Lawn Gnomes in Space

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2011-06-12T08:18:00.002-04:00

Adventure Games and the Training of the Creative Writer

2011-06-07T04:35:00.002-04:00

Adventure games are interactive stories that are played on computers. My first adventure game I was King’s Quest. My father bought me my first computer around second grade and I think the game came with it. I loved it despite its poor graphics and its awkward way of controlling the character where you have to type in commands. If you do not type in a command that the game’s creators programmed the game to understand, a typical response that you received was “You cannot do that.” Often I would have to figure out the correct way to phrase a command because what I typed should have worked and communicated what I wanted my character to do in an accurate way, but the game just wasn’t programmed to understand the words that I used. Another annoying thing about the game is how easy it was to die. You could fall into a lake and drown, fall of a seemingly bottomless cliff (which is akin to Super Mario Bros), accidently press the wrong arrow key while you’re trying to climb stairs to get up to the land of the clouds and accidentally fall to your doom. Also, a monster could appear out of nowhere and eat you unless your character was near the edge of the screen when the monster appeared and you escaped to safety by going to the next screen, where the monster ceased to exist as if by magic. Despite these difficulties, I still loved the game. Another aspect of adventure games worth noting is the games make you confront problems and your job is to solve the problems. If you do not, you cannot proceed in the game and you will wander around aimlessly and get very bored. This is the primary reason why adventure games are not as popular as they used to be. The problems are akin to solving puzzles and are most often resolved by using items that you find while you play the game. Also, unlike video games, you only have one life. So once you are dead, YOU ARE DEAD, although later adventure games would eliminate this possibility. But the death scenario did not make game playing completely impossible because there was a feature where you could save your game from any point during it and restore your game whenever you wanted. Back during the early days of King’s Quest, this meant you had to take out the game’s floppy disk, insert a blank disk, save your game, and remove the saved game disk to replace it with the game disk. Same thing when you wanted to restore your game. This process would later be more efficient when they changed it so you could save your game directly onto your computer.

The term “adventure game” was usually not an appropriate classification for most adventure games besides King’s Quest and the sequels that followed. The reason why the genre of games is called that is because the first adventure game was simply called Adventure (although its alternative title was Colossal Cave Adventure). This was came out a decade before King’s Quest, which was one of the first adventure games that used graphics. Before, they were entirely text based and “before my time,” although I tried a few of them out later on. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game was of particular note because it was nearly impossible to play without dying every few minutes and was co-written by Douglas Adams.

So fast forward maybe a decade and adventure games went through a major change. No longer did you have to type in commands for your character. Instead, the games became ‘point and click’ based. You could choose certain options such as LOOK or TALK or PICK UP or USE and manipulate objects in your inventory to interact with objects and characters that are on the screen (or combine your inventory objects to create an object that is entirely new that can be used for a different purpose). So with these advances of game play, the difficulties of controlling your character via typing in text commands ceased to exist. But instead of this, solutions to solving puzzles became much more difficult. Nothing was ever simple. You could not quench your character’s thirst by obtaining water from a body of water or a sink. Instead, you had to participate in a long process of actions to solve the problem which were often incredibly absurd in nature. Because of this, I feel playing adventure games during your youth (and perhaps now) is an excellent way to train yourself to become a creative writer. They teach you to think laterally and are akin to the kinds of movies that wouldn’t have lasted beyond its first few scenes if the protagonist made a sensible decision rather than a wrong decision that caused their life to spiral out of control and created the setup for the rest of the movie. But unlike these kinds of movies, adventure games never give you the option to act sensibly and solve puzzles using the most sensible and effective means.

Let’s use a game as an example. Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned was the last adventure game produced by Sierra, who produced King’s Quest and was one of the top two companies in the adventure game industry. You play Gabriel Knight, an occult detective. The game occurs in Rennes-le-Chateau, France, and its plot is inspired by the same source material as The Da Vinci Code. Both the game and the novel took elements from the alleged non-fiction book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which in turn was based on what may be the greatest hoax in the twentieth century.

So anyway, you are Gabriel Knight and your objective during one point in the game is to rent a motorcycle. For some reason that I cannot recall, you cannot simply rent a motorcycle. Instead, you must first disguise yourself as a police detective (whose voice is provided by Mark Hamill) who followed you from New Orleans for a reason that I cannot recall. Here is a condensed solution to the process of obtaining the disguise (Credit goes to this site: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/78.html)

First, you return to a museum and steal a red hat from the lost and found box (the game did not allow you to take the hat earlier, but it does now because your character somehow knows that the hat is essential to his disguise). Next, you go to a church and wait outside of it while its Abbe is spraying plants. Eventually, he will go indoors and leave the spray bottle outside. You snatch it. You turn the corner and walk down a street. You will see a black cat. You pet it. The cat runs away, into a small opening in a nearby shed. You take masking tape out of your inventory and attach it to the shed’s hole (if you do not have the tape, you must return to your hotel room and obtain it from inside your dresser). Walk away from the shed. The cat will now crawl on a ledge and is too high for you to pet or grab. Select the spray bottle from your inventory and use it on the cat. This will cause him to jump off the ledge and run back inside the shed through the hole, leaving a piece of its fur stuck to the masking tape. Grab the fur. Return to the hotel and collect the items that are needed for your disguise if you missed them the first time around (they include a black marker, a piece of candy, and a packet of syrup). Knock on the police detective’s door. He’ll let you in and you’ll have a conversation where he mentions his passport. Leave the room and put the piece of candy on a table in the hallway. Go downstairs to the lobby. Buzz detective’s room (I guess the concierge is not around to stop you) to get him to come down. Walk up the stairs to the hallway outside the detective’s room. Watch him leave the room and bend over to grab the candy on the table. While he is occupied, steal his passport. When he goes downstairs, enter his room and steal his coat. Open your inventory. Use the black marker on the photo in the passport to draw on a mustache. Then combine the cat’s fur and syrup to create a fake mustache. Then combine the red hat and the mustache and the detective’s coat to complete your disguise. Then go to the motorcycle rental shop.

So why the fuck do you need to be in disguise in order to rent the motorcycle? I do not remember.

Why the fuck do you have to concoct a fake mustache when the person who you are impersonating does not have a mustache? I have no idea.

Why the fuck did you have to make a fake mustache out of cat hair when head from your character’s head or body would have worked perfectly fine? This defies logic.

And then using maple syrup to attach the fake mustache to your upper lip is just the icing on the cake.

So this is an example of a solution to a problem in an adventure game that is carried out in an extremely indirect way. It is doubtful that anyone figured out how to solve it without looking up the solution on the internet. If they actually solved it without assistance, it obviously would have taken a lot of trial and error.

This solution to the problem is not good writing. Do not do this in your fiction. But nevertheless, it is a good example of a quirky way that your protagonists can overcome conflict.

Other adventure games are more humor-oriented and absurd. I would suggest you play them if you’re interested in writing that sort of thing. I would recommend the sexually perverse Leisure Suit Larry series, the Space Quest series, and my personal favorite, Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle (which is the sequel to another great adventure game, although it’s old and very primitive). Actually, the games that I just mentioned are all fairly old and you will probably have a lot of trouble getting them to work on a modern-day computer.

Oh, and I just want to mention that you play three different characters in Day of the Tentacle: one of them ends up stuck in the past, one in the future, and the last remains in the present. There is a toilet in the mansion where you can flush items that your characters obtain throughout the game through time so the other characters can receive them and use them in their own settings. Time machine toilets=awesome.

So it’s been like forever since adventure games were actually popular, although I hear they are still well-liked in Europe. But there is one particular company in the U.S. who produces really great adventure games: Telltale Games. Much of the staff who formerly worked for LucasArts (the creators of Day of the Tentacle) work for them. I would recommend their Sam and Max series of games. They are about a two “freelance” policeman: a bear in a suit and his partner, a psychotic rabbit-thing. They solve cases. The solutions for the game puzzles are completely absurd and require lateral thinking, but are not difficult to solve like that Gabriel Knight ridiculous. Each case plays out over a “season” and you buy an “episode” to play at a time. It is fairly cheap. You can try out demos to see if you enjoy the games before buying. Check them out. They are worth it. Your brainstorming skills will thank you.

The New Orthodox Order Of Spuds MacKenzie

2011-05-24T05:16:00.001-04:00

Does anyone want to join my cult? I wrote this when I was like 14 or 15:

DON'T MISS OUT IN THIS ONCE IN A LIFETIME OFFER Void in certain states

MEMBERS

High Pope Godoth Frumpfurt
Pope Tater Perdu
Pope T.X. Superfly
Pope "Bob" Dobbs
Pope Monty Catsin
Pope add your name here

Order greeting - YIP YOP.
response - FUCK YEAH!!
second response - RIGHT ON!!!

Have you ever noticed that god spelled backwards is dog. This is what it was originally supposed to be, until the ANTI-spud changed it around. Do you believe that? It has been written in the true book of revelations. There is no god, there is only SPUDS. The idea of god was invented by the ANTI-spud to keep the heat off him. The ANTI-spud is destined to destroy the world in 23 dog years. The only way to survive is to join the order. You will be saved by the otherworldly Frisbee, the SEX GODD, umm no, sorry about that, I really mean the SEX BITCH. The end times are near, of course, according to them, we are, and always will be in the end times. It has been written in the true book. The false book was written by the ANTI-spud in a plot to distort the views of all peoples. What evidence is there that there is a god? You have probably been worshipping god, the false deity all your life. Unbeknownst to you, you are actually worshipping the ANTI-spud.

Spuds MacKenzie died for our sins.

SPUDS MacKenzie visited our prophet, Godoth Frumpfurt while he was having his afternoon tea on December 23, 1932 . Everything seemed to freeze. The clock stopped, and the tea that had been poured in his mouth had frozen in mid-air. Spuds spoke to him, " I am SPUDS MacKenzie, thee original party animal. My soul is located on the Dog Star located in the Sirius System. I am thee creator of life, and I am located everywhere and nowhere. I have been watching, and influencing thee history of your planet for eons, and at this present moment I am very upset. I am speaking you at this moment to defy the teachings contained in the bible of my arch-nemesis - the ANTI-spud. The teachings of the ANTI-spud is nowhere near as horrible as the way that they are being interpreted by the common fool. I need you to recruit people to defy the teachings and clean up this immense doggie bowl. I am not privileged to tell you my teachings, but just think of it as just being the opposite of everything or nothing, or the ANTI-spud's teachings or the common fool's teachings. Bow WOW RUff ruff growl.

It has been written that the ANTI-spud visited the head of the advertising department of Budweiser in a dream. The ANTI-spud convinced him to use the ANTI-spud for the new Budweiser ad campaign. Vast riches were promised. The next day the head found a spuds look-alike to use. The ad campaign was a great success, and Budweiser beer proceeded to increase their sales by millions of dollars. This is why we are forbidden to drink Bud beer except on sodfjday.

Why should you believe us? Who else is there to trust these dog days. We openly proclaim ourselves to be blasphemers and liars. WE ARE BLASPHEMERS AND LIARS. Never in a million dog years, would I trust anybody who stated otherwise. Everybody, without a doubt is. What is a blasphemer anyway? What gives anybody the right to decide what's right and what is wrong. Do not believe in anything. Believe in everything. This religion encourages agnosticism. We are to my knowledge, the only religion that reveals itself to be clever bullshit. All other joke religions are clever bullshit (all serious religions are only bullshit), but do not outright state it. It is only obvious to the clever. We recognize that there this doggie dish is made up of stupid people, so we shall state it outright .

OUTRIGHT

The full force of SPUDS was revealed to me when I was sitting in science class. I went into a trance and SPUDS spoke. I later ponder what caused the trance, science class or SPUDS. My guess that science class was the cause of the trance. If this is true, then it proves that something actually does come out of school. It teaches us how to enter mystical states of being. Back to the SPUDS, I was told everything that I think is wrong, but it is so much closer to the truth and to the untruth then just about everybody else. After that one statement, my vision ended. I have no way of knowing whether or not I was visited by the true SPUDS or the ANTI-spud. It seemed like the true SPUDS to me, because it did not seem like something the ANTI-spud would say. Perhaps that is just what the ANTI-spud wants me to think???

THE TRUE CREATION STORY

In the beginning there was the empty kennel. Then through various complicated methods, it was full. It all started when toad sang his lovely song. The heavens weeped joyfully. Toad was very depressed. This was because he was very lonely, and bored. Because of toad's lovely song, the heavens felt pity for him, and excreted into the kennel. Out from the ashes of the excretion rose pea pods. These pea pods talked, but they were not very good company for toad because of their lack of brains. Toad had a special name for these pods and called them all obergs. After a while, Toad got very annoyed with the obergs from listening to chatter nonsense endlessly. He stamped on them with his feet until they were all crushed to death. Out of the ashes of the obergs remains arose numerous broccoli. They were rather intelligent but their conversations was very cold and robot-like.(This is very strange for broccoli is organic, and not robot-like at all. Perhaps this is misinformation created by the ANTI-spud. It figures). After a while Toad grew hatred for the broccoli. (This was the first time the feeling of anger was shown. It is rumored to be a creation of the ANTI-spud. Although anger may be a good thing . Who am I to say? From this, you could come to the conclusion that broccoli is also the creation of the ANTI-spud. It is difficult to tell, but everything could be the creation of the ANTI-spuds, of perhaps SPUDS, or perhaps even toad, or the heavens. Try to think about it all for a few hours. Does it give you a headache? If the answer to the question is no then you are worthy to become a member. The reason for this is because thou art a liar.) I wrote so much that has nothing to do with creation that I forgot what really happened. I'll remember it later. All I know is that it has something to do with SPUDS.

Our gift to you when you become a member is the divine excuse. With it, you can get away with any crazy shit that you want, just by stating to the person that it was done for religious purposes. You can do stuff like walking around naked, anything in which you have gotten in trouble for in the past. WARNING divine excuse does not work perfectly. If you should decide to kill someone you dislike for religious purposes, if caught you will still be punished. Your sentence will still be decreased because of the divine excuse.

EVERYTHING THAT YOU KNOW IS TRUE

EVERYTHING THAT YOU KNOW IS FALSE

Throughout the years, the ANTI-spuds has possessed many so-called great minds. You know the type, all those self-important assholes who made up useless, unnecessary shit to waste our time studying in school. The ANTI-spud did this to steal our qqq. Just think about it, all languages may have been created by the ANTI-spud. Without a doubt all mathematical theories were created by the ANTI-spud. If I was living centuries ago and was not controlled by the ANTI- spud then my languages and useless theories would be taught in school.

You are real. Aren't you?

It is a sin to copy others ideas, unless of course other members of the order do not contribute ideas themselves. If this happens and the brain is restless, then this law may be considered void. Speaking of such, Joshua Norton, or as he preferred to be called Norton I proclaimed himself Emperor of the United Stated and protector of Mexico in 1859. Norton I was a very likable fellow although he was a loon. Even though he was poor, he was fed well in some of San Francisco's best restaurants. Even though he was a loon, he had all of his state proclamations published in San Francisco’s newspapers. While supposedly rational reformers failed to crack the national bank monopoly, Norton I had his own currency accepted throughout San Francisco. When imbeciles decided to attack the Chinese, and sane men would try to stop them, Norton I did nothing but stand in the street, head bowed, praying. The imbeciles dispersed. The Order has chosen it's own Emperor of the United States. It's name is Emperor Norton II, (how original) otherwise known as the supreme pea pod.

To become a member you shall only want to become a member. Once we get numerous people, we may get a bit greedy and start charging a few dollars. The duties for members are to spread the faith. Of which faith, I cannot tell. Just make sure it is all your own and no one else's.

Free PDFs of Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You and Cameron Pierce's Abortion Arcade

2011-05-23T17:21:00.001-04:00

The two books will be available for free download until the end of the month. Go here for the info: http://bizarrocentral.com/2011/05/23/may-23rd-is-free-abortion-day/

The Series Finale of Smallville Reveals the TRUTH about Judgment Day, AKA October 21st

2011-05-19T12:15:00.001-04:00

I have watched every episode of Smallville. I consider it a guilty pleasure due to its inconsistency. Some of its episodes are great while others are awful. For example, the recent series finale was a disappointment, although watching it has made me an enlightened being.

In the episode, there is an extremely revealing scene where Darkseid’s cronies (Granny Goodness, Desaad, and Glorius Godfrey) are chilling in a room that looks it's inside a church. In case Darkseid is unfamiliar to you, he is an evil god, one of the most powerful characters in the DC universe, and he is probably the greatest villain in comic book history (although Superman killed him off recently in the comics with the help of Batman and comic writer, Grant Morrison).

Darkseid is supposed to be the primary antagonist of the last season of Smallville even though he only gets about thirty seconds of screen time in his true form along with a few minutes of screen time when he’s possessing the body of Lex Luthor’s dad, who is from the alternate dimension where he raised Clark rather than being Lex's “real” dad (because Lex killed his dad, I assume because the actor wanted to quit the show, and the show’s creators pulled this alternate reality crap because the dad is played by John Glover and John Glover kicks ass and they probably wanted him back for the last season but couldn't think of a good reason to resurrect his dead body). So anyway, Lex Luthor’s dad is sporting a hobo beard. Also, he sounds like the vocalist of an industrial band, which is the only indication that he’s possessed by Darkseid besides his hammy dialogue.

So getting back to Judgment Day, here is a transcription of Darkseid’s cronies’ dialogue:

Desaad: The day of judgment is upon us.

Granny Goodness: We’ve saved a million souls from the coming apocalypse to serve the Dark Lord.

When she says “the coming apocalypse,” she’s referring to how Darkseid’s planet is about to smash into the Earth and kill everyone who hasn’t been “saved.” By the way, his planet is called Apokolips.

Then Green Arrow shows up. And he uses a silly deep voice to disguise himself like Christian Bale in the Batman prequels, although I’m not entirely sure why because the cronies already know his identity. And Granny Goodness is surprised that Green Lantern’s omega symbol, which one of the cronies etched onto his head, is gone (Clark is responsible for this). The millions of souls that Granny Goodness referred to earlier are humans that have this symbol on their heads. And the symbols have turned them evil and shit.

In the comics, Darkseid never gave the omega symbol to a million people. Instead, during a big, confusing comic book event called Final Crisis, he sends something called the Anti-Life Equation to every email address on Earth, causing almost everyone to fall under his control and be totally evil and shit. Up until that moment, he had a major boner for the Anti-Life Equation and spent his life trying to track it down. I have no idea how he succeeded in obtaining it.

So basically, the omega symbol is Smallville’s version of the Anti-Life Equation. And Desaad tells Green Arrow that he was “sooo close to experiencing the rapture” and he mumbles something about how those with the Omega mark would serve his Lord “while all others will perish.” Then he asks, “Do you really think you possess the power to vanquish our Lord from the souls of those he saved?”

I’m not going to tell you what happens next in case you want to watch the episode and find out for yourself, but essentially the writers of the show are associating Darkseid and “his” end of the world with Jesus and Judgment Day. And this would have been extremely anti-Christian if it were coming out of the mouths of the good guys rather than the bad guys.

DON’T READ THIS IF YOU WANT OCTOBER 21ST TO BE A SURPRISE: Clark defeats Darkseid in a really anticlimactic way and removes the omega mark from the million people who have it (along with saving the world) in a really anticlimactic way.

In summary, Smallville’s writers are great prophets (even if they may not always be great writers). They have predicted what will occur on October 21ST. God--who is as evil as fuck, has a hobo’s beard, and is in an industrial band--will judge us and sentence us all to death (except for the millions of people who his cronies have saved). But Superman will save the day by defeating him in a really anticlimactic way. And “this should encourage each one of us to go to” Superman “and beseech Him for His great mercy.”

Book Review Solicitations

2011-03-01T14:46:00.001-05:00

Would anyone who does reviews for a publication of any sort like to review my new book, Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You? If so, contact me (It is a novella, and the second book published by Lazy Fascist, a new imprint of Eraserhead Press.)

You can read more info about the book in my last entry.

Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You

2011-02-20T14:48:00.003-05:00

My new book was just published by Lazy Fascist (which is a new-ish imprint of Eraserhead Press)

Back Cover Text:

What the crap is Arnold Schwarzenegger doing on the cover of Rico Slade's book? This is Rico Slade's goddamn book. Rico Slade is not a body builder, an actor, or a governor. Rico Slade is an action hero.

Rico Slade doesn't care about the political climate. Rico Slade has an advanced degree in badassery. Rico Slade's favorite food is the honey-roasted peanut. Rico Slade can rip out a throat with his bare hands.

