No More of Anything will eat out of the leopard bucket, are you going to hand me that or not please

The winner of Justin Taylor's MORE PERFECTION DEPICTIONS OF NOISE is Matthew Simmons AKA The Man Who Couldn't Blog, because the idea of Diane Williams as my aunt makes my lasagna tummy say hi. Thanks to everyone who commented. You can buy Justin Taylor's book for a fair price at X-Ing Books.

I am feeling defeated today I am going to work today I have a vast sense of nothing right this minute.

Though oh, got contributor copies of the new issue of SALT HILL in the mail today. Literally when I opened the package and saw them I said, Holy Shit. They are hardback deep blue/black objects, with beautiful print. It's like a book book, I can hardly hold it. My tits vibrated.



Besides me (with another list thing) there is work by Matthew Rohrer, Chris Higgs, Louis E. Bougeois, Joe Wenderoth, Maud Casey, a totally killer Italo Calvino prize winning piece by Nina Shope, and several excellent others.

Thank you to the editors, good job.

I think these are in certain Barnes and Nobles and the sticker price says $8, can't beat that.

I'm kind of full of everything of shit right now I think I think there is something

I'm hard of hearing and I mumble so everything anyone says to me they have to repeat and everything I say I have to say twice

Atlanta

Atlanta

Atlanta

Atlanta

I am going to refrain from negativity by refraining from going on










I like Eric Idle

Sclordvid Boinkum Resmerrit Siitz

Last night watched the documentary LYNCH, supposedly about Lynch's process particularly during the creation of Inland Empire. It was okay, kind of disappointing, as the directors seemed bent on coming off 'artsy' as opposed to just portraying Lynch in his habitats. There was a lot of random decay over the shots, cuts to bugs and weird noise, all just masking the subject and more annoying than illuminating, but overall, you can't hide Lynch's humor and talent for moving into nothing: he could talk about most anything and make it great. Plus there was a decent amount of him building, conjecturing, figuring out architecture, making up, painting, etc. A rental, for Lynch diehards, but not a must.



One of the things Lynch talked about was making a point to say that, in essence, that there used to be a big stigma that to make art you had to suffer, and that in creation there must be some pain invoked etc., but how this was completely untrue he thought, and that the more centered, the more happy and clear-headed you are, the more you can aim and get into the 'pool of creativity' (I love how he talks in such new age ways sometimes and makes it something to smile about rather than cringe), and that really the most ideas and most innovation often comes out of a pure state, and of happiness. That seemed right on to me, and a point people often dodge.

He also talked a lot about the particular process of Inland Empire, and how he had pretty much no idea what he was doing on any given day of shooting until he got into the room and faced the moment and began to souse out what was there. There's a moment in the film where Jeremy Irons calls with interest about the film, and Lynch kind of explains how he really doesn't even know what Irons will be doing, but that he'll be there, and you can imagine Irons's head as all these Lynch-words are coming in. At one point he says something about being simultaneously ecstatic and depressed as hell about not knowing what the film was going to turn into, and that he had never worked this way before.

I think I've been working in this mode a lot in the past year, with the same kind of weird ecstatic about it. Hearing him discuss things ideas helped me realize why it is I like Inland Empire so much, maybe even as my favorite of his films: the pure sense of unknowing and exploration seems right there on the screen, even for the characters, even for the actors, who are in the face of this kind of moving mutation, never really knowing what they are rubbing against.

Day before, we watched Abel Ferrara's BAD LIEUTENANT, which features Harvey Keitel as a crooked cop addicted to heroin and sportsbook: I really liked it a lot. I don't know how I hadn't seen this, but if you like very bleak, seedy movies with Harvey Keitel acting as pretty much the ultimate dirtbag, you should check it out. It's free on Comcast On Demand right now, at least in my area.



I have no idea why they put Keitel naked on the movie poster looking like he's ready to get his anus ate. I swear it's not dude porn.

