Thursday, April 30, 2009

This blog has a new URL:
gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com.

Links to blakebutler.blogspot.com and their corresponding pages will still access correctly.

Thanks.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Connectivity in Lynch & the Other (1): 'The Other City'

The signs of connective tissue in the films of David Lynch are in places very clear. Beyond Lynch's own mentioning of the mesh of words, most vocally between 'Mulhollland Drive' and 'INLAND EMPIRE,' but also, I would insist, between all the films, in many ways the blank or horrendous spaces that make the films seem the most 'underneath the viewer's skin' are the creation of the space itself, a portal both from film to film, as well as, I must demand, into human.

The rips in spaces in Lynch are all throughout, and in many ways, the definitive space of Lynch: the totem-being behind Winky's, Club Silencio, the Black Lodge, the pink house on the sound stage and the 'other version' of Hollywood & Vine in INLAND EMPIRE, the Rabbits, Ben's house in 'Blue Velvet,' the exploding shed in 'Lost Highway,' perhaps the entire terrain of Eraserhead, etc., etc. You could list these rooms forever.

You could also list, in your own life, the spaces of your mind that are contained in memory or in associative practice: sleep rooms, childhood slurrings, ruined pictures, unrecorded thoughts, most any second mostly. That you could also not truly make this list is important too, as here is an example, in Lynch's hands, perhaps, of what occurs in evidence of the reckoning:





Absorbing all of these spaces, I think, is the room displayed in the credit sequence of 'INLAND EMPIRE,' the room where 'Rita' appears and sits and watches the logger cutting, the singing man, an Asian woman wearing a Laura Palmer-esque wig, the dance crew's insanely mesmerizing performance of Nina Simone, and various other Lynch-pins, if you will, creating a kind of den within the film within the film, an anterior both to the Black Lodge and a space that operates for me as the crown and blood of the whole film, which seems interesting, in that it is used for the viewer as an exit, a segment that is usually walked out on, and also contains all the scrolling names of all the human bodies used to 'create' the film itself.

Also interesting is the hilariously off-putting and seemingly out-of-place (and therefore perfectly in-place) last bit of 'actual film dialog' that serves as a 'key to the door' of the sequence, a sex-rasped "Sweeeet."



At the same time, it is these rips, these collusions and things not quite seen, but only hinted into what is not contained by the film, that give the film its sickening power.

Take, for instance, the 'urban legend' style discussion of what could be the presence of Laura Palmer in the Club Silencio scene of MULHOLLAND DRIVE (see this amazing post 'Laura Palmer in Club Silencio?', linked from the definitive MD fansite, which contains an incredible map of the spaces of the film, and a self-defeating crowd of theories, discussions, etc.)



Whether or not that actually is Sheryl Lee, there is something about the thought and the residue of this contention, and then underlying 'unspokenness' of it, that makes my whole body go rubbery.




[That I am writing all this down while someone is under my house banging with hammers, and the water is turned off, and in a half light through turquoise curtains, is quite right.]




These connective rooms, this blank space, space filmed and not filmed, the antithesis of the actual connectivity which instead then creates actual terrain not on the film and therefore somewhere else (where?): these are what make the body of the air milked in the Lynch rooms so full of and empty of light at the same time. The question of process in Lynch's creation/tapping of these spaces I think is directly related to his process and mental openings, which is another discussion in itself. The connected disconnected. The unintentionally intentional. The accidental right-there.

Certainly, as well, Lynch's affinity for lighting, electricity, doors, curtains, specific foods: these are organs in the massive body.




Some anagrams for the phrase INLAND EMPIRE: A Ripened Limn, Epidermal Inn, Impaled Inner, Melanin Pride, Inaner Dimple, A Primed Linen, Renamed Nil Pi.

Some anagrams for the phrase MULHOLLAND DRIVE: Landlord Veil Hum, Halved Dull Minor, Invader Mold Hull, Drain Hold Vellum, Lard Unmoved Hill, Damn Drivel Hullo, Human Devil Droll






All of this is stirring me, as it does most does in waking and nonwaking, even more so in the light of the book I am currently exactly halfway finished with, 'The Other City' by Michal Ajvaz, which was released in 1993 in Czech and is forthcoming in English from Dalkey Archive Press in June.

