FOREVER INSECT DEATH

Above is a picture of Tony Curtis sitting against some chick with natural boobs, a mole and grease lips. Tony has been moved to the I USED TO EXIST category as of today. Another dead octogenarian. Here's some Curtis quotes which may or may not apply to the act of writing:

Every movie I've been in has ended up on television.

I can't sit around and wait for the telephone to ring.

I don't know what organically grown chickens are; I've never seen one.

I like Vegas for its spontaneity.

I look at everything in an artistic way.

I wouldn't be caught dead marrying a woman old enough to be my wife.

Its not age as much as the experiences I have had.

They gave me away as a prize once - a Win Tony Curtis For A Weekend competition. The woman who won was disappointed. She'd hoped for second prize - a new stove.

While you're doing it, you don't really know what you're doing.

Yes I'm still working, but my life's no longer filled with it.

His usual table at the Hollywood Sizzler is already growing cold and alone. We'll miss you.

BINARY GUTTERS

Here's some recycle from the internet:

Scott McClanahan is reading in NYC tonight. Scott is the bitch's bastard, a real mad dog in the rain. Here he is showing the young what being a man is about:

A human being made a short video about PANK. I am unsure why. What to expect in this video: asshole typewriter; masturbation; blazer & t-shirt; not Kristy Logan; book fragrance; park bench romantics; DR. ROXANE GAY; words; fun; overrated author; 80,000; tits on the beach; honey bear; trying not to look at the camera; dorking out; sexy answers; computers; emotional distancing.

Pank is one of the few journals I actually read. Peep the vid below.

According to facebook, xTx is now single. I am unsure what this means since she is an internet chick. I guess I/we can make believe I/we am/are in a shitty relationship with her. Yay for me/us.

Here's an alleged picture of her armpit:



Greg Giraldo is a comedian. Comedians write jokes. Here he is performing said jokes:

Greg no longer exists, but did yesterday.


In case you are wondering what passion is, I have brought an example. Someone give this sunset a pen:

A thousand people have already told him he "can't" do anything with his life. 25% of which have an MFA. Go figure.

No Rose Colored Glasses Here

In short, I liked David Peak’s, “Museum of Fucked” way more than his, “The Rocket’s Red Glare.”

Where Rockets fell short and fell soft, Museum came hard and came fast. However, it’s probably better that I read Rockets first and not Museum because I would’ve been horribly disappointed in Rockets instead of just mildly disappointed as I would have been expecting similar greatness that “Museum of Fucked” definitely delivered.

Fourteen shorts that paint a decrepit picture of a city that has no beauty, only things destroyed and damaged. It’s bleak. I tried to look for beauty, or even for hope, but I found none. I like that about this book. I like that Peak didn’t pussy away the hopelessness, the ugly and the broken with sunsets, a dirty child’s smile or moonlight sparkling on shards of glass shit. He just gives you the reality of a broken place with skillfully chosen words that lift the plate up, remove the rusted dome and force you to look.

I’m not sure if this book is even still available. But if you can lay your hands on it, it’s worth the read.

INTERVIEW W / GREG DYBEC

Greg Dybec is founder and editor of online fiction magazine, FIX IT BROKEN.


BG: so many quality indie presses and literary journals, what is FIX IT BROKEN bringing to the table?

GD: FIX IT BROKEN’s true ambition is to further bridge the gap that exists between fiction and the culture of today. The written story, in my opinion, will always be the most beautiful and substantial form of entertainment. Perhaps knowledge is a better word than Entertainment. Of course, we hope to provide an interesting outlet for both new and established authors to showcase their brilliance. Though, we offer a fashionable twist. As of now, the winner of ‘top story’ for each quarterly issue will receive a complimentary t-shirt. The kick is that the t-shirt design will be completely inspired by the winning piece of fiction. We hope that this collaboration of style and fiction will catch on and help display the relativity and importance that short fiction still has in this fast fast world. Hopefully, as time progresses it won’t just be one story receiving a shirt.

BG: when the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what literary journals / indie press publications will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?