Last night with visiting friend in car we were coming out of Decatur and at a stoplight this guy motioned for me to roll down the window, he looked like a young businessman on his off day, it was wet a little, we were both behind cars at a stoplight, when I got the window down he laughed and shouted, "Don't these people know it's Monday and not Sunday?!?" It was not clear in any way what he was referring to, he looked at us some more, he said, "Hey look what I'm listening to!!!" and turned up the music in his car to ear-splitting, it was Weird Al's EAT IT, he looked at us with his teeth, we drove off.

Anyone else who wants to try to win Justin Taylor's book I am closing it at the end of tonight. Give a go.

Justin Taylor invokes a woman's needle by lifting the verb hedge

Decatur Book Fair is in town, mostly it is kiddie books or something, I went and la-la gagged through the hot fields with some out of town friends from the McSweeney's/Believer camp, we drank several pitchers of margaritas and threw ourselves through rooms together, getting nasty loud, I think I had a baby at some point, I talked to a dude who really said "I mean, being famous, it's the point of everything, it's what we're all aiming at, right?, it is the mark of success," he was dead serious, I scrunched a little and said something meanish, he looked at me, who am I kidding

We ended up at some 'VIP' party in a marble room layered in the city hall of Decatur, booze was free, I licked a coffin, I got confused as to the purposes of those who weren't there drunk on margaritas and tongue-dancing, 'writer' writers are weird, there were lots of nice people, I liked it, I shouted some, Sweetwater beer is the nast, I mean that in the worst way, things continued

There was a cannon made out of chocolate, I slept inside it, someone was mowing the grass on a trinket, where was Billy Collins?

BTW, if you are going to the Decatur Fest today or tomorrow, drop by the Mcsweeney's/Believer booth, they also have issues of No Colony for sale for us, nicely.

No Colony orders will be going out early this week.

Matthew Savoca has a new video on HERE EXPLODES MY GIANT FACE, which has been a fun site so far to watch and enjoy and lick your underbelly quietly in the meadow smear.

I have Deb Olin Unferth's VACATION now in my hand, it is beautiful, I am going to touch it with my eyes

Speaking of which:

I got an extra copy of Justin Taylor's new poetry book MORE PERFECT DEPICTIONS OF NOISE, it is a beautiful handmade object full of Justin's sleek sexed language & words, Justin is negating the negation by running right into the nostrils of what you were trying not to look at, Justin is a captain of megawattage,



What I am saying is, I want to give away my 2nd copy of the book, who will get it?, here is how to get it: before this poetry book, Justin edited an anthology The Apocalypse Reader. Leave a comment telling which book by any of the authors in Apocalypse Reader you like or admire and why. You may be as brief or verbose as needed, 10 to 10,000 words.

Person who I think says something some way, I will send the copy of Justin's book. I'll choose it like later this week, maybe Wednesday, don't think too much, just type it in the comment, go for it, win.

Authors to choose from include: Grace Aguilar, Steve Aylett, Robert Bradley, Dennis Cooper, Lucy Corin, Elliott David, Matthew Derby, Carol Emshwiller, Brian Evenson, Neil Gaiman, Jeff Goldberg, Theodora Goss, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jared Hohl, Shelley Jackson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stacey Levine, Tao Lin, Kelly Link, H.P. Lovecraft, Gary Lutz, Rick Moody, Michael Moorcock, Adam Nemett, Josip Novakovich, Joyce Carol Oates, Colette Phair, Edgar Allan Poe, Terese Svoboda, Justin Taylor, Lynne Tillman, Deb Olin Unferth, H.G. Wells, Allison Whittenberg and Diane Williams.

This is the easiest-to-enter contest of all time, considering how that list of contributors is probably the most concisely genius list of workers I have seen compiled in one text. Find something to say about one of them, win a book.