From the copy on the book: "The Other City is a guidebook to this invisible, 'other Prague,' overlapping the workaday world: a place where libraries can turn into jungles, secret passages yawn beneath our feet, and waves lap at our bedspreads."

I read the first half of the book yesterday (exactly, to the page), and will read the second half tonight, and yet feel more equipped now to write about it in the context of the above than perhaps if I had finished.

Essentially, 'The Other City' begins in a book shop, with a man finding a book among the others pressed, purple, full of a ruinic writing he has never seen. At first he glances, puts it back, but then returns and buys the book, and in his exploration of the text and its aura's effect on his mind, finds himself on an unraveling inquest to a world that the book seems to be a cursor for (much in the way of the blue cube fro MD): a world contained between all the blank places among the everyday that most people overlook.




For instance, of these places, at one point the narrator finds himself, while walking along an old path, confronted by a sizable topped-off cylinder stuck in the ground, which he remembers having, as a child, hidden behind. There is a rusted stove door on the cylinder that he remembers having never been able to pry open, but in his coming across it now, it opens, large enough to stick a head in. Inside, in a strange light, he comes across a man delivering a strange sermon to a large congregation, discussing their unconscious exile from the city.

Among the long, strange-logicked speech, the man says something that in some way seems to refer to the nature of the craft I only hinted at above: "Why doesn't he choose another typewriter? All the other typewriters have disappeared: some have been borne away to the Caucasus by a swarm of locusts (it is proven that, by joining forces, locusts are capable of carrying even a horse many miles), some typewriters are used as part of some kind of new perversion spreading through the cities, and some have been transformed into the white light illuminating the statue of the beautiful animal angel."

Later, when the narrator returns to try to get into the cylinder again, the door will no longer open.

The space of this room, and the other-logic of it (amazingly rendered in Ajvaz's post-Kafka, hyper-hyper-aware prose), feels much like, and perhaps even embedded in or connected to, the rooms and spaces Lynch is able among our human lights to absorb.



The walls and beings of these spaces and these people, for Ajvaz, like Lynch, are right there among the everyday items and connectors we assume are 'just things' (a railway leading to the titular 'other city' runs through the heart of the 'everyday' town here, but is considered an old line, outdated, and is therefore not questioned, nor are the presence of these strange green shuttles that are said to appear in the city's art, always there).

Though in Ajvaz's spaces, the temper is even more, or at least differently, fantastic: sharks swim in snow, massive flower ceremonies intersect with ski lifts that intersect the the city; strange animal (tigers, bears, dogs) monsters that interact with humans; humans who seem clear on distinguishing themselves politically from the unknowing others, whereas in Lynch, the hidden peoples are murderers, rapists, loons.

The menace, though, in both looms hyper-real, to the point that it seems more real even than telephones or waking. A blood lymph laid around the everyday.

People with any experience of the 'Other City' in 'The Other City' are continually interrupted, distracted, afraid.




Some anagrams for the phrase THE OTHER CITY: Itchy Thereto, Etch They Riot, Octet Heir Thy, Rich Teeth Toy, Retch Yet Oh It, Cry Eh Eh It Tot.




Another quote (pg 51): "The T-bar dragged me up cold, dankly-reeling staircases of houses, lit by solitary light bulbs. I passed through dim hallways into a lobby. I shouted out when a figure suddenly appeared in front of me, but it was only my reflection in a big mirror above the shoe rack. I moved through the corners of bedrooms where people lay asleep. A man and a young woman were making love on a wide white bed; the girl heard the clatter and turned her head toward me, silently staring me in the eyes until I disappeared behind the closet. I was traveling through the interspace between the apartments whose existence is denied."








Alvaj's underground temples, mazelike buildings, dual presences, shifting languages (recall the Red Room backward speak), his terrains: books within books, worlds within worlds, ones that truly call attention to our daily walls and air, moves from room to room, the leaking.

[Such that, now that the banging in my house where I am writing this is silent, and the water has returned, I feel stranger now than when it had been gone.]

And such that, as I wait in this null space between halves of finishing my reading of Ajvaz, the doors seem even more open, looking, oh.]

Monday, April 27, 2009

Boy o boy

More overrated books/entities:

NOWHERE MAN

No. First you start me with a Beatles reference, and THEN have to have the book be a coming of age of a foreign student with a wacky affability? Why this book is getting taught to young writers... PORLERJ! Course, had I known it was a Beatles reference in the first place I never would have picked it up, but man, dang. No.