But Rico Slade has a problem. His arch-nemesis, Baron Mayhem, is threatening to drop a bomb on the Earth that will kill every human being except himself while leaving the world's currency intact. To save the planet, Rico Slade must journey across Hollywood to find Baron Mayhem. Unfortunately, Rico Slade's crime fighting style involves ripping out the throat of anyone who gets in his way, including grandmothers and Midwestern tourists.

As Rico Slade leaves Hollywood in ruins, the only person who can stop him from destroying the city is his Jewish psychologist, Harold Schwartzman. Until he does, Rico Slade will kill as many people as it takes to thwart Baron Mayhem's evil scheme. Rico Slade will fucking kill everyone.

RICO SLADE WILL FUCKING KILL YOU.

Get it here: www.amazon.com/Rico-Slade-Will-Fucking-Kill/dp/1936383470

Poncho Peligroso: 2011 Poet Laureate

2011-02-18T23:21:00.000-05:00

Since I've already conquered every Bradley Sands in the world for the top google listing, I should help this guy retain his title for the top listing when someone does a search for "2011 Poet Laureate": http://ponchopeligroso.com

The Day Your Heart Stood Still Contest Winners

2011-01-24T16:13:00.001-05:00

I'm really late with this, but I'm going to announce the winners for The Day Your Heart Stood Still Contest.

Second-runner up and the proud winner of a collection of random objects from my room is...Kate Paone

First-runner up and winner of a few porn magazines that I'll buy from a nearby store is...Karl Fischer. Luckily, he lives near me so we'll go to the store together and both feel extremely embarrassed.

And the winner of the contest and a handwritten copy of the mysterious story, “My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes,” along with a lifetime subscription to all of my forthcoming books is...Crystal Zimmerman.

Congratulations to all the winners!

http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Said-but-Camera-Crew/dp/1933293934

Metazan's Christmas Charity E-Anthology

2010-12-29T05:36:00.001-05:00

I have a new prose poem in this. The download is free, but a donation is suggested. Get it here: http://www.metazen.ca/?p=6141

Character profile for my 3 day marathon book that I'm starting tomorrow

2010-12-18T22:25:00.001-05:00

Johnny Sweatpants’ mother was the fattest, ugliest woman who had ever experienced a virginal birth. She was so annoyed about getting knocked up without all the fun that’s involved that she dropped her baby in the Hudson River, where he had fend for himself amongst the sewage. Dating guru, Ross Jefferies, was feeding off the river to meet his daily nutritional value when he found Johnny and took him home, cause, you know, chicks dig babies. Ross adopted Johnny and used him as a babe magnet. When Johnny got older and was no longer cute enough to exploit, his father paid him back for all the pootang he got him by home-schooling him, teaching him everything he knew about tricking beautiful women into bed.

Johnny also had an imaginary friend named Melba Toast until he turned eighteen. Other parents would have been troubled by the length of their friendship, but this did not concern his father. Johnny may have been completely out of his mind, but it was preferable to the trauma that would have accompanied the knowledge that he had no friends. Ross Jefferies did not teach him the social skills needed to make friends. Instead, he taught him how to pick up chicks. And the come on lines that he used on his peers did not make him in-demand as a friend. Instead, the pick-up lines made them beat the shit out of him.

The neighborhood children thought Johnny was a weirdo, hated him, and made fun of him at every opportunity. They referred to him as “Johnny Sweatpants” because he never wore sweatpants. This was peculiar because none of them wore sweatpants either. After finding out the explanation behind his moniker, Johnny wore sweatpants every day. But it was of no use. The neighborhood children kept referring to him by his nickname and beating the shit out of him after he complimented their beautiful blue eyes.

Upon reaching 18, he and Melba Toast agreed to a suicide pact. But while Melba Toast was able to decapitate himself by pulling off his own head, Johnny was only able to give himself a neck ache, which he was able to relieve by applying an ice pack. Then he went into a period of depression due to the loss of his only friend and his inability to do anything right. This ended when he blundered into a pet store one day and bought a thirty pound python named Lloyd. Shortly after, his father told him he needed to get a job so he could afford his own place to live since Johnny was past the legal age. Johnny applied to a temp agency, received his first assignment doing clerical work for a cemetery, and found out he was very skilled with things like knowing his ABCs, taking orders, and kissing ass. Many other temporary assignments followed, and Johnny moved into a crummy apartment that he shared with an immaculately clean psychopath who hadn’t killed yet, but it was inevitable.

Johnny continued to wear sweatpants, except for at work, where it was mandatory to wear khaki pants. Since sweatpants were so comfortable, his biggest challenge at temp assignments was fighting against the urge to pull down his pants and run around the office screaming.

By this time in his life, Johnny was less socially inept, but still pretty bad. At least he could distinguish between how he should interact with the different genders. And although he still hits on women outside of work (which is the only way he knows how to act with them), this sort of behavior stopped at work after a number of sexual harassment suits sent him straight. After this, he only used three phrases when conversing with women in the workplace: yes, no, and I would prefer not to.

And of course, Johnny was still a virgin, and very lonely. He also had the ingrained fear of impregnating a woman who he had never been intimate of and having to face the consequences. He tried the bar scene, but didn’t have much luck, so he took up bank robbery. He figured women would be attracted to him because he thinks bad boys have good luck with women. And the fact that they’re under extreme stress, with a guy in a Richard Nixon mask pointing at their heads, helps a little too. So he’s been at the bank robbery game for years, and hasn’t had much luck finding a woman to have sex with, although it’s been really close. And being a temp worker makes it really easy for him to find the time to cross the border and hang out in Mexico until the heat dies down. He always makes sure to tell his agency whenever he’ll be unavailable.

So with each robbery, he takes a semi-beautiful woman hostage and travels with her down to Mexico, but they usually lose interest in him before he’s able to “become a man” and go back to the States without him. He’s not concerned with the money that he makes from his bank robberies. He uses it for his getaway, to pay off the right people, and to buy delicious sandwiches. He’s fairly well off, but always feels the need to do an honest day’s work when he’s out of danger, so he travels back to the U.S. to temp. It makes him feel better about being a criminal.

Johnny is known by the press as The Nixon Bandit for obvious reasons.

I'm auctioning off the movie rights to Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy

2010-12-12T21:47:00.006-05:00

Here is a link to the Ebay listing: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190479648232#ht_2564wt_89

And the item description:

Have you ever optioned a movie? If so, you probably paid tons of money for one story.

One story! Is that all?

Personally, I think you were ripped off.

I am auctioning off the movie rights to my book, Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy, which contains 52 stories.

52 stories! That’s a lot of bang for your buck. It’s enough stories for you to release one movie a week for an entire year. Enough to start a movie empire!

Also, you will have the rights to the title, “Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy.” Who wouldn’t watch a movie called that? The title will appeal to a demographic that includes EVERYONE. Toddlers, teenagers, middle-agers, senior citizens. No one will be able to resist.

Never optioned a book before? Well, that’s ok. Because this is a great choice for your first time.

Do you have no idea how to make a movie? Don’t worry about it! You can learn as you film. Screw up one story and you will have 51 more to choose from, including these potential smash hits:

The Time Traveling Giraffe Is On Fire

Cormac McCarthy

Alligator in Space

Scenes from the Life of a Greeting Card Designer

A Suicidal Amputee Tries to Kill Himself By Rolling Off His Bed, Down the Stairs, Through the Screen Door, and Into Traffic; Some Dominican Kids Poke Him With Sticks Too, and an Eagle and an Eagle Shits on Him

And many, many, many more.

You can’t lose!

So let the bidding begin…

A legally binding contract will be sent to the winning bidder.

Find Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy at Amazon.com. For more information, visit www.bradleysands.com and www.lazyfascist.com.

The bidding ends on Wednesday, December 22 at 8:53 PM EST.

It Came from Below the Belt is going out of print on December 14th

2010-12-02T16:04:00.003-05:00

...so now would be a good time to buy it if you've been meaning to.

It is my first published book (and my first published novel) and I am very fond of it.

You can get it through Amazon.

Here is the back cover synopsis:

Meet Grover Goldstein: Twenty-First Century rascal, trainee provocateur, boy next door who won't stop snickering at you from behind the lawn gnome. Swallowed by a giraffe and regurgitated oodles of years into the future, Grover must satisfy his urge to go home—even if it means going back to high school and helping his severed, and sentient, penis win the presidential election.

Come along to Assumption High as Grover tries to answer the age-old question, "What if I had forgotten then what I don'’t know now?"

And blurbs:

"Bradley Sands’ debut novel is an absurdist dreamscape that subverts the physical laws of the world as we know it and exposes a brilliant new arena of bizarro existence. In It Came from Below the Belt, the body becomes a surreal, grotesque playground as enfant terrible Grover Goldstein tears through the libidinal fabric of time and space on an uncanny journey to the end of the night. This is speculative fiction at its best. Sands is a talented, fearsome, comic visionary who will usher you into the psychedelic matrix of futurity." - D. Harlan Wilson, author of The Kafka Effekt, Stranger on the Loose, and Pseudo-City

"Reading the work of Bradley Sands caused me to vomit happiness and sunshine from my eyeballs. Highly recommended." - Kevin Donihe, author of Shall We Gather at the Garden? and editor of Bare Bone

"I came, I saw, I read, I laughed, I fell out of my chair. You're more unstable than I am. Well done! Just beware those big brawny guys with the net. They're faster than they look. And you've got more books to write. Rock on." - Kris Saknussemm, author of Zanesville

A link to an excerpt:

http://www.bradleysands.com/excerpt.htm

And Lucas Aguirre's cover art:

Guest Blog with Seth Schultz

2010-11-29T17:14:00.000-05:00

(Seth Schultz came up with the title for my newest book. I interviewed him a couple of years ago here. And I wrote a blog entry about him here.)

Hanging out with Brad is an interesting thing. The man's mind is always at work brainstorming new ideas and fine tuning his current writing projects. There is a level of precision in his writing that, as a slacker, I just don't get. But as a thinker I absolutely love. It is easy to get caught up in the process and want to throw your own ideas out just to participate.

Most of the time I would come up with half joke ideas. I am not a bizarro reader or writer, but I can come up with good ideas. On the rare occasion I come up with one Brad like he usually encourages me to use it and write something. But no, I am a slacker. When I came up with “Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy,” I happily let him use it.

It is a powerful title I must admit. Regret, destruction, and taboo sex in five words. I actually did go to a sort of orgy thing in the past. It was college, I was a sort of mini cult-leader/celebrity at the time and I knew some interesting people. But there is nothing quite like being a shy, physically and emotionally awkward man in a house full of mostly rambunctious, beautiful lesbians I had crushes on. It wasn't like a 70s porn orgy. I went, had a good time, hung out with awesome people while naked. Still, there is a particular human pain one experiences when feeling unwanted chastity around so much sensuality. Being self conscious of your unwanted self restraint. Knowing that by being chaste you are kind of killing the vibe. I think Leonard Cohen even wrote about how much shy people at orgies suck.

So yeah, that's where the idea came from. I kind of distilled it into something most people can recognize, then gave it to Brad, who let it blossom into the piece in his book, which I think also conveys that strange energy well.

Book review solicitations

2010-11-02T22:41:00.000-04:00

Would anyone who does reviews for a publication of any sort like to review my new book, Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy? If so, contact me (It is a collection of prose poetry and short stories, and the first book published by Lazy Fascist, a new imprint of Eraserhead Press.

You can read more info about the book in the last entry (which may or may not be below, depending on how you are reading this).

Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy and the event Thursday

2010-10-12T18:02:00.002-04:00

My new book, Sorry Ruined Your Orgy, is now available here. It is a collection of prose poetry and short stories, and the first book published by Lazy Fascist, a new imprint of Eraserhead Press.

Here's the description:

Bizarro humorist Bradley Sands returns with one of the strangest, most hilarious collections of the year.

Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy, the pope gets sued, a headless man falls in love with a bowl of rice, and architects dismantle the earth. A war breaks out over greeting cards. A suicidal amputee tries to kill himself. William S. Burroughs becomes an amateur archaeologist and Tao Lin drinks an ape-flavored smoothie.

Between a breakfast of clocks, a lunch date with Adolf Hitler, and breakdancing in outer space, anything is possible in the work of Bradley Sands. Just never wear a bear costume to an orgy.

And the blurbs:

"Nothing I could dream up compares to the strangeness and wildness of Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy. You should read this book." - SHANE JONES, author of Light Boxes

"Words cannot express what Bradley Sands can do with words. Every page in this book is shocking, hilarious, sad and surprising. Reading it is like crowd-surfing a bookstore full of basketball players on MDMA." - MYKLE HANSEN, author of Help! A Bear is Eating Me!

"Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy is like an Adult Swim show written by Russell Edson." - CARLTON MELLICK III, author of The Faggiest Vampire

And Sam Pink did the cover art.

Also, The Day Your Heart Stood Still...Day is coming up fast and furiously on Thursday.

This morning, I woke to Betty White's maniacal attempt to prevent it from happening, to the sounds of octogenarian fists punching through walls. The deceased members of The Golden Girls lurched towards me out of the cracks, moaning, "coupons, coupons" while staring intently at my skull and licking their putrid lips.

I said, "Stop! This is inappropriate! You are desecrating your memory! I feel greatly offended on your behalf! You are The Golden Girls! The Golden Girls are...awesome!"

But they did not stop frightening me, so I was forced to pick up a Seinfield DVD case and beat them with it (gently, and with a great deal of respect) until they vacated my premises.

Your necromancy can't stop The Day Your Heart Stood Still...Day, Betty White! Nothing can stop it, Betty! Nothing!

And I just want to pause here to mention that if you want to take advantage of Amazon's free Super Saver Shipping (where you have to buy $25 worth of stuff), Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy would make a good companion book, although you would still be missing a few dollars. I suggest buying a pair of 3D glasses or fruit or something to make up the difference. Or if you want your book selections to be a little more diverse, I recommend a volume of the Captain Underpants series.

The Day Your Heart Stood Still...Day

2010-08-29T20:50:00.016-04:00

I declare October 14th The Day Your Heart Stood Still...Day. To celebrate this day, I ask that you go to Amazon.com and buy the softcover version of my new-ish story collection, My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes! Do this, and you will also have the opportunity to win some neato prizes. You may also celebrate the day by helping me get the word out about the book.

Read below to learn of my recent experiences with malignancy and my plan to conquer all evil:

“My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes!” is a story that was supposed to appear in my short story collection, which shares the same title. Due to either supernatural malignancy or the efforts of sinister actress, Betty White, the story vanished from the book after it was sent to the printer.

My publisher and I tried many times to correct the mysterious omission, but each attempt resulted in failure. Soon, the file containing the story deleted itself from my computer. Luckily, I originally wrote it in a notebook, so it was not lost forever. But when I tried to transcribe the story into my word processor, the computer exploded.

Considering I never give up when faced with adversary, I tried many more computers, and they all exploded. And since I live well below the poverty line, I was forced to steal all the computers. The story has turned me into a criminal!

Also, there is something very peculiar about the handwritten copy of the story. You’ll probably think I’m totally crazy, but at night while I sleep, I’m woken up by the story’s words floating off the page to film dating shows for television. I don’t know why this is so freakin’ great, but I’ve been approached by tons of rogue government agencies who keep trying to buy the handwritten story from me for ridiculous sums of money.

I was seriously considering taking one of those creeps up on his offer, because I am living below the poverty line, but decided to sleep on it. That night, a person smashed through my roof and tried to steal it. They were wearing a mask and a tight, black leather outfit. A cord was tied to them, which was attached to a helicopter that hovered in the sky above the hole in my roof. I fought the intruder off by engaging in a tickle war. And I totally rule at tickle wars. While I was annihilating them, I ripped off their mask. And the intruder’s true identity was revealed: It was Betty White!

Embarrassed by her defeat, Betty White pushed a button on her tight leather outfit and her cord lifted her back up to the helicopter. Then she and her infernal flying machine escaped.

Now I’m super pissed. Betty White isn’t going to get my story! A rogue government agent isn’t going to get my story! I’m giving my story to a person who helps me get my revenge against Miss White, and maybe this person is you.

So listen, this is my plan: On October 14th, I will get my revenge on Betty White, but I need your help. Currently, Betty White's autobiography, Here We Go Again: My Life In Television, is a bestseller on Amazon even though it won't be released until two day before The Day Your Heart Stood Still...Day). With your assistance, we can defeat its sales rank. All you need to do is buy my book, My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes! on October 14th. It would also be a huge help if you could promote this event on places like facebook and twitter and in your blog. Also, I encourage you to use these means to let the public know of any sightings of Betty White or other reptoid aliens. Also, feel free to tell us about your turn-ons and turn-offs if you’re interested in appearing on the disembodied letters’ dating show (you just might be the next contestant)!

Please help me get my revenge on the actress, who I’m pretty sure is a reptoid alien beneath her kind grandmotherly looks.

And now you’re asking, “What’s in it for me?”

Well, besides being the proud owner of quality Bradley Sands literature, you will be eligible to win prices.

Grand Prize: A handwritten copy of the mysterious story, “My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes,” along with a lifetime subscription to all of my forthcoming books.

First Runner Up: A few porn magazines that I’ll buy from a nearby newspaper and tobacco shop. Must be 18 or over, otherwise, you will win a few teen magazines about hunky guys and cute girls. Also, the winner should let me know their tastes in pornography and I will attempt to cater to them.

Second Runner Up: A collection of random objects from my room!

So how do you win?

Once you receive your book, email the third word of the first sentence in the fifth paragraph on page 73 to bradleysands@gmail.com and you will be entered into a drawing. It’s that easy!

So help me annihilate Betty White! Not only will you get a cool book out of the deal and maybe win some awesome stuff, but you will also feel really good about yourself after. Say goodbye to any low self-esteem!

ACT NOW!

2010-04-13T19:17:00.005-04:00

My new story collection is officially out, so maybe I should promote it. The book is called My Heart Said No, but the Camera Crew Said Yes! This morning while waiting for the bus, I saw a man on the side of the road. He was sweaty, wearing a statue of liberty costume, and holding a sign that said, "Two days left to file!" He was sweaty because he was dancing. I think he might have also been on crystal meth, or just a lot of gourmet coffee. I approached him and said, "Hey, statue of liberty. You're really good at promoting things. Can you help me promote my new book?" He sneered and set my clothes on fire with his torch. I ran around the street in slow motion. The effect of slow motion and not dying was achieved with the assistance of film and music video director, Spike Jonez. It cost me a lot of money, so I decided to stop running in slow motion and start promoting on my blog since it's a little cheaper. I may or may not still be on fire.

You can find all the info about the book here: www.bradleysands.com/books-myheart.htm

Also, I'm offering personalized, autographed (softcover) copies through my website. During this special one-time offer, I will use my eerie powers to predict the cause of your death. You may not know about my psychic abilities, but they are something fierce. A bunch of nights ago, I was walking down the street with superstar poet, Daniel Bailey, and I was all like, "What time is it? 2:30?" And then I looked at the clock on my cell phone and it was 2:30. It was freaky! And Daniel Bailey can back me up on that shit.

Already, I can see something comical interfering with your respiratory system's ability to function. Like Dwight Johnson from Hartford, Massachusetts. Yes, I'm talking to you, Dwight Johnson from Hartford, Massachusetts. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but you will die by....MAGNETS!!!

My skillz will delight your friends and family, helping them through their emotional pain with the power of laughter. Accuracy guaranteed or your money back.

Now I'm going to be totally redundant and give you that link again cause it's the place where you can make all of your death-revealing dreams come true: http://www.bradleysands.com/books-myheart.htm

It's like a commercial on TV or something where they repeat their toll free number fifty times.

And once again, that link is www.bradleysands.com/books-myheart.htm

Operators are standing by.

AWP Stuff

2010-04-03T18:01:00.007-04:00

I'm attending the conference in Denver. Psyched!

My second book, My Heart Said No, but the Camera Crew Said Yes! is debuting there. But Amazon beat my publisher and I to the punch, so you can buy it from them NOW if you're not going to the conference: http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Said-but-Camera-Crew/dp/1933293934/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

If you are going, I'll be around HTMLGIANT's table during the book fair, so stop by and say hey.

I am participating in two readings, and I organized a third.

So here's the info:

Mud Luscious Press/flatmancrooked reading (Author Vs Puppet): Friday, April 9th. 4 pm during the book fair at the flatmancrooked table.

Readers: Me, Joanna Ruocco, Alyssa Knickerbocker, Molly Gaudry, Emma Straub, Elizabeth Ellen, Edan Lepucki, Jac Jemc, and Aaron Burch.

Two hours later:

The Velvet/Outsider Writer's Press reading: Also Friday, April 9th. 6 pm at Leela's European Cafe (820 15th Street)

$2 off any book with a drink purchase.