NO COLONY Promotional Shaving Video + Byebye

DON'T FORGET

This FRIDAY AUGUST 22nd 7:30 PM in Park Slope Brooklyn NYC @ Barbes

NO COLONY issue 001 Launch Party

Featuring readings by Nick Antosca, Giancarlo DiTrapano, Tao Lin, Robert Lopez and Justin Taylor, hosted by myself and Ken Baumann

Issues on sale, I think $10, something.

Yesterday I shaved my face and spoke into the light in recognition of the folding forces, please observe:



Yeah, I'm really bad at shaving.

I tried to add text titles to the video but iMovie is a real piece of shit and I don't have Final Cut anymore, use your imagination, pretend there are words going in the video saying about the reading or something, pretend my head is leaking fry grease.

Blogger replications of this news &/or clearly erotic video in a promotional effort to garner attendance will be most thanked via mental explode.

aka

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. :)

Those attending the event are encouraged to bring a tennis ball or other spherical object that may be thrown at my head or body while I am speaking, my skull is large, I make a good target.

Concurrently with my offer, Ken Baumann is accepting offers of manual stimulation and/or cash rubdowns.


** SNEAK PEEK **


We got the issues in yesterday, they rub on my eyelids without my nodding.

It looks crooked in the first photo I don't know why, its not actually crooked:





Excitedz.

Anyhow, hitting the road tomorrow morning early and won't be back till late Sunday, so in the meantime, keep your panties tucked tight and your fingers liquidated. Order will begin shipping upon return, thank you to those who preordered, thank you to those who will order soon or now. :)

Byebyez.

Guest Post: Mike Wood on Dzanc Books's BEST OF THE WEB

Today is a big promo day for the brand new BEST OF THE WEB 2008 from Dzanc Books (for more posts all around the web and info on how to buy, check out this post at the EWN.

Later this evening I will have a post about the No Colony issue 1 (which we got in the mail yesterday and they cut my v) as well as a promotional vid for the reading this Friday, which happens to include one of the fine fine dudes who's in BEST OF THE WEB 2008, Justin Taylor.

Here's what Mike had to say:

Blah Blah Blah: What Online Publishing Means To Me (& More!)

Hello there! My piece in Best of The Web 2008 is called ‘The Mystery of Henry’s Bicycle’ and is about Henry James’s testicles. I had hoped that my contribution to his website business today would be the first nine pages of a comic book I’ve written that’s about a bunch of movie stuntmen and a zoo (Da Bronx Zoo!) that has been illustrated by my friend Ed Suckling. I’ll explain in a moment why this was not to be. For now I’ll note that in trying to convince Dzanc Books publisher Dan Wickett that I be permitted to submit this instead of what was actually asked for, I noted that while not directly commenting on the issues us contributors were asked to comment on, it does at least sort of represent how I feel about some of them. For example, I bet that when you started reading this you didn’t expect to have the chance to read the first nine pages of a comic book I’ve written that’s about a bunch of movie stuntmen and a zoo (Da Bronx Zoo!) that has been illustrated by my friend Ed Suckling (or anyway, to read about why you will not be able to read about it) and that’s what online publishing means to me. It means the chance to waste a lot of time getting distracted looking at websites that sound as if they might possibly be at least kind of interesting (potentially interesting enough, anyway, to justify the expenditure of the energy required to push the button on your mouse while the cursor is over where the link is; you also, I suppose, have to expend the energy to get the cursor there as well; and then there is the time needed to assess whether the website you are now on is maybe interesting or just another piece of garbage of which there are so many) but human beings are pretty incredible, and all that work doesn’t really take all that long (still, how many websites are out there where we have the chance to look at them but decide that even that amount of expenditure isn’t worth it!) and so it’s really not such a big deal, is it? Still, there are a lot of websites out there – it’s like everything’s connected to everything else, it’s like some kind of crazy web or something! – and that’s where things can get hairy, where you can end up wasting even tons more time and energy than you intended, often with nothing more to show for it than one or two lousy websites you find that are sort of mildly amusing or whatever and so you email the links for them to your friends but then they never even bother to look at them (to expend even that miniscule amount of energy…even though they are your friends!) because they’re just too cool for school. Now, I suppose you can have like experiences just flipping through books or other print media but in doing so one is much less likely to end up on Wikipedia. And, as another example (of the comic book that was not to be expressing if not directly commenting on ideas related to the issues us contributors to the Best of The Web 2008 book were meant to comment on here) well, the story takes place in New York City, which is where I’m from (go Mets) and so I’m sure there’s some sort of a non-coincidental connection at play there as well.