RUSSELL EDSON

"Dang I'm weird. I'm gonna write something weird. And now that I can do anything I want, it will be cool enough that its 'weird.' I am captain of the weird. Fuck yeah." I don't know, yeah he's good when he's good, but really? Is he really the boss? No, he's not the boss. He's just a guy with some weird sleep habits most likely who throws it down now and again. Get off the D.


GRACE PALEY

Not buying it. Not buying that these stories are that 'new' or even that great really. That she wasn't doing anything that wasn't done better and with more BOOM in the butt by Barthelme or Hannah. I mean, it's cool that she was an old lady kicking ass on paper, but, eh, I just can't figure out what it is that makes people tout her to the grave, except that 'Grace' is a rad name.


THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

If one more person mentions this book in a 'here's how to do ____ in fiction'...


THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES

Put this guy back walking around aboveground and breathing and no one would be reading him, at least not in the mindset of the second coming. I know supposedly after the first 130 pages of the narrator here supposedly finally shuts up running his mouth about being a 'poet' and trying to fuck this one girl, and how he's a poet, and how he wants to be a poet, and poet, poesy, peep. I don't give a fuck if it turns into BLOOD MERIDIAN after that: anyone who opens the first third of their book slavering over supposed 'revolution' and 'poetic fame' can eat a megacock.








I'm reading in Ann Arbor real soon for Hobart with some crazy kats.








Titular asked me to send a piece of Joyce-like for their Ulysses collaborative, and I did: a paragraph from DECADE. Right now it's at the bottom of the page.







I am finally reading Rikki Ducornet. She's real good.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Where is cornbread

Just received my first e-death threat





Just ate an individually wrapped Nutty Bar





Just punched my knee for not going to see Bun B, Mike Jones, and Paul Wall for free last night





Just posted an interview I conducted with Vanessa Place, author of LA MEDUSA from FC2





Just felt a weird surge of something growing on me





Just got my contributor copies of GUSTAF, which is rad and freaky looking, and has Kristina Born, Claire Donato, Sam Pink (actually, sorry, Sam's in issue 1), Tao Lin, Brandon Scott Gorrell, Kathryn Regina, Matthew Savoca, Audun Mortensen, Nathan Tyree, some other freaks: includes a reprint of my MLP chapbook 'IN THE RAPE YEAR OF THE GHETTO TODDLER THE HOUSES WILL AWAKEN' if you missed that, and also a short thing about glitches in iTunes from my 10 day novel, you should please buy a copy, it is a beautiful book and has a cover that looks like a ghost's face smeared in shit or peanut butter, I like these guys





Just looked at early proofs of Scorch Atlas innards, energized and !!!





Just shopped on an online book seller for 15-18 minutes and filled my cart with $54 worth of stuff then closed the browser window

Didn't actually do that just felt like saying it for some reason





Just wished I had CA Conrad's 'Book of Frank,' does anybody want to trade before I buy it





Just finished a draft of my first normal length short story in about 6 months, am pleased so far, it is about children exploding again, but different, my second collection is mostly going to be about children exploding, 'GLYPH ATLAS,' I wonder if I will ever find a publisher who likes children exploding





Just spent all night thinking too hard about certain magical possibilities, but forcing myself to retain the thinking to my unconscious, which I could feel all in my morning teeth, I will not think on them too hard





Just prayed a little in my mind in one second without actually praying





I should be quiet more

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

'The Passionate Male Prostitute'

For my story 'The Ruined Child' in the new issue of Barrelhouse, the dudes asked me to maybe throw over a bonus feature for the web, something like Michael Czyzniejewski's awesome pop-up video style annotation of his story, and the other nice thangs they have compiled

In the spirit of our Scorch Atlas remix competition (which ends at the end of this month), I remixed 'The Ruined Child' by doing a series of Find/Replace and other insertions until it became The Passionate Male Prostitute. It's a big rumblefuck, and includes maybe my favorite sentence I've ever (semi-accidentally) written:

"Anton LaVey opened the labia and saw just a grizzly bear eating Cheerios."

It was interesting to see how dramatically the nature of the story could be changed just by switching some of the major nouns and verbs, without changing the structure of any sentence, or the minor connective words. Made me realize a lot about how important word choice is even in places it might seem minor, which is a good lesson to relearn.