GD: Is this where I write FIX IT BROKEN? Or do I save that for the end of the list and state it in a humble manner? I would have to say Pank, for the simple fact it’s ingenious. Six Sentences for it’s unique boundaries. I’m sure even the next species will appreciate limitation as a motivator of creativity. I’d have to throw Caketrain in the mix too; they know what they’re doing. Dogzplot also, because it just makes life seem cool and colorful. There truly are way too many brilliant journals/publications to name. Oh yes, and FIX IT BROKEN, because who ever digs it up will get a free t-shirt.

BG: what is the last book you borrowed and never returned? who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

GD: I was staying a week at a house in Fire Island and took an old beat-up copy of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. I never returned it and ended up buying a new copy about a week later. A waste of a sin if you ask me.

BG: name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your balls nobody else has?

GD: There’s only one thing in this world I’d bet my balls on, and I don’t think I’ve found it yet. This is a tough question for me, only because I’m young and have only recently learned to break free from the “I must inhale all classic novels as soon as possible” phase. I’m trying to think of an odd manual or uncommon cereal box, but nothing comes to mind.

I’ve been reading a lot of shorter work by Denis Johnson, Jim Shepard, and Roland Kelts. I doubt any of that makes me unique.

BG: who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

GD: Jack Kerouac. That man transcended humanity through his words. I would say that’s what I look for when reading and writing; those moments, if only a few, that literally (literarily…sorry, bad joke) peel off your face and transplant it with a new one. It may look the same, but it sure as hell doesn’t feel the same.

I’ve always been heavily influenced by the Beat Generation and the works that derived from it. I appreciate the obscure form of passion for the things that we encounter each day. Also, that mentality of going out and experiencing the things that you want to experience. I can’t really think of a better way to live.

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

GD:

1. Idioteque - Radiohead
2. Ballad of a Thin Man - Bob Dylan
3. While You Wait for the Others – Grizzly Bear
4. All Apologies - Nirvana
5. Blue in Green – Miles Davis
6. Last Donut of the Night – J Dilla

LONELINESS IS A HABIT

The Lure of Little Voices

There's a cry from out the loneliness -- oh, listen, Honey, listen!
Do you hear it, do you fear it, you're a-holding of me so?
You're a-sobbing in your sleep, dear, and your lashes, how they glisten --
Do you hear the Little Voices all a-begging me to go?

All a-begging me to leave you. Day and night they're pleading, praying,
On the North-wind, on the West-wind, from the peak and from the plain;
Night and day they never leave me -- do you know what they are saying?
"He was ours before you got him, and we want him once again."

Yes, they're wanting me, they're haunting me, the awful lonely places;
They're whining and they're whimpering as if each had a soul;
They're calling from the wilderness, the vast and God-like spaces,
The stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole.

They miss my little camp-fires, ever brightly, bravely gleaming
In the womb of desolation, where was never man before;
As comradeless I sought them, lion-hearted, loving, dreaming,
And they hailed me as a comrade, and they loved me evermore.

And now they're all a-crying, and it's no use me denying;
The spell of them is on me and I'm helpless as a child;
My heart is aching, aching, but I hear them, sleeping, waking;
It's the Lure of Little Voices, it's the mandate of the Wild.

I'm afraid to tell you, Honey, I can take no bitter leaving;
But softly in the sleep-time from your love I'll steal away.
Oh, it's cruel, dearie, cruel, and it's God knows how I'm grieving;
But His loneliness is calling, and He knows I must obey.

-- Robert W. Service

A.D. (part 2)

like moonlight on crutches, we walk right

out of ourselves, goodbye for a few nights until we

boomerang back

a little bit more frostbitten than the time before

but mourning this fact only prolongs that absence

and really it's nothing new

we've been fingerprinted for extinction

right from the start

INTERVIEW W / ROBYN PENNACCHIA

Robyn Pennacchia is a writer, feminist, noted style icon, and the creator and hostess of the quaint Chicago reading series, The Sunday Night Sex Show.
(http://www.notesfromtheunderwhelmed.blogspot.com/)
(http://www.thiswasathingthathappened.blogspot.com/)


BG: with so many quality reading series out there, what is sunday night sex show bringing to the table? what words of wisdom can it offer to the literary conversation?