Now, why can’t you have a look at this comic book about stuntmen and the zoo? Well, it’s because the illustrator, Edward Suckling, has simply been too lazy to illustrate the thing. Ed, a really lazy and wretched bastard, is incredibly lazy, and an incredibly wretched bastard. Yes, this is the truth, though to hear Edward tell it he’s simply currently been too busy because he’s engaged in some sort of a b.s.-sounding paying gig because he needs to bring home the bacon for his wife. Or some such b.s.-sounding business such as this. This is what he says, but you and I know better. We know the truth! (He’s lazy a you-know-what!) Still, if you want to see any of the work actually produced by this incredibly wretched and lazy individual (this bastard) (and not just work he’s talked talked talked about doing) then you can go to his website (http://www.edsuckling.com/index2.html) and while you’re there, if you go there, if you can stomach going there, if you can expend but a few of your precious ergs of energy to move about your little cursor and push a couple of pretty easily depressed buttons, then you can enjoy (watch, anyway) a bunch of Ed’s movies and see a bunch of his pretty little pictures and stuff. And, among his short films, as it happens, is one called ‘You. Me. Let’s Hug!’ and this one, I hasten to add (but only because to do so so encapsulates (at least a part of!) my feelings for online publishing) it has my voice in it. And, further, as it happens, this movie was recently shown in The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on a television show called The Culture Show. And, even further as it happens, one of the hosts of that television show, Mark Kermode, actually compared my work to that of one Mr. Robert DeNiro. This is absolutely true…Robert DeGoddamnNiro. Okay, Robert DeNiro, specifically (and perhaps not entirely meaning it as a compliment) in ‘Meet The Fockers’. (But still.) And but still so especially I think because, I hasten to add, I brag, I boast, I crow, because Kermode is listed in something called The Screen Director’s chart as the tenth best film critic ever. Ever! Ever!! Don’t believe me? Just check out his Wikipedia entry.

Take care,
Mike Wood

NO COLONY NYC LAUNCH PARTY aka Politics Made the Earlobe Whittle, Wouldja Shush?

NYC launch party for ISSUE 001 of NO COLONY will be going down at BARBES in Park Slope Brooklyn --- Friday AUGUST 22, 7:30 PM.

If you live in NYC please come. Directions are on the Barbes website. Please be on time a little too, because there is an event after us at 10. Assumedly the party will bleed out to elsewhere after, I want to accost NYC with margarita blood and make videos.

We will have issues of NO COLONY freshly in our hands (they are to arrive the day before, please someone make UPS not suck a d this once).

Readings by Robert Lopez, Tao Lin, Giancarlo DiTrapano, Justin Taylor and Nick Antosca.

If you live in NYC area, please help spread the word, I want the walls to snort when I wiggle and maybe there will be live pigs we can bring in and roll around with and maybe I can forget how to talk.

Ken Baumann's ass is supposed to be in the house from all the way across the country, he is going to do it, you should email him and tell him make it happen no matter what, he is on the fence a little, push him over.

Also tell him HAPPY FUCKIN BDAY MISTER!

I am excited to be coming back to NYC.


Right now there's some sort of bitchass crawling in my urethra.
Not physically, but like a mental liquid noose.
I want to take a bite out of a baby, I'm not kidding, how much would that cost?