Please get up on The Passionate Male Prostitute.






Congrats to Sean Kilpatrick for having his LC story The Origin of Species Reinterpreted Through Massacre make the 2008 storySouth Million Writers Notable Stories list. Love to see a blood-sniffing text on the powerlist.

Thanks to the judges who picked Sean's piece, and to those as well that selected two of my stories for the list. Very cool. And many cool others in the house as well.






For those in NYC, there is a great event for Noemi Press upcoming:

"Join us at 7 PM on 2 May 2009 for a Noemi Press reading at Stain Bar, 766 Grand Street, Brooklyn NY, 11211 (L to Grand, 1 block west) 718-387-7840

Featured readers: Claire Hero, Shya Scanlon, Mark Tursi, and Lila Zemborain"





If you are in Atlanta (tonight!), Kevin Wilson is reading in Decatur at 730... right now I'm scheduled to work tonight, but trying to finagle my way out. His just released TUNNELING TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is high on my wanting list, and I hope I get to buy it from him tonight. Atlantans, go!






My reading bug is back in me full on.

I just started reading Ignácio de Loyola Brandão's TEETH UNDER THE SUN from Dalkey, and am loving it: my Dalkey count for the year is at 7 now. This book is so far very calm and magical, and easy and fun to read, with simple but power-infused sentences. More evolves.





Just found one of Gaspar Noe's early short films on YouTube, 'Carne,' this could be used as the most effective don't eat animals commercial ever. ** Seriously do not watch this if you are squeamish about animal violence, particularly horses. **

LINK





Finished 1st draft of EVER sister yesterday, maybe to begin noodling now, or something.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Maybe overrated?

INVISIBLE CITIES

Okay, yes I like Calvino, esp. when I first read him years ago. I read most all of his books in a row in a short period, infatuated with someone talking that way. Recently, though, I went back and started flipping through 'Invisible Cities' and realized that what was going on there really wasn't as much as I remembered. Really, was it that difficult a thing to make? Probably not, and that doesn't really matter either, but I have to say that I don't think the weight here is as much as it becomes in memory as on the page.

I actually also tried to reread 'If on a winter's night a traveler...' the other day and got so frustrated with the opening section that I couldn't even make it through, which was odd, considering that the first time I read it, I read it twice in a row.

Perhaps it is how tastes change, or how I have found things since then that do what he does but even more so: Gert Jonke, for example, or Oisin Curran. Still a great writer in my mind, especially 'Cosmicomics,' but the hype particularly on IC and such I think could use a little flagging.




JESUS' SON

Really? Is this book really that huge to so many people? I don't get it. I mean, again, this is something that I enjoyed 5 years ago, but I think people put just a touch too much weight on the evidence at hand. Some of these stories here are actually pretty weak on their own, and more covered over by the strong opening, and the way he seems to have nailed the off-the-cuff-but-literary mode so well, making it simply, to me, more accessible and good than it is just good.

Add to this the fact that any other Denis Johnson book I've tried to read outside this one has been so brain numbingly dull I usually gave up in less than 100 pages, and I have to call nuh-uh on this one, at least just a little bit.




THE MOVIEGOER

This book seriously makes me want to beat myself to death: the voice, the smarmy dick voice. I hate whoever made me touch this.




ARKANSAS

I'm sorry, I have no idea what there is to like about this book beyond the first 10 pages. You'd think a book about drugdealing white hick kids would be the shit, but repeating the same scene over and over and drawing it into another damn love story makes me want to fight.

I wish McSweeney's would put out another one as good as 'The People of Paper,' that is by far their capital achievement I think. Also 'Happy Baby'.




REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

How this relationship drama with a plotline that could be laid on top of 1 of 10000 other books and movies got so popular with the minimalist post-emo kids, I'll never know. It seems as arbitrary as being all about Dr. Phil.

Also, why do writers often have such bad taste in music?

Most of that year I did not sleep, ex. 7-10 (2002) + 1




















+







Friday, April 17, 2009

Contest winners, etc.

So many good entries for the EVER etc. contest, I don't even know how to judge.

Hence, thus, and etc., I have selected a few and then threw the rest in a hat and pulled.