Readers: Me, Caleb J. Ross, Rayo Casablanca, Richard Thomas, Nik Korpon, Gavin Pate, Gordon Highland, Paul Eckert, and some other dudes.

And introducing the Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens Reading Series: Elevator-permitting, a few of our contributors will read their short work during various times throughout the book fair. Meet at HTMLGIANT's table at the specified times if you would like to be a listener. Space is extremely limited.

Ryan Bradley (Thursday, 12 PM)
Amelia Gray (Thursday, 1:30 PM)
Matthew Simmons (Friday, 1...:30 PM)
Mike Young and Gabe Durham (doubleheaders, mystery time and mystery day)

Blurbs for My Heart Said No, but the Camera Crew Said Yes!

2010-03-16T15:42:00.003-04:00

Here are the blurbs so far. Thanks, guys!

"There's a place past all reason, most possibility, and all the jokes I can think of. A place shaped kind of like the human heart. Bradley Sands doesn't write about this place, but he writes from it, pushing farther into the unguessable with each word, each scene."
—Stephen Graham Jones, author of Demon Theory & It Came From Del Rio

"A Bradley Sands story is not like any story you’ve read before… [Sands] discounts reality in a way that renders it obsolete. The book’s strength lies in the way irreverent images are juxtaposed, repeatedly, often rhythmically, creating a sensation that has no use for the traditional confines of literature."
—Outsider Writers Collective & Press

"There is a disorienting alchemy at work in Bradley Sands' fiction. Here phantasmagoria shifts into stand-up and the avant-garde saddles up besides the geek. Imagine: a hyper-palimpsest beneath which burbles a heady brew of surrealism, poetry, memoir, and horror all set to a DaDa soundtrack that sounds surprisingly like the End of the World."
—Rayo Casablanca, author of 6 Sick Hipsters and Very Mercenary

"Reading this collection is like ingesting a bag of fun-colored candy, removing your stomach, and then taking it to a party for use as a pinata. Some readers will love these stories, some readers will hate them but, displayed throughout, is a true love of language and a generous dose of creativity." —Andersen Prunty, author of The Beard

things are happening

2010-02-15T16:16:00.005-05:00

Issue Y'aing'ngah of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens is out and available online as a free download.

It includes stories by Mykle Hansen, Brandi Wells, xTx, Nicole Cushing, Gabe Durham, R.E. Greene, and Jeff Lawhead. Contains book reviews of D. Harlan Wilson's Peckinpah and L.V. Rautenbaumgrabner's As I Was Cutting and Other Nastinesses. Cover art by Kristian Adam.

------------

My twilight wanderings had led me far. In the plains of Jum I saw pigs that walked as men and muttered wicked chants to an ancient wrathful god, in the city of Ka'esran, I beheld a chorus of wicked children piercing hearts with eldritch secrets meant for no man's ears, I met a lady whose most loving touch brought only pain and was almost deafened by the klaxons of interminable war! But, it was worth it to make it past the gibbering madnesses around me and into the company of the goddess Nish-Fkyua, The-Laugh-That-Mocks-Creation. Her skin was a thousand cats in tight corsets, her eyes two hungry Skramps, and her wide open vagina a Gnufrat of most resplendent hideousness. Her voice caused my fingernails to break off in unison and my eyes to melt into pools of jelly. But, what she told me, the ghastly primal, was worth the price I had paid and the untold millions of miles I had journeyed:

"Beyond the gates of Eth there lies a palace of dark opulence, where a king with no eyes sits upon pillows of manflesh waiting. He waits to lead the most courageous and foolish of men into a place of unspeakable horror and delight. He will take you to a golden door engraved with symbols in old Qothric that tell of the secret location of another door atop a perilous mountain where the Masters from Above Time meet every thousand years to plot the end of being. When you get there, you must...

BUST DOWN THE DOOR AND EAT ALL THE CHICKENS!

Get it here.

I'll be attending AWP in Denver from April 7-10. My story collection, My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes! will be debuting. I will be selling it at the HTMLGIANT table during the book fair (along with copies of It Came from Below the Belt, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens #9, and The Bizarro Starter Kit (Blue).

I'm also doing two readings:

Mud Luscious Press/Flatmancrooked Puppet-Theatre Reading - on April 9th, 4:00 pm, at the Flatmancrooked table during the bookfair.

and

OW Press/The Velvet Reading at Leela's European Cafe, on Friday, from 6-9: www.outsiderwriters.org/ow-press-the-velvet-reading-april-9th

In other news, Eraserhead Press is offering more free bizarro book PDFs until the end of the month: Andersen Prunty's Zerostrata and Carlton Mellick's The Haunted Vagina (which are two of my personal favorites), Jordan Krall's Piecemeal June, and the first two issues of The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction. I have a piece in the first issue titled, "How to Write a Short Story!" You can also find it online in an old issue of The Dream People, but the "The Magazine" issue also has a lot of other good stuff. Go here to download: www.bizarrocentral.com

Why I Write

2010-01-17T22:09:00.003-05:00

I used to think I did it because it's the only thing that I'm good at. And although that's somewhat true, I don't think it's the actual reason.

Another reason is that I get depressed when I go through a period of time without writing.

But here is the most significant reason:

I have done a writing exercise called "I remember" a number of times in classes where I was a student as well as a teacher. For the exercise, I would write "I remember" before each sentence and write about memories from my past. By doing this exercises, I have thought of things I have not remembered for years. Some of them I haven't remembered since they happened.

And this is related to the reason why I write. I never know what's going to be transferred from my brain and onto the screen (or the page). And it is always exciting to find out.

Question

2010-01-07T15:37:00.005-05:00

Does anyone (who is associated with a publication or review site) want to review my upcoming story collection? My publisher has a limited amount of review copies. The book is called My Heart Said No, but the Camera Crew Said Yes! and Raw Dog Screaming Press is publishing it in April. You can go here for more info: www.rawdogscreaming.com/myheart.html

If you're interested, email me at bradleysands@comcast.net

New Project

2009-12-02T17:06:00.003-05:00

I'm going to write various prose poem-like things. The protagonist of each one will be a different author. It will be written in his/her style, but only somewhat, because I will put very little effort into doing this. I have already finished a piece with Cormac McCarthy.

To everyone who is reading this: Please tell me one author who you would like me to work with.

In other news: It's the last couple of weeks of the semester and shit is busy. Slowly working my way through essays and final portfolios. Only two more essays to go. Due next week. It sometimes feels like I'm getting a Master's in English rather than Creative Writing, which is a cruel fate because it's easier to find a job teaching literature than teaching writing, but I guess I don't really want to teach literature. But it would still beat working overnights at a gas station like I used to do.

Seasonal Affective Disorder has been getting me down lately. Might ask my mother to ship me my light box. One of the perks of working overnights is I didn't really suffer from S.A.D. I think what I found depressing is darkness early in the day. When I used to go to sleep in the light, I never had to experience this darkness. I just woke up in it. And for some reason, sleeping during the day is a lot more restful for me. I would never wake up and yell, "No!" because I didn't want to get out of bed. This now happens to me whenever I get up early for class.

Temporarily abandoned a novella. Going to start outlining another one soon.

Story-Interruptus

2009-11-19T17:07:00.004-05:00

I have always been frustrated by non-endings in literary fiction stories. They are such a convention in lit journals (and a few collections that I'm read for school). Maybe MFA programs teach their students to do them? This would explain why it occurs so often.

I feel so unsatisfied by these things whenever I read them. They come out of nowhere and it's like a punch to the gut. What is slight becomes dramatic. The author tries to force into finding meaning in the meaningless. What I feel is lazy writing is supposed to sound profound.

A reader develops an emotional detachment to a novel. The reader must be satisfied or the book will be considered a failure. All the time spent reading will be considered a waste of time. So an author must put in a lot of effort into creating their ending. But with a story, endings aren't as important. And considering the state of literary short fiction, I assume most readers don't care about the ending. They only care about what has come before it. So they give the writers permission to be lazy and write lackluster endings.

Have realized that I hate reading stories online but enjoy novels. It's more difficult for me to get into a piece of writing when it's on a computer monitor, but once that happens, it's smooth sailing from there. With stories, I'm usually unable to get into them before the story ends. I think Noah Cicero is probably my favorite writer to read online.

Once I went half deaf after trying to wax my ear out my a tube of ear wax removal stuff that I bought in the grocery store. My hearing isn't the greatest, so I wanted to see if it would improve it. And then I had swimmer's ear for a couple of days until it got so annoying that I went to the doctor and they flushed out my ear and it was wonderful. So I didn't have anything to read for those couple of days and felt too crappy to leave the house, so I bought a few ebooks from Raw Dog Screaming Press. I think they were all short story collections. Two books by Harold Jaffe, which were easy to get into because of his clear writing style. And one book by Darren Speegle, which I really should have been reading in print. His style was way too rich and baroque to be read on a computer screen. And years before this, I bought a couple of ebooks by Carlton Mellick III books and one by Kevin Donihe because they were cheaper than the physical books and was not sure they would be good. That's my origin as far as getting into bizarro fiction.

Right now I'm at my job in my college's computer lab. Part of my job seems to be spelling the word "boredom" for a woman and telling her what the glass is called at the front of a car: "windshield."

Also, five bizarro books are now available for download as free PDFs until Thanksgiving: Ass Goblins of Auschwitz, Super Fetus, Sausagey Santa, and both volumes of The Bizarro Starter Kit. I have a novella that appears in the "blue" edition. It is called Cheesequake Smash-up. It concerns a city-wide demolition derby between levitating buildings. Winner gets total supremacy over the fast food industry.

Carlton Mellick III wrote Sausagey Santa and it's a really good time. A light read so it's friendlier on-screen reading. The two Starter Kits also have a lot of good stuff, although each page consists of two columns of text, so the reading isn't as friendly. Here is the link:

www.jeffburk.wordpress.com/free-books

Spiritual Cramp

2009-11-16T22:32:00.008-05:00

How come I can never go to sleep at the same time each night? How come when I wake up by alarm I always feel miserable and exhausted? It wasn't like this back when I was doing overnights, sleeping during the day, and waking up at ten pm for work. That was the one benefit of working graveyards.

You can now pre-order my short story collection, My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes! Do it here: www.rawdogscreaming.com/myheart.html

Here are some descriptions of haunted houses:

From The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson-

Chapter 1 (omnipresent POV)

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

Chapter 2 (third person limited POV)

No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice. Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up a beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil. This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

From Hell House by Richard Matheson:

It stood before them in the fog, a massive, looming specter of a house.

From "Terror in the Haunted House" by Bradley Sands (from My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes!)

Black-wearing men wheel out a house that is just a little too large for a miniature and just a little too small to be a house. Six stories of pure trial and error, an ungainly spire growing out of its roof that really should be checked out by a doctor, a fog machine that won the Regional Spelling Bee with “doom for asthmatics,” grass that has been overgrown ever since accepting a contract put out on the readers of Better Homes and Gardens―this is what awaits Crispin on The Price Is An Unspeakable Agony.

Also, I have been having trouble connecting with experimental poetry lately. I take a class where it is often workshopped. It is tough on me. This is my theory of experimental poetry:

1: It is not narrative-based. Instead, it is written with the intention that the language/words/rhythm will trigger emotions and memories in the reader. Unfortunately, it does not work like this for me.

2: There is no clear POV. No protagonist or multi-protagonist. No I, you, he, she, the man, the woman, the mongoose. I feel like a POV is a key that opens a door for me. Without POV, a poem remains inaccessible to me.

3: It is often entirely composed of predicates and devoid of subjects.

Also, I came up with a phrase while revising a particular letter entirely too many times: "Revision is the most essential nutrient for typos." Eh...something like that. It was better when I came up with it. Now I'm paraphrasing.

Also, The &Now Awards Anthology came in the mail today. Looks good. I have a story in it. You can buy it here: www.lakeforest.edu/press/lfcp/&now/awards.html. Or here: www.amazon.com/Now-Awards-Best-Innovative-Writing/dp/0982315600

And this just in! Mel Bosworth reads things. This time, he reads my prose poem, "The Time Traveling Giraffe is on Fire."

Thanks, Mel!

2009-11-02T15:50:00.002-05:00

Here's the back cover text my publisher wrote for my story collection, My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes! I like it:

"Have you ever had one of those nights when you could swear in front of a court of law that you haven’t had a wink of sleep, but the prosecutor would have a field day with details concerning your alarm clock going off after what seemed like only an hour and your lingering memories of mischievous lawn furniture?"

Forget everything you know about life, the world and all the objects in it. Bradley Sands can bend them to his will with a frightening disregard for reality. You never know who, or what, is lying in wait behind the next comma. Whether it's Super Noxious Air Man and his sidekick, Kid Centrifugal Force, or the next episode of Teddy the Rottweiler Spayer, Sands keeps you off-balance with laughter and astonishment. These stories are crammed with the delightfully odd and the scurrilously silly. From moment to moment My Heart Said No requires the most unexpected, perplexing and hilarious leaps of faith. But you'll be glad you took this exhilarating jump into uncharted territory.

------------------------------

Have been in a creative funk lately. Feel like I do not have the capability to write well at the moment.

What do you do when this happens to you? Do you keep pushing on?

Working on a novella. Really like the concept. Feel like it is wasted because my writing is not up to snuff. Should I continue, hoping things will change? I feel like it doesn't matter what I work on. It's not the novella that isn't working. It's my writing that isn't working. If I switched to another book, I would probably have the same problem. And I would probably be working with a concept that was as dear to me as the current one. So another one would be wasted.

Maybe I should go back to prose poems for a while. Those are fun, easy. Focus on language. No concern about the plot. Little investment in each piece. Maybe I'll solicit titles like I did a while back.

How do you guys feel about writing when you're tired? I have trouble with it because it cuts down on my confidence. But if I motivated myself to write when tired, I would have a lot more time to write.

I think the main thing about the writing process is whether or not you are confident in what you're doing. It doesn't matter how good it is as long as you're confident. If you feel this way, writing is easy and pleasurable. You can lack confidence and think what you're doing sucks, but end up writing something fantastic even though the process was pure torture. And vice versa. The process may be enjoyable, but the end product may suck, and I don't think that's such a big deal because you had a swell time and at least got some practice out of it. I hate perceptions.

Hate Mail to Someone Who Isn't Me

2009-10-28T00:04:00.006-04:00

Just spent an hour looking for this. It's hate mail to my friend's zine. It was accompanied by a few poetry submissions. Here it is:

Editors, Chiaroscuro:

I'm stymied as to how you could even name a magazine a word you doubtless can't pronounce, and it's a miracle you spell it right, since you're all obviously demented and ignoramic orangutans.

It's beyond my ken that grown American men, ostensibly holding the high-school diploma or beyond, could found a magazine so blatantly and unabashedly vile and rotten and illiterate as this Chiaroscuro debacle, which if I had founded or put out monthly wouldn't have the nerve or the gall to show my face outside a black paper bag.

How is it possible for grown American men to be so downright and outright stupid as to produce this thing--without being so ashamed as to want to kill yourselves?

You make an apology for typos! Hell, typos are the least of your worries. You can't even pick the right words you mean from the English language! You're masters of malopropism. It isn't even that, it's outright ignorance! Done with pride, yet!

When I saw "uncomprehendable" I thought, is that misspelled? Hell, misspelled? It isn't even the word. The word you want is incomprehensible. In the adjacent column you've got "compliments," meaning "complements." In the swatch above that (they're not really columns--your format stinks) you've got "temporally," meaning "temporarily." Do you engage your brains at all before you start writing? On p. 7 of August issue you've got "who's" meaning "whose," "tradition" meaning "traditional," and you think it's spelled "cubical." Could you have less gray matter? I think not.

The verb is "outdid," one word, not "out did"--what puerility!

Last page: only an ass thinks the word is "alright." "Others opinions" is senseless--do you think you want to make it possessive somehow instead of plural? Would you even know how to begin? You don't use "etc." in formal prose. You say "and so on." "Was is possible"? Could it be "it"? Do you use your eyes there, or are they on vacation along with your brains?

Whom do you think you're kidding with this whole vile, rotten, putrid, disgusting piece of dried-up, stinking, caked-white little dog turd each month? Do you have some notion you're "literary," or have the vaguest inkling about English or how to write? What a crock if you do! You're frauds! I wouldn't want a butterfingers doing either my piano-concertizing or my neurosurgery, and that's how you equate, you complete charlatans and stupid asses, having no shame about it!

Whom do you think you're kidding tossing around extreme vulgarities totally extraneously and gratuitously with no meaning to them but to display that you think you're smart? You don't approach the ability to apply to be smart. The f-word as you pepper it is not smart, not funny, not cute, not interesting, and a crashing bore. If you think you're coming off smart by "insulting" readers with it, calling them by it every few lines, you're mistaken. All you're doing is displaying your idiocy and the nearly complete absence of any kind of heart, brain, or soul--as writers. You're not writers, you're frauds, and stupid frauds, at that!

If you think that boring, asinine, monotonous and illiterate elephant diarrhea you print each month and call "fiction" is fiction, you need brain burial. Nothing could be a bigger bore than these maggotty slices of tripe you serve up as "literature." You're the laughing stock of the nation, and all you're doing with Chiaroscuro is blatantly and shamelessly advertising ignorance. Why do you wish to do that? I can't predict anything but failure for all of you if you continue to support this vile, deteriorating form of social anarchy and chaos--failure as writers, but most of all, failure as souls. Right now, you're asses--and I'm flummoxed that you could even come up with the word "chiaroscuro." Is there one staff member who can pronounce or spell it or know what it means? If you want a chiaroscuronic magazine, then learn to write chiaroscuronically. Judging from the last two issues, you're writing with your anuses--and the earth would be better off you were on Uranus.

A Real Winner / Salt Lake City

gasoline

2009-10-21T19:59:00.001-04:00

Feeling kind of depressed. Trying to write a shitty story for class that's keeping me from writing a novella that I actually want to work on. So I thought, Hell, I should write a blog entry instead even though I don't have the goddam internet at my house. Blog entries don't matter, unless they do and I am unaware. I am not obsessing over every little keystroke. It does not take me ten minutes to compose a sentence. I am typing without thinking about what I am typing. It is like someone saying, "Think before you speak." "Think before you type." I am not thinking before I type. I think if I put much thought into my words before I speak, it would take a very long time to have a conversation with me. I think I can be pretty awkward to have a conversation with. Sometimes I say things that don't make sense and use awkward phrases. When I am responding to someone's email, my answers are succulent, well thought out. Two things are bothering me but I will not discuss them because this is blogspot not livejournal.

I've been reading a lot of Stephen Dixon lately. I just finished Frog and it was fantastic. Probably one of my favorite books now. I've always been obsessed with writing and reading about a character's entire life and the novel satisfied me in this aspect. It was super-long.

Listening Nick Cave's soundtrack to The Assassination of Jesse James. Really like it. Didn't start listening to it until recently because I had previously tried doing it on my laptop and it sounded like shit on the speakers, so I had assumed the audio quality was bad. But I tried it on my desktop a few days ago and I was wrong.

When I visited my parents in NY before moving to Colorado, I had a lot of free time and nothing to read. So I looked in my brother's bookcase. Found an uncorrected proof of Stephen Dixon's Old Friends. I must have been really desperate to have read it considering how dull the title was, but it was really great. Especially liked the narrator talking about all the horrible things that happened to his family, and then matter of factly mentioning it was just him worrying + his imagination. It tricked me every time. My brother probably got the book from the newspaper that he edits.

Then I spent must of the summer reading Dixon. I realize the summer is a memorable time when it comes to reading. I will look back at this summer as the summer of Dixon. Last summer, I read The Dark Tower series. The summer of 2000 was Infinite Jest.

I can't understand why I like Dixon so much. His is the sort of writing that I should hate. Mundane, dull. But he's not dull for some inexplicable reason. His books excite me. I think he's sort of like a minimalist in form and a maximalist in content and I found that pretty intriguing.

I just ordered a big book of his short stories. They have it at the library, but it's too long to read before the due date and the stories are too same-y to plow through. I've probably read a tenth of it.

The impression I get from Dixon's protagonists is that he always uses himself as a template and the characters are different variations of himself. And different books tell the same stories in various ways. The man seems to be extremely obsessed with certain events in his life, as I suppose we all are.

I think I want to read his book, Gould, too. I've read maybe six of his books since the summer. He has so many I feel like I'll be reading him for the rest of my life and this excites me. I usually find an author that I like a lot and read everything they have written and have to wait five years for another book and it is never worth the wait. I wonder if I will get burnt out on Dixon.

I've noticed picking up some writing habits from him lately. Like putting exchanges of dialogue in one paragraph rather than many. Gonna make it harder to get to desired page lengths this way.