RP: Well, I think we’re really the only sex positive non-fiction reading in town, so there’s that. I feel like the big difference, however, is our audience, which isn’t the typical Chicago Lit Scene audience at all. We’re like the red-headed, populistic step-child of Chicago readings, really, and I’d say that 90% of our audience isn’t even comprised of writers. Hell, half our our readers aren’t “writers.” It’s just like, people who want to be entertained and hear a funny story about the time someone met some dude who tried to pee on them. It somehow ends up being the most diverse crowd you’re ever going to see anywhere in Chicago - we have the lit community, sure, but then we have the feminist community, and the queer community, the politically radical, the sexually radical, comedians, musicians, actors, hipsters, squares, bros, etc. And no one gives a shit, and everyone gets along and it’s amazing. It’s easy to bond with people who are different from you in that sort of confessional environment, where everyone is standing around telling secrets.

I think that’s really what we’re bringing to the table as far as wisdom goes - because now, I think, a lot of other reading series - like Tim Jones-Yelvington’s “Uncalled-For” series, which focuses on experimental queer lit- are looking at what they can do to bring in different communities. I mean, not everyone who buys a book is a writer.

BG: when the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what sexual objects / books / positions will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?

RP: Oh god, it will probably be Heidi Montag’s new sex tape that’s coming out. That would be just our luck if that were the only thing to survive. I’d hope, however, that they’d find things like “On Our Backs,” the complete works of Betty Dodson, Susie Bright, Rachel Kramer Bussell and the Hitachi Magic Wand. I think they’ll probably figure out the positions on their own. One would hope, anyway.

BG: what is the last book you borrowed and never returned? who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

RP: Haruki Marukami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicles. I borrowed it from this guy at the coffee shop I used to hang out with, and I just never felt like reading it for some reason (Terrible, I know. Whatever. Judge me.), and then he moved. I still have it and I still have not read it.

BG: name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your ass nobody else has?

RP: -Charm Never Fails by Antoinette Donnelly. I collect old etiquette books, and this one is one of my favorites, if only for the title.

- My Life, by Isadora Duncan.

- The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy - It’s basically this giant book that gives you a little bit of information on everything you should probably know, and it was my favorite thing ever when I was growing up. I used to read it cover to cover to ensure that I had something to add to any given conversation, because I was a smart ass like that.

- Now, Voyager by Olive Higgins Prouty - I’ve barely met anyone who has seen the movie (which everyone should, because it’s awesome, and Bette Davis is amazing. You will sob for hours.), so I doubt too many people around my age have read the book. Prouty was actually a way popular novelist in her day, until a rather ungrateful Sylvia Plath effectively destroyed her career by blatantly basing the character of Philomena Guinea from The Bell Jar on her. Then everyone was all afraid that she was (gasp!) a lesbian, and stopped buying her books.

- Madame de Stael, Novelist: The Emergence of the Artist as Woman by Madelyn Cutworth. I mean, someone must have read it because I bought it used, but I can’t imagine too many people are thrilled by reading a random feminist analysis of a totally obscure figure. That being said, Madame de Stael was pretty much one of the most bad ass ladies in the history of ever. She held salons in Paris, took many lovers and told Napoleon to go screw. We totally would have been BFFs.

BG: who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

RP: I have so many! I get really fascinated with random people all the time. Lately I’ve been obsessed with Judy Henske, this folk singer from the 50’s and 60’s that for some reason I’d never heard of until recently. She was/is this really bad ass lady with an incredible, Bessie Smith-esque voice who told stories and basically did stand-up comedy between songs. She was the basis, actually, for the character of Annie Hall. I’m really into the idea of combining mediums like that right now. I grew up putting all my eggs into the baskets of singing and acting and then got into writing later on, and now I’m working on figuring out a way to combine all of those things in a non musical-theater type of way. Why the fuck not, right?

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

RP: Nobody Loves Me But My Mother (And She Could Be Jivin’ Too) - BB King
Habanera from Carmen - Georges Bizet
Femme Fatale - The Velvet Underground
The Mary Tyler Moore Theme Song
Double Dare Ya - Bikini Kill
Second Skin - The Gits

I ALWAYS ROLL MY ICE IN CHLOROPHYLL BEFORE I DRINK WHISKEY.