Here, then, are the winners:

the overall mad winner is Sabra Embury, she actually made me feel ill some, in power, a full yes: tho she's already read EVER and so has agreed to donate her winning copy for a stack of some other books will shall be shipped to her in bloodwrappers

So then the winners of EVER:

1. Crispin Best (mmm)
2. Mark Leidner (it was the 'tomato sauce' that got me)
3. Mathias Svalina (tricky tricky)

& of Chris Higgs's 'COLORLESS GREEN IDEAS...': Ani

& of Jamie Iredell's 'BEFORE I MOVED TO NEVADA': Tim

& of Jimmy Chen's 'TYPEWRITER': BusterFrank


If you are one of these, please email me your shipping info, and you will receive your prize.


Thank you to the many entries, quite a few of them made me pleasure and squiggles.

& thanks again to Jereme for the magic yard to play in, and the contest idea itself.





** Less than two weeks left to enter the SCORCH ATLAS remix competition **






I think I have spent 8+ hours so far this year watching videos of juggalos on youtube:





This whole nearly 2 hour 'shockumentary' about ICP gave me a green bee haircut:



Dang. Neat.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

What happened to that kid Nick H. who in 5th grade I watched rip open the flesh of his hand with a pen expressionlessly in the back of math class

Weston Cutter profiled EVER on Corduroy Books, with some very kind words, including: "...Blake Butler’s one of maybe ten writers currently writing whose sentences are miracles." Dang, thanks Weston.

Also awesome write up in the same post, of J. Robert Lennon's two new ones, one of which I read when it came out in the UK, 'Pieces for the Left Hand,' which is incredible. Really excited for 'Castle'.




I think my goal for this year is going to be to read 30 or more books released by Dalkey Archive, not counting, obviously, the many I've already read other years. So far for '09 I think I've read 6 of their titles, so I have some work to do, but I have a big stack on hand.




Entries to the nasty contest (see post below this one) are open through the evening. Get it juicy, kids. Not that you haven't already. I actually got a little green during some of the posts, either from nast or envy. Prolly both. Do a join in.




Have almost finished a first draft of the EVER-related novel, which takes place in the same house as EVER, I think. Don't know how I got so into it, but I think it is almost twice as long as EVER. Or something. What. What else.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Win a free copy of EVER with your nasty mind

False start on the contest below, but here is a better one.

A very simple chance to win a copy of my book EVER, from the graceful and bounteous hands of Mr. Jereme Dean:

First, add EVER on Goodreads

if you aren't on Goodreads you can instead post a link to the book on your blog, in the comments of another blog, or twitter the shit

then come back here, and leave one literarily-related vile phrase in the comments section (ie: make it germane to books somehow)

such as

mary gaitskill's bleeding anal capacity for filling milk in veterinary life

or

jose saramago scraped the vulva urine from his extra dildo and tossed it to America's forbidden dad

or

octopus magazine's ramrod shunt got caught perpetually in the butt year of blackened mayonnaise

or

i fork-dicked the comte de lautreamont with a salad shooter penile sneak and then we cried lanyards of white need

or

roald dahl's creamy gaping V



whatever you got, be real and nasty

top 3 goodreads or other adders plus dirty mind lit children get the EVER books


*** after this, three more winners will be divvied up copies of

jimmy chen's TYPEWRITER from Magic Helicopter Press

Chris Higgs's COLORLESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY

and

Jamie Iredell's BEFORE I LEFT NEVADA from Publishing Genius.

six chances to win now, and 4 different books. let's get even dirtier. multiple entries welcome.


best comments win on friday morning

thanks again to jereme for the very generous offer

let's get nasty

Monday, April 13, 2009

TOOTLEY TOOT TOOT TOOTLES TOOTELEY MMK TOOTLES TOOT TOTS TOOTIES MMK MMK TOOT.COM

hi

guess what

some things happened mmK





tell ya bout that later

mmK







some other things too: a friendly power jogger (Mike Young) and a Marxist milksucker (Bradley Sands) made this thing called DRAGONS WITH CANCER for the Magic Helicopter Press

each contributor (but lo!) was asked to send in a realistic story and an unrealistic story, about whatever

My stories, titled 'Realistic Story' and 'Unrealistic Story: An Annotation,' are up on that shits with some crazies named Ray Fracalossy Avital Gad Cykman Sam Pink Gina Ranalli Sean Kilpatrick Rhys Hughes Ofelia Hunt Andersen Prunty Kevin L. Donihe