The internet is like my cooter, it keeps making me randomly upset but often glorifies my yamkitten.

I have the tattoo mapped and/or not at all.

Vast Aire's new record DEUCES WILD has a track with the hook: I'm not a rapper I just talk alot. Obviously squatting on Big Pun's 'player's anthem.' I like Vast Aire, his voice sounds more nasal than most rappers, he is smart, the new record has really weird, creative beats, rap is tickling my yearnum

someone needs to email that lyric on loop for like 20 hours to certain people's computers in a vein of sludge they can't stand up from,

I sometimes imagine hordes of special liquid coming out of the monitor like a billion hands and one or two of them touching special moments but the most of them like beating like the shit like out of like my head

my face

More nice now.




Brandon Hobson reviewed THE WOMAN DOWN THE HALL on Clusterflock. Thanks to Brandon.

Justin Taylor's first poetry book is out now from the new X-ing Press. Congrats to Justin, the book looks beautiful, I am about to order it.

Ellipsis Press just put up preorders for two new novels, one by Eugene Marten (who crushed my ass with IN THE BLIND) and Eugene Lim (the editor of Harp & Altar). I have preordered both, I am excited. Also they are open to electronic novel submissions, their books seem really nice,

A lot is happening.



I will not be a negative fuck face

I will be a cordless drill carried in the sweaty palm of Klaus Kinski to make a peephole into the year of Draining

know what I mean

no, no

good mood

oh


last night someone got to this blog with my favorite google query ever,
they were from India,
they looked up
'horse insert his cook in women's pussy'

exactly like that

Indian man

googling

HORSE INSERT HIS COOK IN WOMEN'S PUSSY


i could think about the nuances of that conception for the rest of my life and be happy

next book title, swear to god

i know exactly what my problem is

At 4:30 am the living room turns in a self-basting oven

I sit in the room with all the bullshit I've spouted in the past 9 months and we have a powwow power meeting

My bullshit is fucking pissed off

Do you understand the term 'host body' as well as 'evictor'?

When I look at the pages of books right now I mostly see dogs fucking goats or goats fucking dogs, I can't keep it straight, and the book won't close

I need to be a little serious maybe

My bullshit powwow power meeting told me to cancel this month's seasonal programming and start takin it for the man

Most of the time the problem is I don't have much of anything to say

I was at dinner last night with some people and just kind of sat there looking back and forth from heads like they were tennis

I just woke up from a dream from 11 am to 1 pm, my main sleep block this day, in which I had a coffee cup that was spurting liquid from it straight up in a heavy plume and I could put my face into it

In the plume there was like all these women working out and I talked to Justin Taylor about titles in his short story collection. Tao Lin was sitting under the table looking haggard and I asked him if he needed something to drink and he said no and I asked him about the reading I knew he had in the dream and he said he didn't want anyone to come to it he didn't want anyone to come and I said I understood and then I let Tao Lin be alone under the table

I know that at least one of the people who googles 'boy erection' and 'lindsay lohans tits' everyday to get here probably has a least a lot of money, Hey, person, if you paypal me and my friends some of that money I will write stories for you about whatever pop culture icon or fictional character you like getting reamed in the ass by a bolt of lava and like dudes power jackin it in time to the beat of your favorite song, no problem, my paypal is blakebutler [at] gmail [dot] com

Of if you want me to teach your kid or college student to write I will show them stories I think are good and then tell them why they are going about it all wrong and so am I

I have 17000 words towards a new novel or novella or something already and most every sentence while I am typing it I am thinking, why that word, why that word, why that word

Why any words

Maybe this will be the novel where I don't stop at 60k words and instead just keep writing until the book is so huge it will be called a brick of self-destructive creation and no one will read it but it will have a fat ass spine and it will weigh people down and make them feel tired

I wish I was a chest of drawers

I will learn to wait in silence