WOODY ALLEN on HEMINGWAY

(Dempsey photograph from Encyclopedia Britannica)

I first came to Chicago in the twenties, and that was to see a fight. Ernest Hemingway was with me and we both stayed at Jack Dempsey's training camp. Hemingway had just finished two short stories about prize fighting, and while Gertrude Stein and I both thought they were decent, we agreed they still needed much work. I kidded Hemingway about his forthcoming novel and we laughed a lot and had fun and then we put on some boxing gloves and he broke my nose.

- Getting Even, Woody Allen

What's wrong with books?

Do you think really short stories are "gaining popularity" because we all grew up with Sesame Street and AOL online and fast-paced pop culture figures like Mr. Rogers and now we all have really short attention spans and can't concentrate on things longer than a few minutes because we get distracted by--

Hey! Maybe novels were all written by long-winded bores who can't shut up.

DRAGON THRENODY

Sam Kinison on experience vs academics:

PANTOMIME EULOGY

GNU Word Riot is up. Some sentences I liked from this issue:

Chester swims, stupid.

Masculine. Oppressive.

Never let them close his eyes—

I cannot seem to write anything but porn, and the soft...

rarely do we look up.

SOME WISE WORDS FROM OUR FAVORITE DOUCHEBAG

No, not THE SITUATION, a different douchebag...

"One of the facts that might come to light in this process is our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects or parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity."

t.s. eliot from tradition and the individual talent

INTERVIEW W / LAUREN BECKER

Lauren Becker lives in Oakland, California, where she runs a quarterly reading series called “East Bay on the Brain.” She is a freelance writer and editor, health policy consultant, non-practicing attorney and former director of healthcare government relations for a number of non-profit organizations. Lauren’s fiction has been published in Pedestal Magazine, Annalemma, Opium Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Storyglossia and elsewhere. She also writes for The Nervous Breakdown and keeps a blog here.

BG: So many quality indie presses, reading series, and literary journals. What is corium bringing to the table? What words of wisdom can it offer to the literary conversation?

LB: I don’t really know how to answer. I guess I started Corium to feature words that move people. It was never my goal to generate and motivate discussion, or to critique or theorize. Corium isn’t wise in that regard; I don’t know how to do those things. I know what I like, which is very visceral, and I think the work we feature is unique and beautiful in that regard. As for literary conversation, I think Corium serves as listener. Every conversation needs that. We look for what’s beneath or behind the conversation, the feelings driving it. What it leaves behind when it’s gone.

BG: When the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what literary journals / indie press publications will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?

LB: They'll probably be speaking a different language; I think they might restore, etc., the ones with the prettiest pictures.

Again, I don’t know how to answer. To me, writing is so much about relatability, about seeking commonality in some way. I’m not trying to evade the question, I just can’t say what will resonate with the passage of time, even brief.

BG: What is the last book you borrowed and never returned? Who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

LB: I no longer borrow books or loan them. They are cursed practices. For some reason, those friendships or acquaintanceships end or ebb, and I really do feel like I stole. The last book I borrowed and didn’t return was Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami. I borrowed it from a girl I didn’t know well. She moved and we lost touch. I still haven’t read it. I feel guilty. When someone tries to loan me a book, I tell them to give it to me or I’ll buy it or check it out from the library. I do the same. If I can’t part with it, they get a recommendation.

BG: Name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your ass nobody else has?

LB: I swear I’m not trying to be contrary, but I can’t answer this question, either. Partly because I have no idea what other people have read, and partly because it implies that I have some kind of superior knowledge. So, no ass-betting. If I read a book I think is great, I want people to know about it. Best I can do is to give some recommendations of books I don’t think have been widely read, though I could be wrong: The Book of Proper Names (Amelie Nothomb), the only good thing anyone has ever done (Sandra Newman), Vernon God Little (DBC Pierre), Wrong Information Is Being Given Out at Princeton (J.P Donleavy), and anything by Ellen Gilchrist (especially Victory Over Japan) who everyone has heard of, but it seems like nobody I know has read. These aren’t necessarily the five best books I’ve ever read (except for the Gilchrist, probably), but they’re not beaten path books and I think people might like them.