I saw Christian Bok perform on Saturday. There's two dots over the o in his last name, but I don't know how to type that. His last name is pronounced "book." I do not know why. He was entertaining. I've never heard anyone do sound poetry before. I only went to meet Daniel Bailey. We went to a bar afterward where they try to trick you into going into the wrong gendered bathroom. I ate a peanut butter burger. That's the second peanut butter burger I've had there. They are good.

Going to Portland tomorrow to attend Bizarro Con. Doing a reading and a panel on humor writing. Participating in a workshop. Also did it last year. The exercise this time and last time was to come up with a conceptual book: title, pitch line, back cover synopsis. I like this exercise, which is the reason why I'm doing the workshop again. Forces me to come up with a great concept for a book, and I need to be forced.

Started working with recovering drug addicts and alcoholics Went great. Doing a writing workshop. In class exercises.

oh

2009-09-30T01:30:00.012-04:00

Started writing this as a goodreads comment, then realized I hadn't written a blog in ages.

I only seem to get into Dennis Cooper’s books when I’m a college student. Now I’m back after eight years. I always find a lot of his books in city and college libraries. Was really into him when I was a young undergrad. Until, Period, which really put me off. Found it to be too experimental or something. Grew out of all the gruesomeness.

A few month’s back, I read, God Jr. Stumbled across the premise somewhere and it sounded intriguing. Was a wonderful book. Then I went back and read Period. Loved it, particularly because of its experimental nature. Cooper’s how deal with the concepts of identity is intriguing. It made me want to go back to read Frisk assuming that’s his “My name is Dennis Cooper and I am a serial killer” sort of book. Loved that one. Haven’t reread it yet. But I reread Closer because that was one of the handful of novels the library had. It was pretty alright. Not as good as the first time I read it. Lacked the intriguing innovations or whatever you want to call them of Period. Now I’m about to read Try because it’s the only other book the library has that I haven’t reread. Will probably feel the same way about it. I put in an inter-library loan for The Sluts. Looking forward to that.

Here’s some newly published stuff. I usually like to link to them at the end, but this blog entry seems pretty tedious and I don’t know if people will get that far.

New publications

“A House” at Word Riot

mud luscious issue nine is up & frantic including the work of kate wyer, peter schwartz, christina farella, meg pokrass, bradley sands, mel bosworth, andrea deangelis, zachary tyler vickers, cortney mclellan, richard osgood, david peak, roxane gay, gregory sherl, steven j. mcdermott, & kimberly e. ruth alongside reviews of ANTHEM by c. l. bledsoe, DAYS OF DESTRUCTION by gary beck, & BIG AMERICAN TRIP by christian peet.

Here's Brandon Duncan’s cover art for my upcoming short story collection through Raw Dog Screaming Press: My Heart Said No, but the Camera Crew Said Yes!

Strange how it's not showing the colored bars and my name at the bottom right corner.

Do people actually use Myspace anymore? Wondering if it's worth promoting the new Bust on it. Usually takes a while, but I might buy an evil program to save myself the time. If it's worth the cash. If people still use Myspace.

In my garage, door open. The people in my neighborhood love to wonder around after dark and chant the names of their pets.

In other news, recently I have been able to determine when I will be waking up with TMJ pain beforehand. When I experience a feeling in my brain around bedtime—stress, anxiety, whatever—I know I will be waking up in pain. But I also know there are techniques I can use to eliminate or reduce this pain such as trying to relax, meditation, showering, drinking calming teas, and going to sleep a little later than usual to broaden the time between weird brain activity and sleep. Whenever this happens, I also take a particular pill that I can only buy from Whole Foods which I do not take every night because it is a little expensive and I develop a tolerance to it if I take it a bunch of times in a row each night.

So last night I got all riled up by a piece a student turned in for workshop. Had to write a letter to them about it. Caused me anxiety because every little thing in this world causes me stress and anxiety. The trick is to avoid every little thing before bedtime. Unfortunately, there are not enough hours in the day and sometimes I need to do school work at night. Stress was so much easier when it did not cause me physical pain.

So I took a shower, drank soothing tea, swallowed a Whole Foods pill, stayed up a bit later, and went to sleep. Woke up in pain, although not agonizing pain like I used to. Haven’t had that in a while, perhaps due to the techniques I mentioned earlier and this magical juice thing that my parents send me. It is nice not to experience agonizing pain. I once had that for three months straight. It ended once I figured out what was wrong with me and took precautions.

So I woke up with pain, but not agonizing. When this happens, I am able to read and do other stuff, but not write. I hate it when this happens when I had planned to write. When I am in pain, the music, the rhythm of language is missing from my head. I am tone deaf. I do not have very high self-esteem, but when in reference to my writing, I think, “I am the shit.” I believe thinking this way is necessary to write well, to have the confidence to write well. When I am in pain, I lack this confidence.

Today I had intended to start a novella. It will combine a getaway story with a haunted house story in a manner that is totally ridiculous, illogical, and AWESOME. I have been meaning to start this for a while. I have not done any work on it. I had planned to write the outline first, but I was motivated to start on the actual prose (and will probably only write a few pages before pausing to outline) because one of my professor’s assignments was to bring in ANY piece of creative writing for next week, and I jumped at the opportunity because I have done very little writing since the semester started late last month. Besides a few short assignments—nada. Oh, and the thing I did this weekend. Contacted about writing a proposal for a YA horror novel. Wrote the plot summary and the first 500 words. Hope I get the gig. Because I have no source of income.

So back to this morning. Really frustrated that I wasn’t able to write, which makes the pain worse, probably more so psychologically than physically. So instead, I finished reading Home Land by Sam Lipsyte, which was excellent. Read The Subject Steve a while back and found it incredibly annoying. Wonder if Lipsyte has come far as a writer or I have come far as a reader. I also read a few stories in Donald Ray Pollock’s Knockemstiff, which were pretty alright. And then I took a nap, because TMJ pain often induces napping. And fifty percent of the time, I will wake up from a nap and it will be gone. So I woke up and it was gone (although it is back now to a mild extent). Then I took a bus and ate at Quiznos. Drank a bunch of Dr. Pepper because I wanted to get caffeinated up to start on the novella. Probably a bad idea because caffeine has a tendency to cause pain the next morning. Better to drink it in the morning rather than afternoon/evening. Coffee is out of the question.

Went back home. Tried to write. Had one of those days where it doesn’t come easy. When everything is a struggle. When everything seems to suck. Hate days like this. But at least I got it started. Maybe tomorrow I will read it and think it’s good. Think days like this may have more to do with my perception than my ability to write well. So we’ll see. Glad I didn’t have one of these days on Sunday when I wrote the first 500 words for the YA novel. Everything seemed to go right that day. It was easy. Wrote it in no time. Today, seemed to take me forever to get all this crap into my computer. Suppose that sort of thing is much more likely to happen at the beginning of something new rather than when I’m in the meat of it.

So I wrote a page of possible crap, then used my caffeine high to finish a five page paper that’s due on Friday which I’ve been putting off. Think it’s a piece of shit also, but I don’t care. Haven’t written a paper in eight years, so I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Sure I will figure out along the way. There’s something about my grad school workload that seems so overwhelming, until I finish it. Which always takes very little time. I guess I have no conception of how long something will take. Just see all the stuff I need to do and mildly freak out.

Now I’m going to stay up late, because of this goddam caffeine and the desire to resist pain when I wake up tomorrow. Read some more of Knockemstiff. Maybe start Try. Tomorrow, I have to fill out some paper work and take a tuberculosis test. It’s for a volunteer job I’m doing: teaching recovering alcoholics and drug addicts how to write. Looking forward to it. It’s for a particular class that I’m taking.

Might go see Brian Evenson and Joanna Howard read this weekend, assuming I can get a ride to Denver. Will hopefully meet Daniel Bailey. Write something that I need to get done and keep putting off. It’s non-creative and semi-super secret.

Think maybe going back to school has made me boring blog-wise.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

2009-09-02T20:13:00.002-04:00

Brain frazzled. Using free wireless in supermarket.

Started classes last week. Taking three. Two on the same day: noir and experimental fiction. Three hour break between. Polar opposites. Noir is pretty conventional. Nuts and bolts-y. Experimental is like whoa.

Also doing a class where I'm supposed to volunteer to teach writing in the community. Might be a library or a mental health place or something. Will be nice to get teaching experience. The reason why I was turned down by the college's writing center for a position. Was bummed. Figured going to college is about getting the opportunity to gain experience without first having the experience. The old catch 22. But I guess only to a small extent.

Still looking for work. Have only done so on campus for work study stuff. Did five interviews. Turned down by all. Tired of interviews. Driving me insane.

Now I need to start looking for off-campus employment. Whole Foods or some shit.

Finished editing another novelette today.

Figured out the Yerba Mate on campus gives me terrible gas, unlike the store-bought kind.

Think I want a smoothie.

Crazy busy last week. This week, not so much. Not at all since I only go to school two days a week.

Next week, two of my classes fall on memorial day, so it's like a one week vacation except for one class. Too bad it isn't more middle of the semester.

Going to bizarro con in October, Portland. Will sleep on a floor.

Got first bad review of It Came from Below the Belt on Amazon. Surprised it didn't happen earlier. Wonder why the person bought it. Assume the synopsis or look inside feature would have been a major turn off.

Gonna go back and space this out so it's easier to read.

New Noo

2009-08-17T15:17:00.000-04:00

Rushed for time, so copy and paste:

You can check out the latest issue of NOÖ Journal today! Work from such beauties as Matt Bell, Mary Hamilton, Ari Field, Bradley Sands, Bonnie Zobell, Loren Goodman, and many more. Stuff about the age of the ebook; The Greying Ghost; chapbooks/books by Dobby Gibson, Carrie Hunter, Jon Leon; a time machine; lots of babies; a spittle bug; a painful breakfast; a billboard of thanks; and more.

A blog entry!

2009-08-14T21:31:00.003-04:00

First things first:

The new issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens is out.

Includes stories by Shane Jones, Steve Aylett, D. Harlan Wilson, Christopher Higgs, Sean Casey, Ben Stein, Katy Wimhurst, and Ryan W. Bradley.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, werewolves, transsexuals, and Frankenstein monsters, step right up and see curiosities and monstrosities, wonders and horrors like you've never seen before! See the terror of the Antipodes, the ferocious platypus! Behold the dark, twisted longings of the Satanic progeny of the magus Joseph Smith! For the first time anywhere see the elusive metaphor in captivity! And see the most rare and shy of entities, here for your amusement is the good life! Step right up and break through the barriers set up to protect the tender juicy white meat of your fragile mind, step right up and watch as we BUST DOWN THE DOOR AND EAT ALL THE CHICKENS!

Buy it here: www.absurdistjournal.com/current.htm

Personal things:

My new house doesn’t really have an internet connection. It’s been nice. I’ve been a lot more productive. I’m writing this blog entry in a Microsoft Word document.

When I first moved here, my housemate, who is another MFA student, told me the only way I could get an internet connection is to steal someone’s wifi by going into the upstairs bathroom and standing in the shower with my laptop resting on the window sill. But my battery only lasts for three minutes, so I would only have time to download my email. I did this a few times, feeling totally ridiculous, afraid I would drop my laptop on the shower floor.

Later, I was told by another housemate that I could get a connection from the garage, so that’s what I do these days, although it is not very dependable.

The semester starts in ten days. Have been looking forward to it. It will be a nice, relaxing change from the intensive summer program. One of the classes I’m taking is on reading and writing noir. It’s cool because Will Christopher Baer used to be the professor’s student and Will Christopher Baer is one of my favorite authors.

Have been looking for a work study/on campus job like crazy. Nervous about that. Need money to pay rent. Did a few interviews. One was at the Allen Ginsberg Library. Didn’t get that one. Bummed about it. Suspect cute girls were hired over me. Have always wanted to work at a library. Usually when I apply, I get a “Do you have any library experience?” response. Would have been nice to have gotten some library experience.

Still waiting to hear back about a position in the writing center.

Have also been reading and writing like crazy. Spent a couple of weeks reading like three books a day. They were usually pretty short. It was the opposite of my book depression-affliction that I suffered about a year ago where I didn’t like anything/couldn’t finish anything. I liked nearly everything. Went back to some of the books that “defeated” me during my book depression and flew through them.

Everything I write these days seems to be novelette-sized. I wrote the first draft of one in four days. Now working on another about a ninja. It’s going great. Hoping to be finished before school starts. If not, no big deal.

Looking forward to meeting Daniel Bailey and another writer who I like who emailed me about getting a beer. I like his stuff and had no idea he lived in the area.

My story, In the Restaurant, won a &Now award (subtitled: The Best Innovative Writing. It’s described as “Your friendly neighborhood anti-Pushcart Prize collection.” The story will be reprinted in their anthology, which is coming out in a couple of months.

Found out my cousin who I haven’t seen in maybe ten years is getting her Masters in psychology at the same school as me and just moved here. Big coincidence. Met her a couple of days ago. It was nice.

Things are really good, except for the dire financial situation. Have been living off credit for the past couple of weeks.

boo

2009-07-21T00:39:00.005-04:00

I want to go into a bar and go up to lots of people and say, "Hello, I am a ghost." I hope people will buy me drinks.

ffffffffffffvvffff. My f key is not working very well.

I read a story in Laird Hunt's Paris Stories that made me want to be a ghost when I die. I read it after my urge to impersonate a ghost at a bar.

I think maybe I don't really want to DIE, and ghosts only die, so I'm ok with that. You don't have to worry about money when you're a ghost. Or food or shelter. You can travel all the time. Do whatever you want to do. The ghost in Laird Hunt's story said she never gets lonely because there are a lot of ghosts to keep her company. I imagine a lot of people have died. I'll write books and other ghosts will read them and enjoy them. We'll connect on a human level. Being a ghost is awesome.

I read at an open mic tonight. I love reading. I hate open mics. I need to schedule my own readings. I don't know how to do this.

I'm going to write a totally different book from the one I originally intended for my three day novella. I write first person pov much quicker than third. I started the book that I originally intended to do a while ago. I wrote a little more than a page of third person narration. I wasn't enjoying it so I stopped. I read it yesterday. It was really great. I want to continue with it, but keep the same style/tone. Need to keep it third person. I can't write a third person book in three days.

I'm going to write a book called Untitled Bradley Sands Project. If it actually ends up publishable, I might keep it.

100% free porn robocop

2009-07-18T14:59:00.007-04:00

Blarg. Probably shouldn't have poured expired milk in my cereal this morning.

My summer writing program is long over. Cool workshops. The stuff in the afternoon wasn't so good, like lectures and panels. Too much of a poetry slant. Did a presentation during a panel about how to start a lit journal. Highlights were the workshops with Laird Hunt and Brian Evenson (and Joanna Howard). Saw him dance to a Michael Jackson song. Liked Selah Saterstrom's weekly class a lot. I don't know why I don't hear about her books more often. You should read them. Michelle Ellsworth's performance was great, although I was ill. Was in her workshop for the first day, but switched to Evenson's for the second after someone dropped out. Made a teacup breakdance on its own volition for like five minutes. Saw people breakdancing on yuppie street a few days ago. Couldn't see much since they were ground level and people were blocking my view.

Met lots of people. Nice to be part of a scene that doesn't exist mostly on the internet.

Things are happening.

New issue of Zygote in My Coffee with my prose poem, "A Suicidal Amputee Tries to Kill Himself by Rolling Off His Bed, Down the Stairs, Through the Screen Door, and Into Traffic; Some Dominican Kids Poke Him With Sticks Too, and an Eagle Shits on Him" Thanks Jerome for the prompt.

Afterbirth Books is putting out my novella collection, Disappointing Sophomoric Effort, maybe before the end of the year.

Raw Dog Screaming Press is putting out my short story collection, My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes!, next year.

Another book was accepted for publication that I can't talk about yet.

My novella that appeared in The Bizarro Starter Kit (Blue)-- Cheesequake Smash-up-- was nominated for The &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing.

Have been posting under A_Lawn_Gnome for Twitter 66. Probably should do that more.

Have a bunch of time to kill. School doesn't begin again until the end of August. Psyched for a relaxed semester. Summer program was a little too much. Spending 13 hours a day at school almost every day for a month. Although that's with lots of breaks.

Doing a 3 day novella writing challenge starting Thursday. Gina Ranalli is joining in. Maybe Sam Pink. Maybe others. Join in.

Blarg.

dreams are boring

2009-06-16T01:08:00.006-04:00

First full day of writing program classes. Very busy. Just finished my homework for the night. Feels weird to type "homework."

Yesterday, I heard a recording of Allen Ginsberg. Last night, had a dream where I was sitting next to Allen Ginsberg in the audience of a Quiz show. Jack Kerouac was a contestant. A sorta flapper version of Paris Hilton was playing. She was molesting Jack Kerouac. He was not happy about this.

I once went to an Acumen concert in NYC at The Bat Cave. A man and a woman were standing in front of the stage, rubbing the bassist's crotch. He was not happy about this. He was trying to get away. He was unsuccessful.

I was simultaneously Jack Kerouac and myself. Allen Ginsberg was simultaneously the flapper and himself. He was wearing her clothes. Allen Ginsberg was rubbing me. Not sure if I was happy about this. Maybe uncomfortable. Maybe an emotion I cannot comprehend since it was a dream.

Ended up without clothes. Suddenly, Jack Kerouac was dead. Suddenly Allen and I were in his apartment. It was sort of a museum. Nothing had been changed/removed since the day he died. For some reason, the flapper lived next door. Did something in her apartment. Don't recall what. Not sure if she's dead or not home.

Put on Jack's clothes at Allen's suggestion. Wearing sweat pants. Leave. Find it the authorities are all pissed that I stole Jack's clothes. It's a really big deal. They are pissed. There was a journal in my pocket, which makes it much worse. Odd how I didn't notice the wait of the journal while I was in sweat pants.

Return the clothes. Past crimes are forgiven. Authorities are ok with me hanging out in Jack's old apartment. Allen and I chill.

Dreams are boring.

this place

2009-06-08T01:35:00.003-04:00

Have been in Boulder since Monday. It's great. Paradise, except for when the weather is bad. Big hail stones earlier today. Lasted a few minutes. Meeting a professor tomorrow at a coffee shop. Orientation starts Thursday.

Chose the cover art for the next issue of Bust. Doing last minutes on the issue.

Have an urge to tweet "Masturbating" five times so it fills the right side of my blog. Holding back because it would be really annoying for people who follow me on twitter.

Living in a neighborhood with lots of young college students for the next couple of months. Sometimes gets noisy at night. Annoying

Offered a room in an awesome apartment outside of Boulder starting in August. Would be living with an elderly man who is an ex-priest/ex-judge, semi-retired Jungian psychologist. We hit it off. The area is beautiful. Even more beautiful than Boulder. Quiet. The community is like a country club. Only problem is it's a little far from school and I'm trying to avoid bringing my car up, which I might do if I take this place and busing is too much of a pain.

Walked to campus a few days ago. Beautiful. Tiniest campus I've ever seen. There's two more of them elsewhere in the city. I may never step foot on either of those.

There's a miniature golf course in Denver called Adventure Golf. I want to play. Tiki head and volcano spits fire. You have to hit your ball through a haunted house.

The first issue of The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction is out. There's a reprint of my "How to Write a Short Story!" in there.

It features a novella by Anderson Prunty which he describes as being "like Scooby Doo, but Scooby and the gang traveling pornographers." Stories by Jordan Krall, Bruce Taylor, Garrett Cook, and Michael Gibbs. Comics by Andrew Goldfarb and Jeremy Kemp. Articles by Mykle Hansen and editor, Jeff Burk. A spotlight on Gina Ranalli. Lots of bizarro book reviews.

Buy it here: bizarrocentral.com/magazine.asp

There's also copies for sale on Amazon.

a paragraph composed of the first sentences of all the chapters in my novel in progress

2009-05-29T00:16:00.001-04:00

This is the only house in the neighborhood without a basement. The dog is barking. Dad returns, shaken. Had there ever been a front door? Dad removes his toolbox from the hall closet, opens it, grabs a hammer. Dad climbs the stairs to smash a window in his bedroom. Matt likes his room. Dad tells Mom and Paul it’s all mirror. It becomes quieter than quiet. Mom and Paul are hugging. Dad is angry at his wife for seeking retribution against him. Paul’s consciousness lies in bed. The living room feels bloated. Matt is a cardboard box. The front door ages, retires, and dies, leaving behind a severed doorknob. Matt is a cardboard box. Dad reads Ion a bedtime story. Paul is jumping on a bouncy castle. Matt is not a cardboard box.

all of my mother's day flowers are dead

2009-05-25T08:33:00.004-04:00

I have a beard and am naked in my brother's old room. My old room is now my mother's Ebay room.