I wrote my pieces in vast fury one afternoon after some long discussion about how fiction should get to 'what is human' and how fiction should do this and that

money was shooting out of my eyes during the composition period, which was extensive

my story 'Realistic Story' pervades a viewpoint, which makes it dangerous, as does its brother (note: you toggle between stories for each author by clicking the pic on the story page mmK)

these two stories are soon to become required reading for idiots who decide they want to be writers

'Realistic Story' has a dramatic twist and contains the sentence: "Phillip Roth is Alice Munro is Anton Chekov is Barack Obama is a sandwich is oinken blarzstensen is a steaming pound of need." it is an earned sentence, it really is, like how i earned money to buy a coon skin hat when i was nine by scraping shitty floor wax off of tiles in my parents foyer, it was a horrible deal but i got the hat

the second story is fun with workshopping

let's have a look, it would be fun

i think these stories together make a parish in which i will lay my face apart

hey, let's discuss being human real soon






also rad is that Magic Helicotper has plans out the yingyang, with new print releases already announced by Jimmy Chen, Jack Christian, and a full length poetry book by Daniel Bailey

wowsers, for real

mad props to these friends

and mad thanks to Mike and Bradley for the power fun, let's read together like women do with babies before breast time







congrats again to my man Ken Baumann for having the balls to attempt to make a real piece of film art in this shithole America (he is adapating Stanley Crawford's 'Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine' info)

Ken is one of the realest motherfuckers I know, he does what he says and says what he does





i am also convinced that matthew simmons is rad as fuck







man, today i spoke on the fone with the irs, those guys are cool. they actually kind of are. they know how to talk into the phone and know how to know words to say back, unlike most phone users representing large entities.

never talk shit about the irs in front of me again



i
'm feeling eruptive, somebody come over with a bag of glass and let's build a whorehouse and burn it to the ground

it's happy fury, which is best kind, really

today for a little while i felt like i did heroin

i don't know what doing heroin feels like
or even smoking weed
cuz i am pure

i also ate some candy i found under the seat in my car

i registered www.fuckingmyspace.com the other night while i was drunk playing poker, now what

bitchin'

let's rock

Sunday, April 12, 2009

"Each eye reproduced the entire animal."

My contribution the John Madera's amazing novella list project is here. What an awesome compendium. Flattered to have EVER mentioned severally. Large props to John for compiling such an amazing compendium. My to-buy list just died and rose again.





Someone has been shitting in my mouth. The consistency of peanut butter with the flavor of many many incubation years.





In January, Wigleaf posted a piece by me that was three pieces rotating in an out at random, so that when you went it was changing. Now all three have been archived.

Rupture

Rupture

Rupture

Reading them in order makes something. Reading them out of order makes something.

Thanks to Scott Garson for asking me to do this weird rotational series, it was fun.

These are sort of part of a sort of collection of texts mostly in ruined speaking manners that I am sort of semi compiling slowly, I don't know how much there is yet. The collection contains also my favorite thing I've ever written, a story called 'Sourcebook' about a mother destroying her child. I have only sent it one place, which accepts only nonsimultaneous, but when that is over, I will do something else.

I used to look at Duotrope three times a day at least.

What is Duotrope.





HUGE HUGE MASSIVE CONGRATS to my brother Keith Montesano, whose poetry collection 'Ghost Lights' has just been accepted for publication. I knew that 09 would be his year, having read GHOST LIGHTS in the dark in one sitting having my brain taken off in bits like bullets eating flesh. More info is to come on this soon, but fuck, I couldn't be more thrilled for a good friend getting an amazing book picked up. It could not be more deserved.

Get ready for this one to hit you in the gullet.

Seems like things have been moving lately. New books being woken, things thrown, eating, eating, numbers.

Sam Pink's book of plays is going to melt us.

Shane Jones's thingses coming will mmmmmmmm.

I am trying to stay pleasant in my mind and in my muck but too often shit eats shit and you are shit.





Got a little drunk on Friday and turned into mean man or something. Bitched at people for saying 'poet,' and for over-generalizing a sparse commodity. But things should be mean and said as said is, maybe. I should only speak asleep. All these people and stuff. Word mongers.

One thing to remember: You are no more special for putting your pen to paper than anyone with lungs.

