scoured eBay for a portal into the dog.

My life is beginning to more and more seem to resemble GARFIELD WITHOUT GARFIELD:


New LAMINATION COLONY should be up by the end of the week.

Friday, April 4, 2008

What to do with nowhere + Kemel Zaldivar

KEMEL ZALDIVAR wrote a nice long analysis of a 5 part prose poem I wrote. He is going to be writing about other work on his blog often: good. Thank you Kemel.

The poem he is talking about was published at Softblow, though their server has been down ever since he started writing about it. I am a shifter of evil energy.

Here is the text:

What to do with nowhere



1.

In the living room my parents would sit for hours never knowing I’d hidden the JC Penny catalog bra section to the left of the television. The fan will continue to blow slower. This room is smaller than it was yesterday. I am coming down with cold. In the coming months I will not sweat. Swear you say so. The paint around the borders. In want of bulging child. I once paid a man in t-shirts to collect the smacky crap between the high walls of this home. The phone only rings at moments of cleanest calm. What my mind wants it might have. The yard is full of children. My collection of teeth will soon demolish the entire world’s imagination. I don’t have a problem except for lack of exit. The wire frying in the bulb. This afternoon is wholesome and yet somehow I’ve felt nothing but old skin. Marks of your nails from some short night. We never fall asleep. We sat upstairs in your bedroom beside your mother’s and listened to her squirm. What a voice. A shot. Some short bunt. The line of white dots from white window light refracted reminds me of a woman’s spine. I will be an old woman someday if I am lucky. Muscle envy. Baptism wafer. The soft head reclined or underwater. What do you think about when you’re off? I’ll sell my time off under sand. The sandwich was delicious. Thanks. There are so many things I need to scratch. The light's switch so far from the bed floor. Nod if you’re awake. Something in my cell phone makes the monitor click before it’s ringing, though sometimes it clicks and there’s no call.





2.

I don’t want to get up yet. I feel pimpled. I sense the terrorizing of long veins. Fumble digits. Turtle baby. Wipe yourself off with the sheet. He had the greatest mustache, if you could imagine, if you could ever think of hair. Light blue corduroy lined coffin on backorder. You’d be surprised at the flavor a paycheck, though be careful of the paper edge. Someone once emailed me visual instructions on how to stuff a gummy worm down your urethra. I won’t think to save this until it’s too late. Paint below the paint. Clockwise bible. Month of donor. Mouth to mouth in hallways, gone. Any combination of correct digits will connect a caller to the one you love. What voices tie the ribbon. Covert masturbation somewhere senseless in the dark. Someone’s mother made this blanket. It will not last forever.





3.

Could you not have told me sooner. For weeks we chewed into the fan. Another thing I always wanted was my arm elbow-deep in the VCR. The wedding trellis made of paper. Vast condition. Liquid net. What splices from no brother. The commercials made my dentist who he is. Palm fronds over the window. Summer light. Evacuated. If someone kills their neighbor in unconscious terror, is it still considered self defense. The dust map on the fan blades. The weeks we could have been aroused. I will find a box large enough to ship this building. I will yip into a corridor. There are houses where the walls bleed. I believe the things I confabulated at age five. Sandcastle destination. Eternal home life. Blitz of sneeze. Loophole in the loophole. Ash fountain in the head. What sentence would most break you. What cheese would appear in your folds. The clothes purchased without fitting. One brown evening I will trip the signal that brings the whole sky to its knees. Elastic infant. Coupled cream rinse. One day there will be quiet. I’ve never sneezed a bird but I have ambitions. Accidental layer. How deep the nostrils go. No interruption. No blood ceiling. Fuses fused to make a ring. This bottle of hot sauce will erupt without warning on the first night of your disease.





4.

The ice piled in the freezer will one day make someone a happy man. Dread bubble popped for no one. Leather on the breeze. The sidewalks are busy cracking. I have your vacation all lined up but you will have to send for it in writing. Sour wisdom. Attic portal. If only you could swim so far. Turn the volume down, I’m thinking of what I’ve shaken off my shoulders.





5.

Golden trombone solo for the years of shit shoved in my closet. Carried with no lid for invitation of the dust. Wire nostrils. Undivided. From how far away can you see me coming when I wear the handmade puff paint sweatshirts my aunt gifted seven years for Christmas. No nozzle for this beverage. The tire wishes it were flat. I would buy you a soldering iron but I am afraid of where it’d lead. My message will be delivered when you are not home. We could spend so many weekends hid in that lard. I know what the doctor kisses with his own mouth. The grass was dead before it woke. We ordered shutters for our shutters. Whim ambition. Or you could wonder. One condition: will you still come over if I’m underwater. The insects keep finding new ways in.







PS: You can download OCHO 19 which has both me and Kemel and Mike Young and etc for free here.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Editing Snafu Avenged + New Lamination Colony

Just got an email from HARPUR PALATE accepting the 'TOUR OF THE DROWNED NEIGHBORHOOD' story I discussed about 10 days ago wherein FAULTLINE wanted to accept and then tried to get in the butt, causing my decline. No request for Frankensteining from HP. Looks like waiting paid off.

Speaking of rewrites, I am finally getting together the new issue of LAMINATION COLONY. It's got some sick shit in it including an incredible 'epic-length' poem from fellow Georgian IAN DAVISSON called ACHY MUSCLES which will crush several skulls, as well as a totally new face for the whole site, and the lost works of DICK PALACE. I'm stoked on it. Somebody send me a weird video collage or a picture of their mom or something.