BG: Who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

LB: Good writing is brave, I think. Where the writer sets aside ego and channels experience, including the bad stuff – loss, pain, fear – into creation or progress. There are so many writers who do this; it’s hard to think of just one. Dorothy Allison comes to mind. Bastard out of Carolina is so stark and brutal, vulnerable and honest, and it’s no secret that the book is largely autobiographical. In an interview with Salon, she said something that resonated with me, challenged me. “Some days, when I feel really tired, I kind of believe in God because it would be easier. I don't believe in fate, except some days. And I don't believe that fighting really hard and sacrificing necessarily makes a difference, but sometimes it does.” She chooses the challenge over the easy, but is honest about the temptation. One of my favorite things I’ve written is a piece for The Nervous Breakdown, called The Things We Would Not Be, which deals with how writers (especially me) use fiction and/or humor sometimes to edit or make sense of those scary or horrific or embarrassing things that helped form us. It actually scared the hell out of me to post it. I liked that fear.

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

In no particular order:

Swan Dive (Ani DiFranco)
California Stars (Wilco)
Court and Spark (Joni Mitchell)
Talk About the Passion (R.E.M.)
Polyester Bride (Liz Phair)
Revelator (Gillian Welch)

SIT RETICENT WHILE I EAT YOUR PUDDING CUP

PANK announced their nominations for best of the net 2010.

I am going to be honest, I have no clue what this nomination is for.

I don't really care either.

But! The raddest internet chick I know is listed as one of the nominated authors.

Check it out here.

IT'S MONDAY AND WE ARE ALL OPPRESSED.

The present author is no philosopher, he has not understood the System, nor does he know if there really is one, or if it has been completed. As far as his own weak head is concerned the thought of what huge heads everyone must have in order to have such huge thoughts is already enough. Even if one were able to render the whole of the content of faith into conceptual form, it would not follow that one had grasped faith, grasped how one came to it, or how it came to one. The present author is no philosopher, he is poetice et eleganter [to put it in poetic and well-chosen terms], a freelancer who neither writes the System nor makes any promises about it, who pledges neither anything about the System nor himself to it. He writes because for him doing so is a luxury, the more agreeable and conspicuous the fewer who buy and read what he writes. In an age where passion has been done away with for the sake of science he easily forsees his fate – in an age when an author who wants readers must be careful to write in a way that he can be comfortably leafed through during the after-dinner nap, and be sure to present himself to the world like the polite gardener's boy in the Advertiser who, hat in hand and with good references from his previous place of employment, recommends himself to a much-esteemed public. He foresees his fate will be to be completely ignored; has a dreadful foreboding that the scourge of zealous criticism will more than once make itself felt; and shudders at what terrifies him even more, that some enterprising recorder, a paragraph swallower who to rescue learning is always willing to do to others' writings what, to `preserve good taste`, Trop nobly did to The Destruction of the Human Race, will slice him into sections as ruthlessly as the man who, in the service of the science of punctuation, divided up his speech by counting the words and putting a full-stop after every fifty and a semi-colon after every thirty-five. No, i prostrate myself before any systematic bag-searcher; this is not the System, it hasn't the slightest thing to do with the System. I wish all good on the System and on the Danish shareholders in that omnibus; for it will hardly become a tower. I wish them good luck and prosperity one and all.

Respectfully,
Johannes De Silentio

Here's an online version of fear and trembling. I don't like the translation much. But it is free.

Jereme Made Me

ZINE-SCENE is a new site dedicated to spotlighting litmags as well as authors and today they go live with a breakdown of decomP; a fine zine run by the awesomely bearded Jason Jordan.

PLEASE TO ENJOY!

SHAVE YOUR PUSSY IN THE DARK

Interview with Paula Bomer up at Dark Sky Magazine. Once, I told Paula I wanted to make a mold of her vagina and place it on my mantle. She wrote something about me soon after. It was the most beautiful thing written about me.

She's one of my favorite birds. Check her wing.

I CAN FASHION A SWITCHBLADE OUT OF TWO POPSICLE STICKS, A RUBBERBAND AND THE SIDEWALK.

Man, I feel like a supreme shit. Sam Pink is reading. Like now. Some other dudes tomorrow.

I am bad at promotional efforts. I am not a worthwhile human being.