I am in NY. There are a couple of readings in the city I might go to. Probably not though. I would if I could drive rather than train to them. I don't like readings, unless I am reading. I would rather read an author's work myself than hear them say it out loud. I cannot follow a story when it is said out loud unless the speaker is very animated. I fade out a lot. I miss things that are necessary to follow the story. If this happens when I am reading a book, I can backtrack. Although it happens less. I think the only thing I like about going to readings is the hanging out aspect.

The house that I grew up in has a room that I forgot about. There is also now a door that allows me to access the garage from inside the house. This blew my mind when I walked through it. I felt excited.

My parents' are trying to sell the house. A bunch of bookcases are filled with books "for show." It is a schizophrenic mixture of books. A combination of my books/parents' books/brothers' books. Zagat's restaurant guide next to a William Gibson novel. I found the uncorrected proof of Stephen Dixon's Old Friends. Liked it. No typos. Needs a better title. The long paragraphs hurt my eyes. Experimental, but accessible. I like books like this.

What other good Stephen Dixon books are there?

I am not in the kitchen. I am no longer naked. The kitchen is nice. It's sunny. I'll probably spend a lot of time at the table.

bubbles

2009-05-21T08:42:00.002-04:00

Thinking about moving this blog to my website since it gets barely any hits and my blog gets lots. And it would be nice if people actually checked my website on occasion.

But I don't know since I barely write in this thing any more. Will probably wait until I'm feeling more motivated.

I did my last overnight shift on Tuesday night, stayed up until 9 pm last night, and woke up early today so I could begin my new, normal sleep schedule. I'm happy about the idea of becoming a day person. I've always been a night person, but staying up all night for a year and a half caused me to lust after the idea of becoming a day person. It has given me a newfound appreciation of sunlight.

Going hiking today with a few friends to the highest point in my area. It will be nice. I usually only hike with one person because he's the only guy who's cool with going on early morning hikes with me (since I would go to sleep early in the afternoon). But now I'm going at 1 pm, so others are down as well.

Going to Long Island on Saturday to visit my parents for a little over a week. Might go to Opium's Literary Death Match. My father was buddies with one of the readers in high school.

Flying to Boulder around the beginning of next month. Naropa's summer program starts a few weeks later. My first workshop is with Laird Hunt.

Need to start writing fiction again. Haven't done that in a bunch of days. Was working on a novel-sort of thing. But got tired of it. Stopped around 5000 words. Hoping being in my childhood home will reignite my interest in the "book" because that is the setting.

Have been reading tons of books lately.

voice mail

2009-05-11T23:44:00.003-04:00

Eric Blair left me a message asking if I knew anyone who wanted to get a short poem or story published in a zine that no one reads. He emphasized that you will receive a contributor's copy. If so, send email to: ericblair23 at gmail.com

send me your stories

2009-05-03T12:34:00.004-04:00

I just reopened submissions for Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens. It's going to be an online issue. Looking for stories and prose poems less than 2000 words. Guidelines here: www.absurdistjournal.com/guidelines.htm

Not sure if it will be a PDF or an HTML issue. Leaning towards HTML. Blake Butler has offered to help out with that. I'm a lousy web designer.

We'll be releasing issues online rather than in print from now on until I either graduate from college in two years or find the money to pay for a print run.

Maybe I should start looking into an NEA grant or something? No idea.

The next issue will still be print though and it should be out sometime in the summer. I'm still looking for cover art. Otherwise, it's finished.

our prices are insaaaane

2009-05-02T00:43:00.006-04:00

I am a slave to email. My email program is on all the time. It checks for new email every minute. When I receive a new one, I hear a soothing sound. If I am not depressed or tired or in pain I will respond to the email the moment I get it. I will stop what I'm doing to do this. Otherwise, there is a fifty percent chance that I will forget to respond.

I already wrote about this on twitter, but if you have been meaning to buy my novel, It Came from Below the Belt, now would be a good time. It would be appreciated. I can only bring two suitcases with me when I move to Colorado. I need to cut down on stuff that I need to bring. I guess I could mail stuff to myself, but that costs and I already need to mail a bunch of other stuff. I have a bunch of copies left: www.bradleysands.com/books.htm

Here is a book review: www.sfreader.com/read_review.asp?book=1066

As I mentioned before, same deal with the last issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens: www.absurdistjournal.com/current.htm

It is on sale. My novel is not on sale. This is because I'm all like, "If you've been meaning to buy it, do it now!" rather than "I know you probably don't want it and I'm going to use my special marketing tricks to make you want it, which involves rearranging the molecules in your brain by shooting a laser beam at your head from space."

I will be utilizing my space laser to get people to buy the last issue of Bust.

Jeff Burk is the editor of The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction. I think the first issue is coming out soon. I can't remember when. My "How to Write a Short Story!" piece is being reprinted in it. Jeff Burk is a really nice guy. He has a mohawk. His novella, Shatnerquake, is #147 on Amazon's sales chart: www.amazon.com/Shatnerquake-Jeff-Burk/dp/1933929820

a blog entry

2009-04-26T02:43:00.005-04:00

Remember when I used to write a blog entry nearly every day? I liked doing that. I miss it. I think I was compensating for not writing very much fiction.

I don't have much motivation to write in this thing anymore.

I'm looking forward to moving away and changing my lifestyle, which has become intolerable ever since I found out that it would be changing. Time has never moved so slowly.

The "great submissions project" is finished, I guess. Submitting is fun. Now I see why everybody does it so much.

I hate the last bunch of prose poems that I wrote, so I'm probably not going to do it anymore. I'm in a funk again. I took a break from writing them for a couple of weeks because I had to work on an essay and I sent my laptop in for repair and I didn't feel comfortable writing the poems in a notebook.

Now I have my laptop again and I wrote a few poems and they are no good.

So I tried to start a story and it was no good.

I don't know where to send my stories anyway. I feel like I need a place to target to motivate me to write.

I like submitting to online journals over print. It's easier to get accepted into good online places than good print places. Because online places are more adventurous than print. I think my poems are for online and my stories are for print. My stories usually end up long, and I don't submit long online.

I'm going to start a new novella tomorrow night. It will be literary fiction, then it will not be. I don't have a good title yet. Ron Loewinsohn's Magnetic Field(s) has inspired me to write it. I wonder if it also inspired Blake Butler and Mark Z. Danielewski.

I wonder if the novella actually end up being a book rather than something short and unfinished. I already have a couple of "books" like that. I've met a lot of people with books like that. They are usually written by people who have never completed a novel before. I ask, "How far along are you?" They say, "Like five pages." A couple of months later and it's still "like five pages." I say, "Why don't you write a short story? Short stories are easier to write." They usually haven't really written any shorts. So many people want to write novels without first doing shorter work and end up biting off more than they can chew. I think there should be another term that should be used for the "I am working on a novel" sentence if the novel is in its early stages. "I am working on a THING THAT WILL PROBABLY NEVER GET DONE AND I WILL PROBABLY WRITE VERY LITTLE OF."

I'm not going to talk about my plots anymore. Getting paranoid.

Fuck this blog entry.

Interview with Ryan Manning for thunk.

Dragons with Cancer

2009-04-14T00:31:00.003-04:00

Mike Young and I have released Dragons with Cancer, an e-anthology of real and irreal stories.

It includes stories by Blake Butler, Ray Fracalossy, Avital Gad Cykman, Sam Pink, Gina Ranalli, Sean Kilpatrick, Rhys Hughes, Ofelia Hunt, Andersen Prunty, and Kevin L. Donihe.

READ IT HERE

online journals that I "co-founded" are seeking submissions

2009-04-12T02:20:00.003-04:00

Wamack: A Journal of the Arts:

Send your weird fiction to grantwamack@gmail.com

Word length:1-3000 words.

What we want: weird fiction, bizarro, absurd and anything else that fits in-between these genres. Well-written tales are expected. Stories that flow nicely. We want pieces of art or at least something resembling art.

Kek-W Quarterly:

5 - 350 words.

Any language.

Looking for originality and a unique voice. Duh.
Some sort of emotional impact, even if oblique or intangible.
A narrative thread rather than just words thrown together.
A mood, atmosphere, flava, vibe.

Prose rather than Trad. Poetry.

Points given for combining genres, formats: show me something I've never seen before. But no experimentation for experimentation's sake.

I reserve the right to contradict myself or ignore any of the above at any point that I feel like.

If I reject your submission it doesn't mean that you or your work suck; it just means I, oh, you know...

If sending v. short pieces, then send several.

kekw10cc [at] googlemail [dot] com

Mall Security

2009-04-11T14:11:00.006-04:00

Oh man. This is awesome: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekAQzff95E8

"Bi-polar mall security guard Ronnie Barnhardt is called into action to stop a flasher from turning shopper's paradise into his personal peep show. But when Barnhardt can't bring the culprit to justice, a surly police detective, is recruited to close the case."

Have an idea for a movie? Write a treatment. Release it into the netherworld. Hollywood will do the rest.

Well, just the bi-polar mall security guard thing. I based my treatment on a story that I wrote two summers ago. Used it as a writing sample for my MFA applications. Where the fuck did I send it? (Checking my tracker on Duotrope). I think the guy who wrote the screenplay either considers applicants for an MFA program or edits for Fence or edits for McSweeney's (who haven't responded yet) or edits for Columbia: A Journal of the Arts or is Mike Young.

Well, at least this movie looks good. Unlike that Paul Blart shit. I want to see this one. I will imagine that my movie magically appeared.

Here's a list of my top ten favorite novellas: www.johnmadera.com/2009/04/bradley-sandss-top-ten-favorite.html.

And other lists by all of these people courtesy of John Madera:

Leni Zumas
John Dermot Woods
Kevin Wilson
William Walsh
Justin Taylor
Joe Stracci
Matthew Simmons
David Shields
Peter Selgin
Christine Schutt
Bradley Sands
Tim Russell
Adam Robinson
Cooper Renner
Kathryn Regina
Ben Pester
Kimberly King Parsons
Ben Myers
Clayton Moore
Carole Maso
Michael Martone
Micheline Aharonian Marcom
John Madera
Lorette C. Luzajic
Gary Lutz
Sean Lovelace
Reb Livingston
Catherine Lacey
Lee Klein
Paul Kincaid
Michael Kimball
Sean Kilpatrick
Michael Joyce
Shane Jones
Jac Jemc
Jamie Iredell
Lily Hoang
Christopher Higgs
John Haskell
Jim Hanas
Amelia Gray
Brandon Scott Gorrell
Renee Gladman
Molly Gaudry
Timothy Gager
Brian Evenson
Scott Esposito
Nicolle Elizabeth
Jackie Corley
Jimmy Chen
Tobias Carroll
Blake Butler
K. Kvashay-Boyle
Daniel Borzutzky
Crispin Best
Matt Bell
Ken Baumann
Nick Antosca
J.R. Angelella
Steve Almond

stick a fish in your ear

2009-04-10T01:18:00.003-04:00

A few new prose poems:

"A Sloth and the Newspaper Boy" in Wamack: A Journal of the Arts

"A Headless Man Falls in Love with a Bowl of Rice" in Magazine of the Dead.

"The Man with Penis Breath" (where I totally rip off Russell Edson) in Every Tree Has a Face

Anyone else?

I found a review of the current issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens. I like translating things with Babel Fish. It's always funny:

A review published by Bradley Sands, who proposes absurd news, surrealist and bizarro. In this number, a few great purple passages: - " Bang bang" , d' Adam Breckenridge: sympathetic. Not trascendant, but sympathetic. - " We witnessed the advent off has off new apocalypse during year episode Friends" , of Blake Butler: a news based on an idea with the idiot: and if you look at the TV during l' appearance of the first signs of l' Apocalypse, and that those did occur during a épidode from Friends? Funny. - " Chocolate Caramello candy bars and yoohoo drinks" of Darby Larson: the main character of this news has two characteristics: he is busy (in the purest style, in other words, he saw his life while doing nothing but pass) and especially lorsqu' he skirts his hand in the pocket of his trousers, he always arises with the sum d' money which it needs at the time. A sympathetic news, too. - " Castle Cesare" of Rhys Hughes: probably the best news of the review, which starts with " I believe that I am the only living being to have really two ages. J' have at the same time 28 years and 9.731.065 ans." A beautiful news, poetic, surrealist, barred in its head. If you should not read qu' a news of this review (what would be a pity frankly, because the others are very well also), it must be that one. - " Because accident" d' Ofelia Hunt. A very short news, very shock. After that of Rhys Hughes, my preferred news of this delivery. The Web site: http://www.absurdistjournal.com/ To note that this site proposes some numbers in remote loading, as well as small anthos. So long for new adventures; -)

The Great Submissions Project

2009-04-06T03:10:00.011-04:00

Another prose poem in Kek-W Quarterly.

Other submissions so far:

"A Suicidal Amputee Tries to Kill Himself by Rolling Off His Bed, Down the Stairs, Through the Screen Door, and Into Traffic; Some Dominican Kids Poke Him With Sticks Too, and an Eagle Shits on Him" to Jereme: A Journal of Dean Fiction. Response - The editor said it was awesome. No mention of publication. Assumed rejection. I am perplexed. I will probably submit it elsewhere.

"Brave Contestant of Faith" to xTx's Internet Tendency. Response - Confirmation received. The editor said she liked it. Again, I am perplexed. An editor has never told me they liked a submission in the confirmation email. Editor also requests I continue to drink awesome sauce. I think this might be a good sign, but I don't know.
Update (10:57 AM)- It has been accepted.

"A Texas Cowboy and His Pal, The Jeanie, on Vacation" to Chiaroscuro. Response: Not yet received. Have been waiting an hour and fifty minutes. Starting to feel anxious.

Poems I still need to write:

"Diners and/or Dinosaurs and/or Diaphragms" for Noo Journal. I will write this tomorrow so I won't be interrupted. I have the night off. I also have the next night off. I will start my Steve Erickson essay then. If I do not feel like writing prose poems during this time, The Great Submissions Project may go on a short hiatus.

"A Headless Man Falls in Love with a Bowl of Rice" for Magazine of the Dead.

"A Sloth and the Newspaper Boy" for Wamack: A Journal of the Arts

Anyone else?

my salami has a first name

2009-04-01T13:11:00.010-04:00

The new issue of The Dream People is out: www.dreampeople.org

The Dream People=Awesome

I have a story in there. I wrote it the night before David Foster Wallace's suicide, so I'm a psychic. It was tasteless of me to submit it, but not tasteless of me to write it.

I just started writing one prose poetry story a day. Depending on my level of concentration, it takes me an hour or two to do. It took me a while to get started because I've been having major TMJ head pain. And days when I suffer from major TMJ head pain are days that do not exist.

My first poem was accepted for the next issue of Mud Luscious. Thanks J.A. for doing that and for giving me the title/subject.

My second poem was accepted for The Brandi Wells Review: brandiwellsreview.blogspot.com. Thanks Brandi Wells for doing that and for giving me the title/subject matter.

Tonight, if tonight exists, I will write a poem for Jereme: A Journal of Dean fiction. It will be called "A Suicidal Amputee Tries to Kill Himself by Rolling Off His Bed, Down the Stairs, Through the Screen Door, and Into Traffic; Some Dominican Kids Poke Him With Sticks Too, and an Eagle Shits on Him."

I think I'm going to start playing the submissions game like all of you guys. I seems like it would be fun. I'm usually not a big submitter. Maybe one story a month. I don't care about getting shorts published as much as getting motivated. Knowing that a person likes something enough to publish it is good motivation to write more.

I like writing prompts. If anyone has one, I will write a poem for you and submit it to your lit journal, regardless of whether or not you actually have one.

jello jigglers

2009-03-26T15:18:00.005-04:00

Someone give me a topic for a prose poem. I'll make you feel special. I'll submit it to your lit mag. Doesn't everybody who reads this have one of those?

I need to get back into it, maaan.

Getting antsy. Haven't worked on anything new (except that story for my bro's birthday) in a month or so.

Withdrawal symptoms.

Have done a lot a lot a lot of editing during this time. Dragons with Cancer, the new Bust, my novel.

I want to write one prose poem a day. I don't want a substantial project.

I need to write an essay. So I'm going to do it on Steve Erickson. Have been rereading his books. Taking lots lots lots of notes. Feels like it's been keeping me from writing. I'll make the time.

I was trying to fall asleep, but I stopped trying to fall asleep so I could write this post.

i hope everybody who works for paypal pisses lava until they die from pissing lava

2009-03-18T07:10:00.005-04:00

The current issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens is on sale for a limited time. Get it HERE.

I also have two copies left of issue 6.

I also have no idea why my status of having eighty-one verified sales never goes up regardless of how many people buy an issue.

I DO NOT NEED SOMEONE TO SEND ME A ONE PAGE STORY

2009-03-18T00:32:00.010-04:00

UPDATE: The story has been chosen.

angry dwarfs

2009-03-17T14:10:00.007-04:00

I'm going to put the current issue of Bust on sale soon. It will be the "I am moving across the country and can only bring what I can fit into a suitcase" sale.

I started using twitter: twitter.com/bradley_sands

I signed up a while ago, but couldn't figure out its purpose.

I have figured out its purpose.

I am enjoying it. More than blogger, I think.

Andersen Prunty is serializing a novel online: thebeardnovel.blogspot.com

I like it so far.

I don't like reading novels online. He's one of the only people whose novel I will read online. Him and Noah Cicero. I will only read Ohio writers online. This is my new rule.

I just registered for my summer classes. It filled me with happiness.

I've been looking through my old college essays. I need to use one for a writing sample so I can apply for a job at my school's writing center.

This is a good part of an essay about Tarkovsky's Solaris:

And what are we to take from that fact that Sartorius’s "visitor" is an angry dwarf. The "visitors" are supposed to be some part of the men’s subconscious. So is this dwarf somebody who was important to Sartorius or is he merely a representation for his personality. It would make sense - Sartorius is cold, scientific, emotionless, and calculating. The dwarf can represent that he is angry, and his growth has been stilted emotionally.

I am a big fan of angry dwarfs in films. This reminded me of the film that has been a personal favorite of mine - "The Angry Dwarf." I think that the dwarf should have been given far more screen time.

I don't think I will be using this essay (and the movie is actually called "The Sinful Dwarf")

I might use an essay that I wrote about a few Fassbinder movies. But it is twenty pages long and I need to make it five to seven. This probably won't be too difficult. The beginning embarrasses me:

You might be asked as you walk down the street some day, “Just exactly what is postmodernism, you intellectual bastard?” To that, you may be pretentious and quote Fredric Jameson by saying that post-modernism is “a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody’s ulterior motives, devoid of...any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists (Shaviro, 7). Or you could reply as the Zen master would to their student, with perhaps including with it a quick jab to the head with a stick, “Just what is is?,” For post-modernism cannot be defined in simple terms - it is a reflection of our way of life. It cannot be defined in words because according to postmodernism, words are meaningless and empty. All that we can do with words is seize and distort them, for they never had any original meaning, only what we chose to bestow upon them.

Maybe I'll just have to write something new. I haven't written a critical essay in eight years. Maybe I'll write one on the novels of Steve Erickson.

submissions call for poetry

2009-03-12T23:39:00.013-04:00

I belong to a useless social networking site. I get a couple of messages a month through it that usually say something like "You seem interesting" or "How are you?" When this happens, I either ignore it, thank them, or if I'm in the mood, write something funny and ridiculous. They never write back when I write something funny and ridiculous. Most of the profiles on the site consist of a picture and a sentence. Usually something inane.

A couple of days ago, I received this message from a sixty-year-old unemployed, bipolar prison guard with high cholesterol (his age seems to have dropped to forty-nine since the last time google's webcrawling spider hit his profile):

... and yet despite all your efforts you still remain tedious

I love getting stuff like this (and I'm not being sarcastic when I say that). I love it when anonymous strangers insult me for no apparent reason. And it happens so infrequently that it feels like an early birthday present. Threats of physical violence are even better. But unfortunately, this did not happen.

I wondered if he called me "tedious" because of what I wrote in my profile:

My interests include absurdism, surrealism, bizarro fiction, condensed writing, comics, cleverness, off-color humor, finger monsters, and napping.

I wrote a novel called IT CAME FROM BELOW THE BELT and I edit a journal called BUST DOWN THE DOOR AND EAT ALL THE CHICKENS.

www.bradleysands.com
www.absurdistjournal.com

I guess my list of interests is a little too "precious."

Since the social networking network is utterly useless, it didn't save what I wrote back to him. But I will try to remember:

Anonymous insults on the internet are funny. Good job.