Fucking "for real."

Eat money like money.
"Life was taking its vengeance on me, and that vengeance consisted merely in coming back, nothing more. Every case of madness involves something coming back. People who are possessed are not possessed by something that just comes but instead by something that comes back. Sometimes life comes back. If in me everything crumbled before that power, it is not because that power was in itself necessarily an overwhelming one: it in fact had only to come, since it had already become too full-flowing a force to be controlled or contained---when it appeared it overran everything. And then, like after a flood, there floated a wardrobe, a person, a loose window, three suitcases. And that seemed like Hell to me, that destruction of layers and layers of human archaeology."

C.L., T.P.A.T.G.H.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

"Ghetto yellow with broke blue writin'"

Some things that influenced my mind today:

- the dog barking every few minutes outside my window at nothing, staring ferociously at nothing, ignoring me when i yell at it to be quiet, staring at nothing

- this article about a Japanese man who cannibalized a woman and was released on claims of legal insanity, and who now makes a living writing about cannibalism. The articles includes these quotes:

"Almost every night I would bring a prostitute home and then try to shoot them from behind while they washed their vaginas at the bidet."

"Can you please call for people who would willingly be eaten by me in your magazine? There’s one condition, though: They have to be young, beautiful women."

- Reading 2 chapters of Barry Hannah's 'Geronimo Rex' in the bathtub, freshly cleaned, while listening to my stomach make ooh-ooh noises about bran, having eaten too many bran cookies until my stomach was grinding itself while I typed and drank fucked coffee plus exploder thinking of new ways to laugh

- Realizing how important the word 'hello' is to me

- This video of the oldest metal head alive:



- Listening to the new DOOM album 'Born like this' (crazy beats, deconstructed, flavor) and the new Black Dice 'Repo' (which actually has a lot of fucked vocals, collagisms more so than usually, and fun of sound)

- Receiving 'The PASSION According to G.H.' by Clarice Lispector in the mail, on rec. from Evan Lavender-Smith in its similarities to EVER, reading the first graph three or four times straight with the dog still barking, ready to read and eat it with life inside me fully






Other things: if you will be in Atlanta on April 18, the next edition of the Solar Anus reading series is a true masterfuck: a night of Action Books featuring readings by Lara Glenum and Sandy Florian, and the locally majestic Mark Leider in the house. I believe again will be featured at the Beep Beep Gallery around 7 PM, so please mark it with an A on your calendar, this one I am mega throttled for.





If you have not yet checked out the two newest releases in Publishing Genius's THIS PDF Chapbook series, you must, they are two of the finest that have arrived.

Chris Higgs's COLORLESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY

and

Jamie Iredell's BEFORE I MOVED TO NEVADA





Last night I ran 4.82 miles watching the shittiest NCAA game I've ever seen.

Today I ran 3.4 miles watching a shitty episode of King of the Hill mixed with the Cosby Show.






I just can't help it: I can't take Toni Morrison seriously, and it ain't cuz she's black, cuz.

People love to pull that easy punk trigger. If more people read Zizek's 'Violence' and understood half of it, this world would be slightly nearer to a slice of pie.

Dang I want a 'dinner plate sized doughnut' (shoutout to Oisin Curran's 'Mopus').






Sigh. Whiteboys.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Blue Nap

Usually I double-brew coffee. I think today I've triple-brewed it. It tastes like a tire. With wheels. I will eat it with my lungs.

Reading Genet and Hannah at the same time is like eating that protein shit that muscle dudes eat. I feel raucous and randy.

I have been slowly upping my run distance over the past week or two, from a 2.4 mile cap to now last night I ran 3.56, all at steady pace. With the state of the real estate, you have to go on a long Spinal Tap-esque trek through corridor after corridor because the fucks who are working on the place and have been for a year now decided to put up a fence around the normal to the walkway to the gym. So they can work on it? No. It just sits there. Though last week they restricted our parking so they could have room to park their BBQ truck and have a 'we've been working on this bitch for a year and still aren't done, hurrah for us' party. Eating BBQ in front of the residents whose homes you've been dicking around on for forever, listening to music and bullshitting rather than working = wish I owned a BB gun.






Elizabeth Glixman did a long interview with me about EVER for Eclectica Magazine. This one was interesting because Elizabeth had a lot of questions about what the book means, which tends to be a common question among my local friends and etc.