OHIO:

THROAT POUNDER

fuck.

sententia2.

tits out of my mind:

ML PRESS. 2011 BLIND FAITH SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE

Mud Luscious Press is offering a ‘Blind Faith’ subscription deal: If you are willing to trust us on the titles & authors of our 2011 catalogue without any cover takes or blurbs, then we’ll reward you by knocking the price down. So until mid-October, we’ll give you all the 2011 titles for $35, including

GRIM TALES by Norman Lock, THE HIEROGLYPHICS by Michael Stewart, I AM A VERY PRODUCTIVE ENTREPRENEUR by Mathias Svalina, [ C. ] an mlp stamp stories anthology, plus handmade chapbook volumes from Jessica Newman, Stephen Gropp-Hess, Neila Mezynski, Kristina Marie Darling, John H. Henry, Andrew Borgstrom, Ani Smith, & others

Get in on this deal here: www.mudlusciouspress.com/subscribe

Thanks and thanks and thanks again. If you have questions, email me anytime.

J. A. Tyler, Founding Editor

www.mudlusciouspress.com

BE MY MELVILLE GIRL

Q: What do you think about your films?

A: I don't.

BOOKS I READ THIS WEEK

I gotta say (and if you know me you know it pains me to say this, but if you know me well you know it doesn't), out of this bunch, Indian Killer was the big winner. I mean, there's nothing literary about it. Pure pop-fiction. There were times when it even felt a little Scooby-Dooish, but holy fuck. When I got to the end I was completely satisfied. I felt good. I felt ready to read more Sherman Alexie.

Although currently, I'm not a runner, I did a lot of it the six or seven plus years I spent in martial arts and boxing, so I got into this book quickly. I love how Tanzer was able to weave domestic relations, his sincere feelings about being a writer, and the zany affairs of his officemates, alongside valuable lessons in breathing, foot work, and pacing. Tanzer is careful how much information he gives out and when, sometimes I wanted to know more, to go a little deeper, but that day's run was over, and I was left craving his next insight.

This is a pretty beautiful book. I learned a lot from it. I can't say what I mean because I'm in the student lounge and it's loud and so many college girls in south jersey shorts, its not a good environment for intellectualizing. It's a solid look into the lives of 1950's semi-elite/celebrity. It feels to me a lot like some of Hunter S. Thompson's better stuff, but I prefer the quickness of Thompson. Sometimes Mailer drags on and on. He says in 400 pages what could be said better in 250. He can take three or four pages to describe one feeling. Which is alright I suppose, but it's not my preference.

I can't even think of one good justification why this was even published. A long way from some of Alexie's early stuff that had an abundance of flavor (Indian Killer, Tonto and Lone Ranger, Business of Fancydancing) This is lifeless.

I'm much more familiar with Hank's prose then I am poetry, but this seems to be typical of what I've read of his. The stuff I really loved broke my heart and the stuff I didn't felt like a shitty rant from a high school kid. But say what you say brotha, the man's got soul.

I hope

There's a wildfire burning in the hills, north of my cubicle and over my car and across the parking lot and above a few streets and currently a mile south of my house. I, like many other twenty-something failures have moved back into my father's place, about a month ago. I can still afford to pay a landlord for rent and pay all my bills, but I decided not to. I let a lease run up at the beginning of August and tucked my tail back between my legs and asked dear old father if I could live with him.

I borrowed his truck for a weekend, filled it with repeated loads of furniture, books, electronics, and clothes. I gave 3 couches to the Salvation Army. I threw out a lot of bullshit I decided I no longer needed or had the energy to donate or sell. I packed my childhood room with expensive bullshit and technology I would have creamed myself over at the age of sixteen when I had originally left, and I looked around and felt nothing.

I moved everything I owned and loved and believed I needed into this house and a month later I can see the fires pushing over the hills and down the canyons and over the mountain and I can almost smell my flatscreen burning. I can almost hear the whir of my harddrives failing in intense heat and choking on smoke. I can almost imagine watching the manuscript to my novel disappear forever.

Yesterday, I skipped out of work on a long lunch when the fire first started threatening my bullshit I love and my 'life' and everything I was so convinced I needed. I walked out of my cubicle and jogged through the courtyard and ran through the parking lot to my car. I drove across the parking lot and through a few streets and over some hills and arrived at a road block as thick smoke poured over the canyon. I argued with a cop and was promptly turned away. I didn't try very hard to argue with him.