He responds:

I can't remember which commentof yours I am replying to ... but... you are a prime time poseur!

In England we call your sort 'Tossers'.

This confused me because I've never written a comment on this social networking website (it has music and books discussion).

I also loved getting called a poseur because it reminded me of sixth grade, where it was a popular word among bullies and didn't seem to have a meaning besides being an alternative to the word, "dork."

While reading my new friend's latest message, I imagined the main character from Gasper Noe's I Stand Alone, sitting nude in a dark room. The room is empty, except for a computer, desk, and office chair that he is sitting in. The glare from the computer monitor revealing that he's pumping an erect penis with one hand and typing furiously (and poorly) with the other. The glare from the computer monitor shows his enormous belly puffing up and down. The glare from the computer monitor shows that his face is red, his teeth clenched in rage. He types another insult and strokes himself some more. He is also wearing a funny glasses/mustache disguise that makes him look like Groucho Marx since that's the picture he uses for his profile.

I respond with something like:

I like being called a poseur. What exactly am I trying to be? Someone who comments on this website since I've never actually done it before? In America we call your sort anonymous men who insult strangers so they can feel better about creeping closer to death. I am glad that I have been able to help you feel better.

Then I was looking forward to learning what I was trying to be. If I disagreed with his assessment, I was going to tell him that he was incorrect. That I have always wanted to be an amoeba. And that I had just added 'the person who sneaks up behind you and pops a balloon in next to your ear' to the list.

But unfortunately, he did not tell me what I wanted to know. He replied:

"Creeping closer to death."

Maybe you could write an epic pome about it?

Since I'm pretty sure he was soliciting an epic poem from me rather than a type of fruit produced by flowering plants in the subfamily Maloideae of the family Rosaceae and the error was due to furious masturbation, I responded:

I hate writing poetry, but maybe one of my poet friends wants to write a poem about an old man who insults strangers on the internet to make himself feel better about his imminent death. I will get back to you.

I think he overdid it a little bit by asking for an epic poem, but does anyone want to write a significantly shorter poem about an old man who insults strangers on the internet to make himself feel better about his imminent death?

He is now accepting submissions in the comments section of his blog: http://mooney1959.blogspot.com.

It's also a good place to visit if you're having trouble sleeping.

Update: He has accepted poems by Jess Gulbranson and Brandi Wells. Congratulations!

Maybe I will write a prose poem. I like writing prose poems.

camaraderie

2009-03-12T00:51:00.001-04:00

I like it a lot when a black guy calls me a nigga. I wish it happened more often.

I think maybe I should start actually using twitter to express things like this. I have an account, but I never use it.

debris

2009-03-10T03:51:00.002-04:00

Elizabeth O'Hara is this blog's #1 fan.

I do not know where Ryan Call's cookies are.

I want to start wearing sweaters and penny loafers rather than ten year old moth-eaten t-shirts and jeans. It will be funny.

I found a place to live in Boulder for the summer. I feel relieved. Now I need a place to live for the rest of the year and the next year and some of the next year.

I want someone to chase me through the kitchen of a five star restaurant.

Attack the wack.

Bust news

2009-03-07T01:58:00.008-05:00

I just filled the next issue. It feels great whenever this happens. It always takes a long time to fill the last story slot for some reason. There are still twenty or so submissions to respond to. If one or more of them are great, then the size of the issue will expand.

It is a very good issue. It suffers from token female writer syndrome like most issues of Bust. I feel like it is a kinder and friendlier Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, except for a story where Mitt Romney pleasures himself with his mouth and a story by D. Harlan Wilson where many people get shot with bullets. D. Harlan Wilson is great at cartoonish violence. I think I'm tired of violent stories, unless D. Harlan Wilson writes them.

Last issue, I rejected a bunch of good stories because they made me depressed. This was the beginning of Bust's evolution. I used to really be into black humor. I still am, but I'm shying away from it now. I think all of the "extreme" stories in the last issue had black humor, except for Blake's. I am getting tired of "extreme" stories. I'm not sure how I would describe Blake's story since it's dark, not really humorous, and I still loved it. I think it exists in a different dimension.

A lot of the stories in the new issue are more uplifting and bittersweet than stories in the past. A lot of them are written in a simple language and feel magical. This is the sort of fiction that I'm interested in reading and writing now. I think the contents of each new issue reflects me tastes at the time of its release.

I'm going to try to get away from negativity in my writing. And black humor. Less people will get killed in my writing. I want to write things that will make me happy to be alive. I want people to read it and feel happy to be alive. I'm not sure if I'm happy to be alive, but maybe I can write myself into feeling this way.

I think Shane Jones has been a big influence on me in the regard of happy surrealism. He also has a story in the issue. Maybe Richard Brautigan is also an influence on me. But Shane Jones is corporeal, so he is more inspirational. It is conceivable to see him and touch him and send him an email. And if I write about him in my blog, he will probably read it. I hope I get to meet him on Sunday.

I don't know if I will succeed at this happy surrealism idea. I think it's natural for me to be negative. I will work on a story and write negative things and then delete them and write happy things. I will do this until I stop writing negative things. I think I am maturing or something. I might be writing another shock value-y novel for a publisher though. Hopefully I can turn the content of my writing on and off.

Steve Aylett also has a story in the issue. His writing is the polar opposite of simple. He is also very negative. But his fiction is not shock value-y. I consider him my "favorite author." I don't know if I will continue to feel this way after I read his next book. I think Steve and I might be growing apart. Including him in the next issue seems like an act of nostalgia. I think people will like his story a lot.

Two authors who have stories in the next issue are locals (and I think Shane lives like an hour away). I've never put out a journal with a story from more than one local author (and it's usually something really short from a friend). It's too bad I'm moving to Boulder in June because that's when the issue should be coming out. If I wasn't moving, we could have a reading/release party. I think I'm happy regarding every other aspect of moving.

I still need cover art for the next issue. Usually I put absolutely no effort into getting art and find something that's awesome. I'll stumble across something online, love it, and contact the artist about using it. Or I'll contact an artist who I really like about drawing something. Or an artist will email me something I like even though I don't put anything in my guidelines about submitting art.

But I just updated the guidelines looking for art and sent a myspace bulletin through Bust's page since a lot of artists add me as friends. I also posted on livejournal's pop surrealism group because I while back I figured out that pretty much all of my covers use art that can be classified as such.

The following issue will be an online, flash fiction edition. I might continue to do online issues until after I finish grad school because money is probably going to be tight (and my funding minimal). Maybe I should apply for some grants and try to remain print after doing the online issue?

Sometimes I feel a wave of panic after I send an email. Because I cannot take it back.

8tml Reader Series chat log

2009-03-07T00:57:00.004-05:00

Mike: hey dude
march 9th
a monday
you want to read with blake?
and some other folks?
at amherst books?

Bradley: yes. thanks. awesome.

Mike: it would be 8pm

Bradley: ok

Mike: sweet
i think it will be you, blake, rachel b glaser, peter jay shippy, and chris cheney

-----------------------

Listen carefully. This chat log contains a lot of misinformation.

It will be on Sunday, March 8th, not 9th.

It is at 6pm, not 8 pm.

It is at The Black Sheep Cafe, not Amherst Books

Claire Donato is reading, not Peter Jay Shippy.

King Arthur is totally insane

2009-02-23T01:48:00.003-05:00

A while ago, I was researching King Arthur for my novel, so I read a book about King Arthur and his knights. I remember it being totally insane. I stumbled across my notes. They prove that the book was totally insane. I enjoyed reading these notes again. You can too:

A king sends a message to Arthur saying that he will spare him if he send him his beard. He has cut off the beards of the kings that he has conquered and used them to make a border on his royal cloak. If Arthur doesn’t send him his beard, the king threatens to also take his head.

Arthur promises a gift to the lady of the lake in return for Excalibur. She asks for a knight’s (Balyn) head (the knight drew a magical sword and refused to part with it. Drawing it meant he was without wickedness). The knight ends up cutting off the lady of the lake’s head. Arthur is pissed. The knight makes everything ok again by defeating the beard king.

He kills an evil knight who makes himself invisible. The king that he serves chases him. He runs into the room where the holy grail and the spear of destiny are kept. He wounds the king with the spear (the king is/becomes the fisher king).

The knight fights another knight to get permission to enter a castle. It is his brother. He does not know he’s his brother. They kill each other. Oops.

Merlin is totally fucking annoying. He is always spoiling the plot and revealing things that will happen much later on. Maybe he should do this in my book, but he should always be wrong so it doesn’t spoil the plot.

One of the knights of the round table is called Tor. Lancelot kills him when he’s trying to rescue Guenewhatever from execution.

“The names of the knights of the round table shall live forever.” Interesting comment that Merlin makes on the immorality of characters of folklore.

First quest for round table knights – happens during Arthur’s wedding feast. Deer runs in, followed by hunting dog and hounds. Dog knocks over knight. Knight grabs dog and rides away. Damsel shows up, says it’s her dog and she wants it back. Unfamiliar knight rides up and kidnaps her. Arthur assigns three knights to each find the deer, dog and knight, and damsel. Bring these things together. “This adventure was made for the feast.” I guess Merlin set it up with magic. Gawain and another knight (probably non-round table) fight over deer. I am confused.

Deer runs towards castle, followed by hounds. Hounds destroy it. Castle guy runs out. He is pissed because he gave the deer to his sweetie as a gift and now it is dead. Vows vengeance against hounds. Gawain volunteers to take their place. This is all very silly. As Gawain is about to cut off the castle guy’s head, his sweetie flings her body on top of her man. Gawain accidentally cuts off her head. Oops. Gawain keeps sending knights that fuck with him to King Arthur. It is weird. Castle guy’s knights fuck him up and take him prisoner. A bunch of fair ladies annoy them until they let him out. They make him promise to ride around with the castle guy’s sweetie’s rotting head.

Sir Tor’s horse is attacked by a dwarf.

The knights are always running into problems because other knights won’t let them pass unless they defeat them in combat. This is stupid. It’s like a bad movie with a gang who won’t let someone walk through their territory.

Sir Tor defeats the stupid knight and sends him and the dwarf to King Arthur. His castle will be very crowded. I guess these knights are new or something and they don’t know how to do anything but tell their enemies to go hang out with their king.

The dwarf asks to be Tor’s servant. Tor is cool with this even though the little fella attacked his horse.

Everybody in the King Arthur myths are totally insane. They fight to the death over every little thing. There is only enough cheerios for one person. Two people want a nutritious breakfast. They will fight to the death. This chivalry shit is fucking weird. They love chopping off people’s heads. Weird code of ethics.

Another knight finds the damsel. Two knights are “battling furiously over her.”

your bedtime is a lie

2009-02-22T08:02:00.018-05:00

Today I deposited a check in an ATM and pressed the NO RECEIPT button without thinking. It probably won't be a big deal because I've never had a problem with depositing checks into ATMs in the past. But my life is filled with many moments like this where I make little mistakes while on autopilot.

I remember sitting shotgun in my father's car when I was very young. It was a piece of junk. I could always hear the transmission fluid or gasoline or some sort of liquid sloshing back and forth while he was driving it. One day, the radio was turned on and a song played that I will remember for the rest of my life although I have no idea what it was. It sounded like there was a lot of shouting. I had never heard a song with a lot of shouting. It sounded very strange. I think it was a classic rock station since my father likes to listen to classic rock. I am wondering what the song was. Maybe Joe Cocker since he sort of sounds like he's shouting? Tom Waits would have totally blown my mind.

Now I listen to music with shouting all the time. I am living that moment over and over again.

I have been enjoying Cradle of Filth lately, although the singing is more like banshee wailing than shouting. I always avoided them in the past because I had thought they were they AFI of death metal, but they are actually very good.

The guy who played Pinhead says things on the new album. He's supposed to be playing the character of the Gilles de Rais, but his voice reminds me of Aleister Crowley's voice, which I heard in an old recording. Yesterday, Dennis Cooper linked to a lecture that Aleister Crowley gave on the Gilles de Rais: www.feastofhateandfear.com/archives/bannedlecture.html. I have not read it.

I googled "Doug Bradley" and "Crowley" a few days ago and found out that Doug Bradley had played a character in a movie that was pretty much Crowley with a different name around the time the Cradle of Filth album was recorded. It was an adaptation of a Clive Barker story. The story appeared in one of his Books of Blood collections. I like those collections a lot. I don't like Clive Barker's later novels where he turns into Stephen King and writes eight hundred pages when the books should have been two hundred pages long. He's written some good novellas also. I've read about five of his novels and I hated them all.

I notice that I write in character a lot when I'm writing posts or emails. Since I'm working on a first person novel, my outside writing sounds like my character's. Like I am a method actor or something. I think I want to reinvent my writing style with each new book that is written in the first person. I think this is unnecessary if my books are written in third person. I think it might be kind of cool for all my third person books to retain the same style/voice and for my third person books to be completely different. I don't know if it's worth it to reinvent my style for a short story. It is difficult. I don't know if it's worth doing it for something so short. I wish I could switch back and forth between styles with ease. But I cannot. It used to be very difficult for me to write because my sentences were so compressed and idea-saturated. Now it's very easy for me to write. But I am incapable of switching back to compression and idea-saturation. I hope to do this in the future.

I have noticed that a lot of bloggers start sounding like other bloggers in their entries. That's funny. Like a person who lives with another person and starts talking like them. I think Tao and Blake are big influences in this regard.

I think California is a funny state. A bunch of liberals elected and reelected a republican for governor because they thought it was funny. I think people should always make important decisions based on whether or not something is funny.

This porno is funny. There is a moment of brilliance: www.pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=1b1e1a4055ba935d994a

I was going to embed it, but I don't want to add the "this blog has adult content" thing every time someone clicks on it.

Search for "classic funny porn!" to see another good one. It's not linking for some reason. It's not funny though. Just bizarre. Good bizarre rather than gross bizarre. I've had the idea for the same kind of porn.

Cruel Intentions 2

2009-02-21T09:33:00.001-05:00

I just watched this movie and it may be the greatest bad movie that I have ever seen.

The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa College

2009-02-18T18:35:00.001-05:00

I'm in.

100% free porn

2009-02-13T05:08:00.008-05:00

I am trying to get more hits for my blog.

I would like to visit Muncie, Indiana one day because I really like the name and Garfield lives there, but I really hate to travel.

The university near me has a library that is open 24 hours a day a bunch of days a week, so I went there to try to write tonight since I don't like to do it in my room. I failed. Writing in public makes me nervous. I think I might try again very late when no one is there. I think I can write in public if I am comfortable with a place.

If I stick to my schedule, I should be finished with the first draft of my novel (or novella) in about two weeks. It is fun to write. It is not as easy to write as it was six months ago when I stopped working on it. It is going slowly. I am more distracted. This is why I am sticking to a schedule. The book will probably be around 35,000 words, which is five thousand words shy of being considered a novel in the genre world and like 45,000 words shy of being considered a novel in the literary world. It is more like a genre novel than a literary novel.

Most literary novels suck anyway. Some are awesome, but that is unusual. There are a lot of good short literary fiction stories. It seems to work best in that mode. It is ironic that literary fiction novels need to be like 80,000 words to be classified as such.

Most genre fiction books suck too.

I felt the need to be an even bigger jerk to avoid coming off like a jerk.

I am full of hate. I hate all you guys for not commenting on the music video that I posted!

I don't like most novels I try to read these days. I usually request a book through the library system, read like ten pages, and give up. I think I wouldn't give up so soon if I had actually paid for the book.

Last awesome book I read: Shane Jones' Light Boxes.

I just felt the urge to type "big fucking surprise."

I realized that the mailbox that's in front of the cemetery near my house probably belongs to the house that's across the street from it. I am very disappointed.

People in Swedish death metal bands are not very good spellers. They spell cemetery with an e near the end.

I'm doing a reading next month with Blake Butler, Rachel B. Glaser, Chris Cheney (who likes to buy frozen food from me for outrageous prices), and a woman from Rhode Island who I have never met and cannot remember the name of. It will be in a town that I can walk to in five minutes. I cannot walk to the bookstore in five minutes. I probably couldn't walk there if I had unlimited time because it's very far, but I have a car. I am a poet!

It's very far
But I have a car.

That was just a sneak peak of one of the poems that I'll be reading that night.

Mike Young set up the reading because he is an invincible wizard. He is a Highlander. The earlier movies kind rather than the shitty sequels.

I want to watch the Beastmaster 2.

I've decided that I will travel long distances to two conventions a year. I have traveled long distances to two conventions this year.

My reading last week in Boston went pretty alright. I felt a little "off my game." I heard some old people were horrified, but I didn't notice. A couple of old men also came up to me after and told me they liked what I read. Matt DiGangi was there. He was nice.

I hate when people send me a links request and don't tell me what website they want to swap with. I have like three websites! So I just ignore them because it seems like a mass mail thing if they don't mention the website. But I'll write back to clarify if the site looks cool. I'm not sure if I've ever done this.

Kevin Donihe: Come over and do my laundry.

i am posting a video that i like

2009-02-10T08:33:00.001-05:00

Dire Literary Series

2009-02-05T21:56:00.002-05:00

I'm doing a reading tomorrow in Cambridge, Massachusetts: www.direreader.com

8 pm

106 Prospect Street

with Norman Waksler and Lo Galluccio

Kevin has flappy parts

2009-01-27T20:24:00.006-05:00

There is a can opener in my bathroom. I do not know why. I am addicted to shooting my cat with a Nerf gun. I would think of it as cruel, but he seems to really like it. I do not know why we have a nerf gun at my house. I do not live with an eight year old. I just gave my cat a ride in an empty box that used to be filled with cans of beer. I probably should call him "my housemate's cat" rather than "my cat."

I recently started working on my novel again after a six month hiatus, during which I did very little writing. I have been in a funk. Very little has felt right. I started many things and abandoned many things during this time.

I recently sent in my laptop for service. It should take a week or two. This is really poor timing because that means that I cannot write at work, unless I train myself to be ok with freehand. But so far the novel has been written on a word processor, so I'm also afraid that the protag's voice would be off if I used that technique.

I've also been training myself to wake up earlier because I have a reading in a little over a week and it starts at a time when I am usually in bed sleeping (and it is a two hire drive). I sleep on a mattress on the floor. I am thirty and do not use a bed spring. This is the first mattress that I have bought myself. All the others were bought by my parents or were hand-me-downs from friends with spare mattresses. I also tend to move a lot, so having a bed spring would be slightly inconvenient.

It has been difficult for me to write when I wake up. My brain takes a few hours to function properly. Back when I was able to drink coffee, my favorite time to write was after I woke up. Because I was less critical of myself.

It's been taking a couple of hours for my eyes to focus so I can read the computer screen properly. Last night, I was very aggravated about not being able read a long email from a friend for a couple of hours. Short emails are fine.

Once I was able to read his email, I wrote a long email back. It concerned a screenplay that we are plotting together which I will be writing.

I also cannot write very well when I get home from work because I am tired and on the verge of going to sleep. It is too bad that I did not get used to this sleeping schedule earlier.

Last night, I also reread the twenty thousand words or so that I've written in my book and wrote the first paragraph. I was able to do this fairly quickly, except for the final sentence which I had to rewrite many times in order for it to sound right.

I don't understand rewriting things straight through without stopping. I trying to get it right the first time. The content and rhythm of one sentence will have influence over another sentence. It's really annoying when I change something major during a rewrite. Then I need to go over everything and make tons of changes. It's like the butterfly effect. I tend to just cut lots of stuff during my rewrites.

The difficult thing about editing the work of others is that you must rework sentences that are not written by you, but you are restricted. You must walk on eggshells. You cannot make substantial changes. The sentence must continue to appear to be written by the author rather than written by you. So instead of making major changes, you cut a word or two, move a word to another location, replace a word with another word that resembles it, or offer suggestions (which usually begin with "Do something like this:" and end with "but something better"). So instead of having unlimited options when you're rewriting your own sentence, some, the sentence of someone else is limited to the contents of their sentence and variations of the contents.

The Dragons with Cancer e-anthology is nearly done on my end. Mike Young is doing another version. An HTML version. I am making a PDF. I am waiting for the cover. My layout is finished. But I still need to proofread a few stories (my printer ran out of ink while I was printing it out and I am waiting for Amazon to send me a new cartridge).

I forgot to mention a new web journal: Micro 100. I have a story in it.

I will mention another journal that I am in. No Colony #2.