Maybe I should erase my pissy post from earlier today.

No.

SUSURRATING MASSIVE LIQUIDATOR WITH ANAL BLEND AND IMPENDING DECISION FOR LIFE

I wrote about HEATH LEDGER in Robot Melon 3. Robot Melon 3 is looking good. It has a lot of people I like in it. I am glad something is looking good.

Everything is fucked.

The dog is making mouth noises.

I can't take a shit in silence.

I don't know where my lips are.

This story by Dawn Raffel about a bloody baby is good because life is onktenven lorbswisson. The story is from her book CARRYING THE BODY which I am now reading.

This video by Fernando Sanchez made up of clips of people looking at the camera in their home pornography made me laugh while I was trying to take a shit and everything imploded except the video.

If someone writes you an email that they enjoyed your writing and you don't answer with at least a 'Thanks' you are a weak piece of self-admiring dickclap and your online magazine is boring.

It doesn't really matter.

I need to rent a small pool filled with porpoises so I can get in with them and let them swim around me closely like I'm getting beat up in the face and body please.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

SIT NEAR A WINDOW AND DON'T LISTEN

It is time I begin living more concretely.
I will no longer put potentially abstract phrases in quotes.
If something is good I am going to say it is good
because it is good.
I am speaking. It is time I said.
Metaphysics and abstraction are more important
to me as language than things I can define.
The most simple things are the most abstract.
I would rather read about a wall in a house
than about sadness.
The wall in this blue deskroom is more sad
than the day you couldn't think of anywhere to go.
I am not thinking about anyone specific
while I am writing this. I am not angry.
My anger for life has inverted
and become a mammoth child that stands over me
in my bedroom while I am sleeping
though my bedroom now is somewhere else.
People are probably going to my ex-bedroom
while I'm not there
and having fuck parties on my bed
which still has a blanket on it that my mom made
out of tshirts that I used to wear
and they are probably fucking hard.

I am not afraid to tell you that
I think General Tso's chicken is delicious,
and when something is delicious it is good.
Good in the sense that I ate it
and felt pleasure eating
and felt pleasure again
when it came around to leave my body
for somewhere else.
The chicken that died for me to eat it died.
Abraham Lincoln also died,
as did Tupac and Roald Dahl
and lots of other people with names
which to most other people are nothing
more than names.
Al Pacino has died a fuck lot of times in the movies
but he still finds time in his schedule
to make more movies
albeit bad ones
and probably play golf and donate money
to a presidential campaign of his choice,
though he does not choose.

The scene in THE SHINING
when Jack Nicholson is working at his desk
and Shelly Duvall comes in and interrupts
causing him to yell at her profusely
with a smug grin and wild eyes
should be mandatory viewing
for all people everywhere.
It should be replayed in endless loops over cribs
while babies lay waiting to make more shit and spittle.
They should also watch credit card
and mortgage lending company commercials
to prepare them for the presence these entities
will take not too far in the future in their lives
if they decide to allow these entities
into their lives.

One day your mother might be raped
and I can always watch TV.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Motorman & What the

I reread MOTORMAN by David Ohle over the past 2 days. I read it when it first came out from 3RD BED years ago and liked it but could not remember much about it. Then I think Chris Higgs mentioned he'd read it and loved it, so I read it again. It seems like a lot of stuff I have read I could not tell you the first thing about. I'm not sure why. I am equally bad at remembering names and numbers and dates from history. I have good recall of other things. I don't know.

MOTORMAN is an enjoyable read. It uses a lot of unusual language but not in a language-y way. Like you don't feel put upon when he says lines like "He opened the spigot, testing, got sour air and pipe vibes." That is a very unusual sentence. No one probably has written that before Ohle, even though it uses all simple words. I think he picks words that feel a certain way in the mouth rather than words that take a lot of mouth to say. That, I guess, is the difference between writers like Lydia Davis and Christine Schutt and writers in the 'language camp' who pack their sentences so full you aren't even sure if they knew what they meant.

Supposedly David Ohle was at one point hired by William Burroughs to write down Burroughs's dreams when he woke up in the morning. Whether that's true or not, I think Burroughs is an obvious major influence on Ohle, as Burroughs kind of invented a lot of the sentence ideas and phrasings I noticed in MOTORMAN. For instance, in MOTORMAN there is a woman named Cock Roberta. That is a Bill Burroughs character name if I've ever heard one. Plus Ohle isn't afraid of a dick joke or talking about feces.

It is good to see writers influenced by Burroughs and not completely imitating him. I think Burroughs gets written off a lot because of his cut-up stuff, but sit down and read THE WILD BOYS. That book is fucked and has some images that have stayed with me no matter how long its been since I read it.

I've had Ohle's edit of William Burroughs Jr's memoir/third novel CURSED FROM BIRTH for a long time now and never got the chance to finish it, but I believe I will read that next. It is crushing. It keeps making me put it down.



[ENTERING ANOTHER THOUGHT COMPLETELY]



Yesterday I finished a pretty long section of the new thing I am working on. It is about a woman sinking into her bathtub. I want to send it somewhere but I don't know where to send it. I used to send out so much work all the time. Now I never know what to do. I've regressed a little in my publishing aggression, I think.

What is a good journal to send 'surreal' but not 'absurd' work to?

I wish 3RD BED was still around. Damn, they did good stuff.

I also need to send SCORCH ATLAS out some more. I've had some positive outlooks looming that I feel strongly about, but I think if I send it more places it will help me feel better overall about realms of possibility.

I feel like I don't know anything.

Somebody tell me something.