The look on my friend Anna's face last night as she told me she'd read the book on a plane was a prize winner, and worth the time it took the write the book.

So this discussion I hope is helpful for those who may have read and didn't understand, and for those who did. The questions are fun, and resulted in an answer I can print up and give to people when they ask me about what the book is about next time:

I am happy with the categorization in your mind in relation to light, houses, structures, blood, and mud. I feel strongly for all of those things and will probably continue writing about them for the rest of my life. I also like shit, babies, mold, layers, rash, titties, hair, teeth, junk, and crud.

We also talk about Beckett, Bobby Beausoleil, blood, the literal, genre, and others. The read is here. Thanks Elizabeth!





Um, MF Doom is good and stuff.







Many many stylez.

I can't listen to 'rock music' anymore, I think. I always get bored in 10-18 minutes and have to go back to rap or noise mess or nothin. When will the $$$ die?






Final month for entering the Scorch Atlas remix contest, let's see them DJ skillz!






Today I am not going to let anyone have any inch of my time but me and this electronic paper, starting now...

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Mega Dick Preloader plus Scam Curfew and 'Codebook of Come Pressure'

Mad back on track n shit n whatnot, maybe, haha, though every day in this Georgia shit is rain. There isn't even mud. Just water. Someone digging in the concrete around the house at night.



EVER-related new novella/novel/something is blowing up around me, in the good way. Finding new doors in the house I had left closed, and more of them, and new. Feeling strongly. This one may be longer. This one may be.

The title 'White of White' jumped out of my tits yesterday, while driving past a middle school near my house that I did not go to and that often seems in its color and condition filled with a creme I can not smell.






Really tired of people 'asking probing questions on their blogs' about certain 'specifics of the act of writing and genre, to stir a 'debate' that will maybe define these terms in some useful way' and 'further the community while opening up topics of discussion of form'.

Something to be said about democracy and linearity and 'playing the game' here but fuck words that aren't words.

In 'Violence' Zizek had a whole great set of ideas about how talking about a thing, such as world peace or racism, in a way that sets up a commodity of 'community discussion' and 'awareness' about that idea but as an act really 'does nothing' is actually more damaging than those generally conceived as counterproductive or limited and void of void, which I won't try to reiterate or expound upon.

There's something to be said here about NaNoPoWriMo (NaPoWriMo)? or whatever that dumb shit is called, but fuck words.

That's all about that.







I just ordered Harmony Korine's Collected Fanzines. Mad excited. I think I read 'Crackup at the Race Riots' ten or twelve times over the years. Though not as much a fan of Mister Lonely, I think Korine is as important a voice as Lynch: no one else saying things in his way.

Wondering now about his 'Fight Harm' series, where he would go talk shit to people in the street with hidden cameras and provoke them verbally until they beat the shit out of him, which he had to abandon after 23 minutes of footage because he had been taken to the hospital several times and badly damaged. Was supposed to come out on a dvd of rare stuff of his, such as 'The Diary of Anne Frank Part II,' where where where where where.

I heard a story about the scene of the two brothers in the bathtub washing each other in Gummo (very brief shot) that made me like the inclusion even more.

There is something to be said about idea meeting image here, but fuck words.






Watched all of the Vice Guide to North Korea last night: highly recommend: they sneak their way into the ridiculous regime and capture some really bizarre shit there. Part one of 14:



Also creeped by the documentary on the drug 'scopolamine' or 'the devil's breath,' which was kind of fascinating. here.

VBS tv has so much great watching, if you have not explored, give yourself a few hours at least, all of it online, free, fun.





Have been reading and enjoying the shit out of a series of numbered shorts on Laura Carter's blog for a good while now, she posts several a week, short clips of text about rooms and spaces and aura, oddly, I wonder if this is a book she is making, I think someone should publish it as a whole thing when it is finished. Laura is interesting, she does not believe in revision, but saying it right the first time.






It is raining today, there is a lot of thunder, there is money coming out of a tree I can see through the window, where someone has been burning something every day for the past few days.

I like writing on a desktop computer when it is storming badly, as there is the fear that the power might go out at any minute and destroy what has been written and not saved, which imbues the moment of typing with this weird energy sometimes, if I am the pea carrot eater of that minute.

I am going to go now.