With stuff by:

Isadora Bey
Kristina Born
Aaron Burch
Blake Butler
Luca Dipierro
Scott Garson
Rachel B. Glaser
Chris Higgs
Brandon Hobson
Edward Kim
Matt Kirkpatrick
Rauan Klassnik
Lee Klein
Darby Larson
Evan Lavender-Smith
Patrick Leonard
Eugene Lim
Sean Lovelace
Anthony Luebbert
Conor Madigan
Gene Morgan
Bryson Newhart
Christian Peet
Jennifer Pieroni
Kathryn Regina
Joanna Ruocco
Bradley Sands
Ken Sparling
William Walsh
Corey Zeller

I like the cover.

i like Chocolate Milk a lot.

2009-01-21T01:37:00.002-05:00

I am back in The States.

Here are the 100 most frequently used words in my novel:

again always another asked body boner brother came chapter class come day door down during end even ever eyes face feel felt find first gave get go going goldstein good got grassy grover hand having head high inside know last left let life little long look looked looking man mind mother mouth mrs myself name need new next now nurse oh old own page people place please put really right room sally school seat see since something still students take tell thea thing think thought time tongue took towards tried turn two unnamable upon use wall want without work world

If my novel was the television show, 24, this would be the most frequently used word:

dammit!

I have spent the last few weeks watching every episode of 24 (because my life is bullshit). Here are my reviews of each season so you don't have to ever watch any episodes of 24. You can thank me in the comments:

Season 1: Awesome!

Season 2: Sucks!

Season 3: Sucks!

Season 4: Awesome!

Season 5: Awesome!

Season 6: Sucks!

The made for TV movie, 24: Retribution: Sucks!

Season 6 (first five episodes): Pretty ok! But there are a couple of really lame things:

A) Every episode is an argument for the awesomeness of torture. The show is now really defensive about this.

B) A major character who had an on screen death a few seasons back has suddenly come back to life. What is this? DC Comics?

Batman is dead btw. Grant Morrison teamed up with Darkseid to kill him. If I were a betting man, a would put my money on him being resurrected shortly before the release of his next movie.

Chocolate Milk

I love chocolate milk. I did not love chocolate milk until recently. I disliked chocolate milk up until recently. I loved hot chocolate. Cold chocolate grossed me out. Cold coffee grossed me out. I drank chocolate milk recently. I loved it. I think this bullshit milkshake that I drank a few times was a gateway drug to chocolate milk. I now realize that the bullshit milkshake tasted very similar to chocolate milk. It was a little colder due to advanced cooling technologies. These technologies were very impressive because the bullshit milkshake was stocked near the chocolate milk in the cooler. It also tasted slightly richer. I think I prefer chocolate milk to bullshit milkshakes. I love chocolate milk.

Bradley, age 30

Disco Biscuits

2009-01-17T03:12:00.001-05:00

Fans of Disco Biscuits all wear stupid looking hats and buy an excessive amount of candy.

proof the kids will submit stories to anything these days

2009-01-15T08:10:00.003-05:00

The e-anthology, Bradley Sands is a Dick, is out. Thanks to Andersen Prunty for being totally ridiculous.

It is a PDF. Because PDFs rule the fucking universe (and I am terrible at web design). Go here to download it: DOWNLOAD IT DOWNLOAD IT DOWNLOAD IT

Here is Sam Pink's cover:

Here is the table of contents:

Bradley Sands is a Dick: An Acrostic by Jess Gulbranson
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Elizabeth O'Hara
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Jordan Krall
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Carlton Mellick III
Bradley Sands is a Dick by D. Harlan Wilson
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Mykle Hansen
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Kek-w
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Garrett Cook
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Nathaniel Tower
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Tony Rauch
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Michael James Gibbs
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Kristin Fouquet
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Katy Wimhurst
Bradley Sands is a Dick by Cameron Pierce

Fuck you, Jess Gulbranson, for making the table of contents slightly less awesome with the addition of an "an" and another word that I needed to look up to find out the meaning of. Go write a poem spelling out "I hate life" and then put out a clove cigarette on your chin.

secret messages

2009-01-06T21:32:00.017-05:00

Blake Butler: I used to love to wake up in the morning, slam down a ton of coffee, and write. I loved this because I was less critical of myself in the morning. It felt like I will still asleep while fully conscious and completely out of my head. I cannot drink coffee anymore. This may be the biggest regret of my life.

J.A. Tyler: There was a period during high school where I lucid dreamed every night. It took me a while to be able to do this. I would often get scared when the dream became lucid and wake up. Eventually, I forced myself to stay asleep. I was really stupid in my lucid dreams. I could have done so much awesome stuff, but instead I usually had sex with girls from my high school that I had crushes on. I had never had "real" sex at the time, so it must have been very inaccurate. Now I rarely have lucid dreams as hard as I try. Some times I blame losing my virginity.

Keith Montesano: Back when I was really depressed, I used to have terrible nightmares. I would force myself to wake up from these nightmares. I would go back to sleep. The nightmare would begin from where it left off as if it were a movie and waking up had paused it and going back to sleep was the same thing as pushing PLAY. So after the nightmare started again, I would wake myself up again. And then I would go back to sleep. It felt like I did this hundreds of times each time I had this kind of nightmare, which was often. It was really terrible to experience these things. Sometimes I think all the lucid dreaming in the past was somewhat to blame.

Daniel Bailey: Once I woke up in college and a girl who I had a crush on was on top of my chest, choking me, and I was unable to move. After a while, she vanished. It was pretty traumatizing. It took me a while to be able to move again. I knew it wasn't a dream because the surroundings of my dorm did not change after I was able to move again. My eyes were open the entire time. Later, I did research and found out that I had experienced sleep paralysis, which involves dreaming while you're still awake. It is very rare. In my case, and I think in the case of everyone else who has experienced it, I woke up during a dream and continued dreaming. This has only happened to me once. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. And further research tells me that the idea of a succubus was the result of sleep paralysis through the ages.

Brad D. Green: I once watched a Richard Kern movie. Soon after, I saw one of the actresses from the movie on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. I thought I was dreaming. I jumped up and down, trying to fly. I did not fly.

Brandi Wells: I just woke up from a bad dream. It was about an ex-girlfriend. I cannot stop dreaming about her even though I haven't seen her in seven or eight years.

Mike Young: I went to the UMASS library this morning to find out about job possibilities, scan some papers, and print out some papers. Doing all of these things was an extreme pain in the ass. The UMASS library was not an extreme pain in the ass back when I was a UMASS student. But we did have naked men jumping off the roof.

Jason Jordan: A billionaire bought out my whatchamacallet cart. He is now my boss. It sucks having a boss. He was my secret santa for christmas. It was not very secret because he and I or the only people in the company. He bought me satellite radio for my car. I listed to the metal station all the time. It is amazing how many variations of metal they play: Seventies metal, eighties cheese, metalcore, metalcore with cheesy eighties vocals, emo metal, death metal, black metal, neu metal, nineties metal. Metal is strange. Black Sabbath and metalcore feel as if they belong in different universes. I like metal a lot. But not enough that any of the bands that the radio station plays really distinguish each other in my head. Except for a Japanese band that I forgot the name of, I have not heard a song by a band that has made me though, "This band is awesome and I need to hear more by them!" I am a casual metal listener.

Jason Gussman: I do not understand Facebook. I don't understand when people who are really my friends request my friendship on it when we are already friends on myspace. Will it make our message exchanges more magical if we do it on Facebook rather than Myspace? I have like fifty Facebook friends. I have like two thousand Myspace friends. I use Myspace to promote. I don't think I've ever made a friends request on Facebook. Maybe I have. Unlike Myspace, I used to want to keep my Facebook account pure by only adding my actual friends. But then "reader type" people started adding me. And I started accepting, hoping they would buy my book. I am ashamed of myself.

Josh Maday: My desk collapsed, so I put my computer monitor on top of a dresser. My desk collapsed, so I put the motherboard on top of a table. My desk collapsed, so I put my mouse on top of my motherboard. My desk collapsed, so I put my keyboard on top of my lap.

Brad D. Green: Sometimes random strangers send me stories to read and give my opinion of (rather than submitting stories to my journal). I rarely read these stories and share my opinion. I wonder if this makes me a bad person. I will read and share my opinion if my friends send me stories. I will even do this if a friend sends me an entire novel as a Microsoft Word document.

Cameron Pierce: You are the worst arm wrestler I've ever arm wrestled.

kek-W: I really like the titles of American B movies from the fifties and sixties. I feel the need to write "American" since you are from the UK. It seems like the better the title is, the worse the movie is. Movie titles are pretty awful these days, except for stuff like Snakes on a Plane and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (because of it's awesome long-windedness). Most of my favorite titles for my books and stories are in the same vein as these B movies. I am going to start outlining a new book tonight. It will be called Sex Offender Vs. Evil Houses, which is derived from the film title, Earth Vs. the Spider. Earth Vs. the Spider is a better title than Sex Offender Vs. Evil Houses, but Sex Offender Vs. Evil Houses is still very good. I have not seen Earth Vs. the Spider. I am afraid the movie will ruin the quality of the title. I always thought it was Earth Vs. Spider rather than Earth Vs. the Spider, but I just googled it and am a little disappointing by the addition of the "the." I will not add the additional "the" to Sex Offender Vs. Evil Houses. It sounds better in my head that way. My book was originally going to be called I Was a Teenage Sex Offender, but the protagonist is no longer a teenager. I was also thinking about naming it I Raped Your Grandmother Last Night, but I don't want to write a book with "rape" in the title. It is distasteful. I just realized I Raped Your Grandmother Last Night is similar to a line in the Misfit's song, Last Caress. That is a good song.

Sam Pink: This made me laugh:

This too:

Matthew Simmons: This is a really good song:

Security Job

2008-12-28T10:20:00.009-05:00

I was writing a screenplay, and then my mother told me about this movie:

It is VERY similar to my screenplay. I think if I completed my screenplay and it was filmed, this would be the worst possible version of it.

So I guess I have lost interest in writing this screenplay. I was writing it as an exercise, but I was still hoping that it might end up being good and it might end up being sold. My mother has crushed my dreams. I sort of wish she didn't tell me about this awful movie until I had finished the screenplay. Then I wouldn't have lost the inspiration to complete it. And although I couldn't sell it, at least it would still exist. I have wasted a lot of time. Fuck Hollywood for creating the shittiest version of what could have been a great movie.

Now I have another idea for a movie. It is a secret. The zeitgeist cannot steal it from me. Fuck the zeitgeist. Happy birthday. All of your ideas have been devoured by giant worm retards.

Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty

2008-12-28T00:20:00.006-05:00

I think I lost the urge to write in this thing nearly every day like I used to. Tomorrow night, I'm celebrating not knowing what the hell I did with my life during the last ten years by going out drinking with TTB and other people that the people who read this blog probably don't know.

I wrote a review of Sam Pink's Yum Yum I Can't Wait to Die. It was for Noo Journal: www.noojournal.com/view.php?mode=1&issue=nine&id=173

I thought I knew what I was talking about while I was writing about it. But then I tried to find examples to prove what I was saying, it felt like I was talking out of my ass. Mike Young said it was ok.

reese's feces

2008-12-17T10:08:00.005-05:00

I like to drive behind raisin plows while shouting the words to Danzig's "Mother" and watching the plow hit mailboxes with a wave of raisins. This is even better when the raisin plow hits a cemetery mailbox with a wave of raisins. I like to watch cemetery mailboxes sway back and forth after getting hit by a wave of raisins. Cemetery mailboxes are my favorite mailboxes ever. I will put a raisin in an envelope and mail it to a dead person.

Go read Carlton Mellick III's story, "Candy-Coated." It is in the new issue of Vice. It is online. It is a very good story. I saw Carlton Mellik III read this story. He is a better reader than you are.

Madelyn Burgess, who is supposed to be "the girl who tells you which register to use at Whole Foods over the PA," also reads it online. I don't think I've ever heard her voice before. I usually go to Whole Foods in the morning. It is not busy in the morning. I like the way Madelyn Burgess says, "laydaaays." Madelyn Burgess's voice is more calming than Carlton Mellick III's. Carlton Mellick III also has a story in the upcoming Bradley Sands is a Dick anthology, as do many others who are not named Ryan Call.

storm warning

2008-12-12T00:12:00.010-05:00

It is raining cherry slushy. Driving to my Whatchamacallit stand where I sell the delicious candy to incredibly wealthy men was highly disturbing.

The electricity on my cart just went out.

It just went back on.

I am reading a book called The Art of Seduction. I am embarrassed that I am reading it. I am reading it because I LOVED the author's first book: The 48 Laws of Power. I am reading it because my hymen has grown back.

Someone needs to write a book called How to Get Beautiful Women into Bed if You Are a Recluse and Only Leave the House to Go to Work and You Are Afraid of Women Who Use the Internet for the Purpose of Meeting Men Because That Shit Is Highly Suspect. I would buy it. I once wrote a flash story called "How To Get Beautiful Women into Bed" (and a zine called Olympus Found published it), but I would be breaking a lot of laws if I followed my own advice.

The next issue of Bust is filling up fast. Maybe one or two slots left. This NEVER happens. Maybe I will have a few months to "chill." Maybe I would make Bust quarterly instead of bi-annually if I could spare the cash. But I cannot. Although I am a very wealthy man, there is a limit to the amount of money that I'm willing to spend on publishing literature that excites me.

I'm flying back to the states on February 2 to do a reading in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the Dire Reading Series.

(Don't read this unless you're Mike Young: It is on a Monday instead of a Saturday as I had originally thought. My housemate does not know if he can drive. I hate driving in the city, so I will not. It is not during AWP.)

I am going to start working on my novella (TV Snorted My Brain) again. It has been too long since I worked on it. I have not worked on a proper book since June. I am no longer waiting to work on it. I am excited. I think it might result in a short novel rather than a long novella.

I will probably wait until I have a day off from selling Whatchamacallits to incredibly wealthy men. It's sort of a ritual/excuse to be lazy of mine to wait until I have a day off before I start on anything major. In the meantime, I will reread what I've written so far to get back into the voice of the protagonist. I also need to edit a synopsis for a comic book submission.

I am writing the novel for a specific company. I hope they like it. If they don't...

I wish there were more options for me as far as submitting my books for publication.

What I write is not literary fiction. It is not genre fiction. It is not experimental fiction.

It will probably be too short for a glitzy NYC publisher because glitzy NYC publishers rarely publish novels under 300 pages.

The small press is an ideal place for short books. The small press tends to specialize in literary fiction and genre fiction and experimental fiction.

Lately, I have been writing entertaining, humorous, absurdist, surrealist stuff. I guess "fucked up commercial fiction" would be a good description of it. Or Bizarro Fiction.

I guess it is a little similar to the works of Christopher Moore or Jasper Fforde. But not really. And those guys write long-ish stuff. I think I would like their books better if they were short-ish. I think I would like most books better if they were short-ish. Most novels published by ritzy NYC publishers seem to have dull filler so they can meet the ritzy publisher's 300 page requirement. Take a page count from a novel and subtract 200 from it. This is often how many pages need to be cut before the book is a decent read.

On second thought, I've gone a little overboard. I blame my tendency to write books that are 200 pages or less. I think 300 page books are usually ok. Anything more=too long.

i forgot that i made sam pink a character in the shitty novel that i was working on and am not working on anymore

2008-12-04T11:05:00.001-05:00

Grover woke up. He was outside. He was on the ground. A member of Truth and Consequences High's security was looking down at him. The security guard's name was Sam Pink. He was mentally retarded. Truth and Consequences High was an equal opportunity employer. Sam Pink wanted to become a police officer, but he failed the stupidity test. He was too intelligent. Sam Pink wrote poetry. His poetry put him on the FBI watch list. It was very violent and all dealt with his plot to assassinate the president.

"Hi, Grover," said Sam Pink. "I am going to knock out your teeth and then pile them on top of each other. Then I am going to climb up your teeth and sodomize the man in the moon. He will finally have something to smirk about. His anus blood will rain down upon the Earth. Crops will grow at a rapid rate. They will all be shaped like my bowel movements. When people eat vegetables, they will be eating bowel movement shaped-vegetables. The bowel movement-shaped vegetables will explode out of their stomachs and do snazzy dances. The shape of my bowel movements in the form of vegetables shall inherit the Earth." He made a retarded face. "Did you like my poem? If you didn't, I will cum on your pet armadillo."

Grover said, "No, Sam Pink. I didn't like your poem. I hate you, Sam Pink.

Sam Pink said, "Why aren't you in school, Grover? Want to watch cartoons?"

Grover didn't answer him. Instead he knocked out Sam Pink's teeth, piled them on top of each other, climbed up them and sodomized the man in the moon. Then the man in the moon's anus blood rained down upon the Earth, causing crops to grow at a rapid rate, shaped like Sam Pink's bowel movements. People at the vegetables and the bowel movement-shaped vegetables exploded out of their stomachs and did snazzy dances. But the bowel movement-shaped vegetables did not inherit the Earth because the U.S. Army took their asses down before their dying uncle could bequeath the Earth to them in their will. And Grover walked home.

New issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens

2008-12-01T10:02:00.000-05:00

It is out.

Info things:

Issue #8 demonstrates why this journal has been hailed as the figurehead publication for absurd and surreal literature. Throughout these pages readers will find a man with an endless supply of money in his pockets, a nun who finds teeth in her ice cream cone, and a giant mechanized Michael Ironside stalking the streets of Galveston, Texas. Readers will also find the apocalypse as experienced by the cast of Friends and a race of chickens that enslaves a man and forces him to eat the last egg ever to be eaten. No one theme or tone dominates this issue. Some stories feature mindless violence or irreal nonsense. Others display sharp cultural satire or brain-tingling wordplay. At a time when most fiction serves up the standard fare of realism and common sense, issue #8 offers a zany feast for the ravenous imagination.

Includes stories by Sam Pink, Blake Butler, D. Harlan Wilson, Rhys Hughes, Ofelia Hunt, Cameron Pierce, Mike Young, Matthew Simmons, Darby Larson, Aaron Sitze, and Adam Breckenridge. Contains book reviews of Duncan Barlow''s Super Cell Anemia and Jeremy C. Shipp's Sheep and Wolves .

It costs five bucks plus shipping. Do it. Do it. Do it.

There's a few story excerpts that you can check out on the webpage.

Submissions are open again. Do it. Do it. Do it.

Now I need to do some hardcore internet promotion. I have not done any hardcore internet promotion since last year. I do not look forward to it. I hate hardcore internet promotion.

whatchamacallit

2008-11-30T00:12:00.003-05:00

Since the fire in my apartment ate all my belongings, the only thing I brought to Vietnam was a suitcase filled with peanut-flavored crisp candies topped with a layer of caramel and dipped in chocolate.

Luckily, Whatchamacallits are a delicacy in Vietnam and only rich warlords can afford them.

I am a very wealthy man.

I am trading Whatchamacallits for nuclear missiles and trading the nuclear missiles for white slaves from impoverished countries.

I am also now a Vietnamese citizen. I gave a Whatchamaccallit to a corrupt government bureaucrat and he gave me a citizenship.

Life in Vietnam is simple, pleasurable, and highly profitable.

Mike Young was supposed to visit yesterday, but his plane was hijacked by flying monkeys. Not real flying monkeys. Actors who were supposed to have played flying monkeys in the new Wizard of Oz remake before the Hollywood system decided the world would be a better place if they stopped remaking movies and started paying screenwriters to write stories that are 90% rehashed movie and 10% new material.

Mike Young is either in Oz or on the bottom of the Atlantic, having developed superhuman gill-like attributes. If so, you may send care packages to him at the following address:

Aquamike
The Atlantic

Last night, I attended a film festival showing American-made movies about Vietnam. There was a big protest outside. The Vietnamese people were unhappy that all the American-made movies about Vietnam were about the war. They took hostages. I escaped in my Bat Mobile. I always wanted one of these things. Its tires feed upon the blood of the disgruntled.

New from the home front:

TTB was caught contributing to the corruption of the youth of America. He has been fired.

In the Shit

2008-11-23T23:41:00.005-05:00

I have been receiving a lot of email asking if I'm really in Vietnam.

Yes, I'm really in Vietnam.

It is dangerous here.

Decades ago, the VietCong set up bear traps and hid them beneath VietCong feces. The VietCong are tricky.

I haven't stepped in one of these bear traps yet because I know what VietCong feces looks like. But I like to have a picnic next to a bear trap and wait for people who look mean and point and laugh when they step in the bear trap. I also make a sad face whenever a person who looks nice steps into it.

The VietCong strategy was for their VietCong feces to infect the wound so their victim would have to get their leg amputated. This was back during the time that I like to refer to as Nam'. Now, all of the VietCong feces is an antique and can be sold on E-bay for like twenty bucks a pound. It is so old that it no longer causes infections, but it is not yet prehistoric, so it is still really gross to have slathered all over your bloody leg.