I turned around and headed into a parking lot and behind a warehouse and over a median and through a neighborhood and past the roadblock and drove up the hill as fast as my four-banger could take me. I kept the windows tightly rolled up and watched the sky turn steadily more and more brown and I could stare into the sun without discomfort. I reached my house pretty quickly and called out to my cat, and ran across the deck and flung open the door and hopped down the steps and looked around at my bullshit.

I thought about taking pictures of everything and then ferrying my most expensive possessions up the driveway to my car, packing it full and then collecting doubles from the insurance anyway. I thought about pouring gasoline all over the place before I left. I thought about where I was going to go.

I ran my fingers over my flatscreen and listened to the low hum of my quadcore and kicked my lovesac and ran my eyes over the harddrives and ps3 and games and books and clothes and called out for my cat again. He woke and lazily walked up to flick his tail across my shin and I thought about what I could carry to the car and how many trips I could make before the road block got more strict and without thinking about it any harder I picked up my cat and left.

I hope it fucking burns.

I hope it all fucking burns and I hope it's tragic as fuck.

I CAN HEAR THE FILTH OF YOUR ORGAN

Pank has an interview with Gena Mohwish.

Her photography is like a fallen viking in the snow:
(click on each picture to make it go oreo)

The War in Iraq is Over, Baby! Everything's Good Now, Right?

THE GAKULAN RIDER OF YOUR VIRGIN SECOND ORGASM

LET'S GET NAKED AND FEEL ALONE TOGETHER

"ZARATHUSTRA HAD gone to the mountains in search of aloneness. In the crowd you can find yourself lonely, but never alone.

Loneliness is a kind of hunger for the other. You are missing the other. You are not enough unto yourself – you are empty. Hence everybody wants to be in the crowd, and weaves around himself many kinds of relationships just to deceive himself, to forget that he is lonely. But that loneliness erupts again and again. No relationship can hide it. All relationships are so thin and so fragile. Deep inside you know perfectly well that even though you are in the crowd, you are amongst strangers.

You are a stranger to yourself too.

Zarathustra and all the mystics have gone to the mountains in search of aloneness.

Aloneness is a positive feeling, the feeling of your own being and the feeling that you are enough unto yourself – that you don’t need anyone.

Loneliness is a sickness of the heart.

Aloneness is a healing.

Those who know aloneness have gone beyond loneliness forever. Whether they are alone or with people, they are centered within themselves. In the mountains they are alone, in the crowd they are alone, because this is their realization: that aloneness is our nature. We have come into the world alone and we will be leaving the world again alone.
Between these two alonenesses, between birth and death, you are still alone; but you have not understood the beauty of aloneness, and hence you have fallen into a kind of fallacy – the fallacy of loneliness.

To discover one’s aloneness one has to go out of the crowd. Slowly, slowly as he forgets the world, all his awareness becomes concentrated on himself, and there is an explosion of light.

For the first time he comes to know the beauty and the blessing of being alone, the tremendous freedom and the wisdom of being alone."

From OSHO's Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance

GRANDPA HY

My grandpa will not be remembered in any history books. He did nothing society particularly values. He sold suits in a modest men's clothing shop and listened to his wife verbally abuse him that he didn't have more ambition to give them a better life. I remember sleeping over their house on the softest mattress I had ever felt then waking up in the morning to a lavish breakfast of eggs, bagels, and cream of wheat. I have no memory of him ever scolding me or even raising his voice. Not once. He was nice to me and if I took his hat and put it on my head, he let me. He accepted me. My heart swells with love every time I think of him, but also sadness because: what little boy ever really shows his appreciation for his grandpa? It's only as an adult that I've come to realize just how great a man he really was.

He also had terrible O.C.D. and eventually lost his mind and died from lupus, but I never saw any of that. I never once thought he was weird. I think he must have hid that from me out of love. But it wasn't even his actions that touch me the most. It's something almost too simple to put into words. He smiled at me a lot. Like in this picture. He loved me and I knew he loved me because I could feel it. Rest in peace, Grandpa Hy.