Getting caught in a bear trap can still cause your leg to become infected. But at least you stand a chance if you get to a hospital ASAP. Like if you gnaw off your leg and bring it to the hospital to be sewn back on. Your leg will never become infected if you gnaw it off. Vietnam has some excellent hospital seamstresses.

Mike Young says he's visiting me on Friday. I will try to help him avoid the bear traps.

If anyone wants to send me a care package, please use the following address:

Bradley Sands
Vietnam

Mike Young's new chapbook

2008-11-22T23:48:00.000-05:00

NAB IT!

2008-11-22T20:22:00.005-05:00

I am in Vietnam. I have been staying with my friend and his brother and his mother because my apartment burnt down, but they would not let me live in their house while they were on a Vietnamese vacation. So I went with them. The mother is dead. This confuses me. All the hotel rooms in Vietnam are luxurious, have high-speed internet, and six comfortable beds for me to choose from. Yet I still have trouble falling asleep.

2008-11-22T02:32:00.002-05:00

I really like T Rex.

I woke up when my room was on fire. The fire told me the time. The digits on my clock are fire.

Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens Interview Series: Sam Pink

2008-11-19T01:42:00.004-05:00

Sam Pink wrote a story called I Am the Dictator. It is an ~~awesome~~ shitty story. Sam Pink threatened the lives of my family and friends if I didn't publish it in Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens #8. But at least it is not an ultra shitty story. I wouldn't have published it in Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens #8 if it was an ultra shitty story, even if Sam Pink threatened the lives of my family and friends. I still have a ethics. Here is an interview that I conducted with Sam Pink:

Why are you interested in working at the Bronx Zoo?

Because that is the first place I ever hid in a bathroom stall and blew out a mouthful of all-kool-aid-vomit through a harmonica and let the harmonica-spray hit my feet.

Tell me a little about yourself.

I am currently interested in things like filling my mouth with all-kool-aid-vomit and then blowing it through a harmonica onto my feet in a public bathroom at the Bronx Zoo.

If possible, I would also buy a wax dolphin like the ones they sell at the Brookfield Zoo because I enjoy throwing those at the ground and stepping on them.

If I contacted your former employer, what would he tell me about you?

My employer, he or she would say, "Yeah, he's a pretty good person who we employed at this location, but he had a habit of leaving work to like, blow a mouth of kool aid vomit through a harmonica onto his feet in a public bathroom like some place such as the Bronx Zoo. He also calls off of work with excuses like, 'it was too soon after the last time being there' and 'it is the first anniversary of me deciding to declare an anniversary before work'. But definitely hire him, he is a great hugger."

What is your greatest strength?

Sitting completely still on my couch listening to the fridge and feeling like a very special person.

What is your greatest weakness?

Any of the ways another person could manipulate my body to result in death.

Can you tell me about a time you had a problem with an animal and what did you do to alleviate the problem?

The only animal I experience currently is my roommate's cat. When I sense that the cat is about to misbehave, I pick him up and rock him back and forth and also I make up songs for him and sing the songs while I am cradling him. There is no living creature who can escape my infinite love.

Do you have any questions for me?

Yes I do:

Bradley Sands, aside from eating ass, which is your main pursuit, how do you spend your time?

When I am not enjoying the sensation of having my ass eaten by you, I watch my family and friends on surveillance cameras, hoping to catch you in the act of attempted murder.

Oh no way! Awesome. So, let's say you are not eating ass, and instead you go to get some fuel for your car. How do you resist filling each of your pockets with gas and lighting your pockets on fire and then just standing there?

When I am not enjoying the sensation of having my ass eaten by you, I think about my family and friends and how I wouldn’t be around any longer to protect them against you.

Good answer, Bradley! Can I just cut some skin off your skull a little? Open your mouth and let me throw a rock at the back of your throat. Why are white people necessarily evil and what is the best way to kill the white people?

Yes, yes, chlorine in swimming pools, forcing them to ingest a change purse of pennies and lit firecrackers (although this would not work on my family and friends).

I hadn't even thought about it like that! I am impressed by your answering ability. Did you have anything to ask me?

Why are you so damn hard to kill, Sam Pink?

I am hard to kill because every time someone tries to hit me or kill me I put my hands over my eyes and then I disappear into that person.

Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens Interview Series: Blake Butler

2008-11-17T15:27:00.007-05:00

Blake Butler wrote a story called We Witnessed the Advent of a New Apocalypse During an Episode of Friends. It is an awesome story. I published it in Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens #8. Here is an interview that Bust's associate editor, Jason Moore, conducted with Blake:

Jason Moore: Let's get started with something that immediately struck me about your work. I'm talking about your use of poetic devices, poetic language in your fiction. How does your reading and writing of poetry inform your fiction?

Blake Butler: I began with writing by writing 'poems'. Some common freakshow over the Beats, in particular, Allen Ginsberg, who slammed me against the wall. I read his collected poems back to back several times when I was fat, and I got fatter before I got thin. I wrote a lot of shit through high school and into college, trying to get a computer science degree. I was, and still am mostly, an awful poet, when I think about writing a 'poem as a poem.' Though I think, with writing, because it all comes down to the word, to the arrangement of words, you have to be in a semi-'poetic' mode to say anything at all. Most of the time when I read narrative fiction now that is more about the 'story' or the developing of the character or the ideas inside it than it is about the way those perspectives are phrased, how each word rams into the other one by one to build sentences, if it does not feel syllabicaly deliberate, I can't continue. I think at best, whatever you are writing, there is a balance there of language and content that when strung & struck together in some unnamed balance, is where the shit is. 'The shit.' Often people spend too much time thinking I think about 'what it is' they are writing, rather than just letting words come out. Recent people who have rung my bell as master balance are Eugene Marten, Ken Sparling, Stanley Crawford, and most every day, William Gass.

JM: Right, William Gass. I love him. He said something about how too much contemporary fiction lacks a performance and auditory sense. He said he tries to write for the ear. Something to be heard. I see the same thing in your fiction. From editing/reading you I notice some times you will bypass the clear word or phrase to achieve a musicality. Do you agree with Gass? Do you think fiction should be written "by the mouth for the ear"?

BB: I think I write 60% out of just rhythm. Though for me, it's more a mouth in my head than in an out loud mouth, because when I talk I mumble, and even more often I just would rather think. Too, people are reading inside their head, and so I write mainly I think from some kind of tremor that is up there. I will leave or insert words that have no meaning that I could want to explain because of the way they come off when I hum them. Then, if I want to be a son of a fuck, I could go look again and affix a meaning or reason why those words are there, 'what they are saying,' though really, that doesn't matter to me as much, because there is always something there. I believe in saying something without knowing you are saying it, because anything I've ever felt I've really said were things I did not think about and had no idea why I was saying them. When I think about what I am saying, I usually say really stupid or obvious shit. My girlfriend makes fun of me for it. 'Oh that would be awesome.' I say. Or 'That sounds good.' I don't think it’s an accident when you don't know what you are saying. It is combination on a level that does not require even intuition.

In the book I read last night, Ken Sparling's DAD SAYS HE SAW YOU AT THE MALL, which is amazing, there is a line: "If you think you can say a word, tell a person a single word, without telling the person everything you know, you are wrong."

There.

JM: Yeah, I have that same problem of saying obvious shit or completely boring things like "definitely" or "sounds cool." You can have all these complex thoughts but in certain situations they stay locked inside. I mumble a lot too. Maybe it has to do with that. Or maybe we are thinking too much about what we are saying.

But I want to get your opinion on something I once heard Jonathan Franzen say. He said experimental fiction limits literature's potential for mass readership and sends a negative message that "good" fiction is difficult to read. Being someone who likes to experiment with words and ideas, what are you thoughts on this?

BB: I don't care. Jonathan Franzen has never written a single word that said anything to me. So why does he need a big audience? What is essential about what he is saying that it should be spread into so many people? He's competing with the sitcom. I would rather say more to less people. I would rather say things to myself.

Most of the time when I write I am writing to no one. To nothing. I don't mean that as a misnomer, or as some sort of qualifier for why one thing is better than another. I would rather be saying something that no one can claim to understand than something that housewives can get cajoled into buying. The funny thing to me about the Oprah vs Franzen snafu was that he was right where he should have been. He just got coy. I would like to make Oprah throw up into a bucket. I would like to impregnate Oprah with paper and then induce the abortion.

At the same time, though, I don't think writing intentionally for shock or in babble or to 'be experimental' has much value either. Again, there's some kind of line there, like in the mash between narrative and language, in which you can completely disrupt people's heads while giving them something to suck on.

People talk too much about what things are supposed to be instead of making them into what they are, I think. Usually when I start bitching about something eventually I think I think I wish I had just shut my mouth and put my words into something else.

Good fiction doesn't have to be difficult to read, but if I understand everything you are saying, if my head doesn't get opened up, I might as well be renting DVDs or asleep.

JM: I was checking out something you've been working on for a while, 2500, a series of stories written in lists. I saw something like that in some Donald Bartheleme pieces. What drew you to that technique?

BB: I started writing the lists as something to distract myself from a bullshit job I had at the time. I came in one morning and my supervisor said 'Good morning' to me and I wanted to throw up on his desk but instead I went to my desk and started writing the first thing that came out of my head. In an office, waking first thing, the lists just came out naturally, and gave me an ordered system to write in fragments while I was doing other things for the job. I had read Barthelme's 'The Glass Mountain' before that but it wasn't on my mind at all: it was pure function. I wrote them in my Gmail browser so I could hide what I was doing.

But in general, I just love lists. I tend to think of everything I write in list fashion to some extent. It probably comes from having first wanted to try to make things after reading Ginsberg, who is a list master.

I finally just finished the 50th list in the series yesterday. I have some more to do fix-wise before I'm done with the fucker, but I am glad to have an end in sight. 50 lists turns out to be a lot.

JM: So what is your revision process like?

BB: I guess it depends on what I am working on, but probably not. I tend to revise a lot while I am writing directly, in that, at least, I am careful with how I phrase things as they come out. I like to make a good sentence the first time, and spend time on it, which is different than what a lot of the advice I got in writing school was. They say, "The first draft doesn't matter, just get it out." Which can work, but I think then you are setting yourself up for a fuckton of work and probably a lot of shit to wade through. I'd rather do it well the first time, and I think in the vomit-write method you end up with a lot of stuff that masks what you are really trying to do. So, even though I often end up writing really fast, I usually have at least a decent manuscript when I am finished.

After that, I read through the manuscript over and over, adding or deleting, until I feel like I can read through it without wanting changes. Of course, the longer you wait between drafts, the more you tend to see, but at least with what I've been doing lately everything is of such a specific mind that I like to try to get it finished in the same stretch. That's another revision rule I'm not crazy about, "Write something, set it aside, then come back and see what sticks." I think that method works with certain kinds of writing, but often I want something that comes out of who I am right then. I also tend to increase my word count through revision, as I find more holes and openings in ideas I left half-stranded on first pass. I like the idea of expansion, finding little tunnels into sentences, and worming them open, making more.

I read an interview with William Vollmann once where he talked about his idea of revision being that he takes a sentence, and packs more and more into it until it explodes the way a kernel of popcorn does, with all these other surfaces and edges to it, that weren't there in the original kernel. That always stuck with me.

JM: Insect imagery recurs throughout your work. Do insects have any special metaphorical significance for you? Do any particular themes or ideas fascinate you or run through your work?

BB: I hate insects. I don't think about insects in metaphor. I try not to think like that when I am writing. I've said 'crap' and 'crud' and 'dander' and 'foam' and other things of that nature quite a bit throughout the stories I've published in the last year, though I am trying now to move off of that. To force myself to use other terms. Though I like the idea of things recurring. I think everything I've ever written is connected in some way, even in a designed way to some extent. Though I try not to think about things like 'scope' or 'significance' or 'themes' when I am writing. Or ever really. Ever ever.

I am trying to stop writing about babies getting destroyed or eaten or ripped to bits but I seem to have trouble thematically disregarding that.

I like candy and bubbles too I think.

JM: I want to switch things up a bit and get into editing. You're editing a journal called Lamination Colony. How do you approach editing other people's work? What makes a good editor?

BB: With Lamination Colony, I mostly only accept things I don't have to edit for content. Meaning, I really only edit grammar and punctuation errors, etc. I don't think it is my job as editor to change what is said. In other words, I don't take a piece of writing if I am not willing to run it as it is submitted, line for line (though I guess in rare exceptions I have suggested very minor changes, or cuts that make it stronger). I'd say at least 9 out of 10 pieces though are left entirely unchanged. With other things I've edited I don't do this, but in the case of Lamination Colony, I think this is the way that works best. Too often things are edited down to remove their quirks or to smooth out things that don't need to be smoothed, usually in the case of clarity, but I like some lack of clarity here and there.

In certain circumstances, I've even left in grammatical errors that would throw the reader out of the text, because I like to throw a reader out of the text in some cases. For example, in Sam Pink's 'i clipped a random picture from an obituary ate ate it...', the last line is 'one of the first things you have to learn is how to ties your shoes.' Obviously that isn't proper english, but I like the way it comes off, and I like how it functions at the end of the piece, as a semantic ejection. Whether or not Sam did that on purpose, I don't know for sure, but I am going to believe he fully did, because I trust a text as it is on the page until I am given reason not to. I think it would much less funny without the 'ties.'

Editing is a funny business. In this particular journal's case, I say, 'Let the monsters live.'

JM: I agree, to an extent, about letting the monsters live. Too much clarity, especially in surreal or bizarre fiction, takes away a lot of the power. N.O Brown said that surrealism is a "systematic illumination of the hidden places and a progressive darkening of the rest." And of course most surreal poetry/fiction is full of so-called errors, and there isn't much in the way of clarity. Do you think clarity is overemphasized in contemporary fiction? Just look at all the how-to write books out there. They're mostly about achieving perfect clarity. It's kind of an obsession with them.

BB: I don't think it is clarity as a whole that is overemphasized necessarily. Clarity of text is important, though I think moreso in saying it the way it should be said rather than in clarity of meaning. There definitely is too much reliance on 'knowing what is being said' and 'what is human about this text, what is the experience of it.' People misinterpret the question of what is relatable to in a text for the way it creates parallels perhaps, but I think even obfuscation is human, probably more human that clear understanding.

I watched an Andy Warhol documentary the other night where he said something along the lines of how people criticize films because they are too irreal for life, but in those films the basis of an emotion is displayed in an actually jarring palpable way, a way you can feel, whereas most of real life, when things happen, it is flatline, it is deadpan, the moment comes and goes. If I wanted to experience a fiction that simulates those big emotions in definitively connective ways, I would watch a movie or TV.

I read mainly because I want to be pulled into something like what is there when I am asleep. And for the same reason I enjoy dreaming, I enjoy fiction that leaves itself unanswered, or an answer buried in it, not simply systematically embedded and orchestrated and answered in all ends, with a specific purpose, not fake tits.

JM: This morning I was reading something from James Hillman's Revisioning Psychology. He was saying that our dreams tend to produce the most distressing images--perversions and disgusting images, fantasies we tend to shy away from while awake. He said "the worst images are the best." Is this irruption of the unconscious similar to what you were alluding to when you said "I want to be pulled into something like what is there when I am asleep"?

BB: I think so. I like images that erupt more of what they are and their collision than something orchestrated by a human mind, with intent. That's not to say there is no authorial design in texts that leave things unanswered, but more that it is something the author was not necessarily fully of aware of during the creation. Writing, and by the same ticket, reading, should be a process of discovery for the author and the person experiencing the text, I think. You hear certain kinds of writers talk about how the act of writing and reading is a 'contract between the author and the reader, and when that contract is broken, all trust is lost.' That's an awful way to think about it, I think, and dangerous, and suffocating. In many ways I think the author is just a vehicle and the text is something altogether of itself, that it is the text creating the author and not the other way around.

Searching for a waking dream state is probably why I get out of bed at all.

And yet even the term 'dream state' gets used to ill ends, such as Gardner's concept of the narrative dream, in which if you ruin the contract, you have destroyed the story. So many of my dreams are so shocking and terror ridden in me distinctly because I am aware of what they are trying to do to me, and manner with which they construct walls that seem both made of parts of me I know and do not know. I guess that's where the collision of the creative state for me is: on some cusp. Because I only ever feel half awake in the first place. Because humans are meat.

JM: Gardner, to me, took a lot of the mystery, terror and soul from the term "dream". As if dreams come from some rational space in the mind where everything is known, easy-to-follow, well-lit. I don't know about you but my dreams aren't always "vivid" or "continuous." Have you had any interesting dreams you'd like to share?

BB: Exactly. 'Rational dreaming.' Jesus christ. I just got an ad in my email inbox from Narrative Magazine. How fitting.

As far as recent dreams, they haven't been as violent lately. Usually my dreams are fairly brutal and seem to last for many days. I think this comes out of my usual pattern of shitty sleep, which has gotten a lot better in the past month or so.

Here's a calmer dream I like from many years ago, from the dream journal I unfortunately no longer keep:

I'm in an evacuated shopping mall, walking along the rows of unlit stores with a baby who does not seem old enough to hold himself up, but who nevertheless is able to keep right in sync with my every stride. He saunters like an experienced cowboy.

Together we peer in through various store windows. Each one is filled three-quarters of the way full with a cloudy volume of water, and is weakly lit by florescent lighting that exudes from the back of store. If I concentrate hard enough I can make out the presence of figures that hover just above the floor in strange scuba gear. They hold stock-still and stare back at me with frozen disregard, as if they are trying to avoid being discovered by some presence.

Whenever we come to a pair of escalators, I stand and watch the baby ride up one, and then down the other. He grins with a mouthful of fully developed adult teeth and socks me in the gut every few minutes.

Here is one more typical of me: http://blakebutler.blogspot.com/2008/07/i-should-probably-keep-dickhead-dream.html

head explosion

2008-11-13T00:27:00.006-05:00

New story up at Opium: www.opiummagazine.com

Posted two minutes after I was emailed the acceptance. Immediate satisfaction.

Wish I knew the direct link since it probably won't be up on the main page for long.

Finished with all my MFA apps except one. Will mail out writing samples in the morning. One unfinished app needs tax return info. Not enough time to figure that out (since I'm at work) before I leave to go to the airport.

Applying to grad school=destroy

Will be traveling from 9 AM EST to 7:17 PM PST. I hate traveling. I will destroy. Going to Bizarro Con in Portland-ish Oregon.

This is the last time I will ever tell the truth (besides dull announcements about not dull things that get published).

Help! A Bear is Eating Me!

2008-11-05T02:30:00.000-05:00

Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! from mykle hansen on Vimeo.

Interview with Seth Schultz

2008-11-03T01:17:00.009-05:00

Seth Schultz has multiple personality disorder. He used to have two, until he killed one off with a chainsaw. He is writing a book about how to manage your money. It is called Mutant Money Management, I think. He was working on his memoir, but that was many years ago. It was called Mutant Memoirs. I think he might have lost interest in it. He was once the leader of his own cult.

Why do you enjoy being naked at parties?

It is part ego trip and part trying to get people to let loose. It's not about sex, or even seeing people naked. People are so uptight and trapped in our societal structure and parties are supposed to be a way to wind down. But even most "smash the system" people I know are too uptight and or insecure to get naked amongst friends and party goers. So when I'm the only person that does get naked I feel like I've out done everyone. Though I'd feel like I actually achieved something if I actually convinced any number of people at a party to get naked and wild.

Why are you writing Mutant Money Management?

I'm writing a book on how to manage money because most people I know don't seem to manage their money well. The long term goal is to convince enough friends to become financially stable enough to participate in a dream co-housing plan of mine. Or at least live with cool people who also have money to pay bills on time. Of course, by the time this happens everyone I know will be married and have kids. Because that's what humans do. They get bored, mate and breed uncontrollably.

The reason I'm presently not working on this book on managing money is because I'm a procrastinator, I hate the human race, and I think I have this strange fear of completing things. I would much rather start work on three other projects that probably wont be finished than work on this one right now. Also I've been playing the sequel to the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. because gunfights with Russian speaking characters in radioactive landscapes is closer to what I wanted to be when I grew up than a writer.

The problem with inner piece is that you don't really give a shit if you die and don't leave anything amazing behind. Wait, is that inner piece or depression?

I'm not answering your question. I'm the interviewer. You're the fucking subject. You don't get to ask me questions. Especially questions that don't have proper answers. I'm on to your schemes. There are men in black suits watching outside your window.

How come you decided to write a memoir when you're not elderly, a former drug addict, a homosexual, or a former abused child? People who aren't elderly, former drug addicts, homosexuals, or former abused children aren't allowed to write memoirs. Also, when are you going to finish your memoir?

I'm writing a memoir because I'm not an abused elderly homosexual drug addict. Sure I suffered, but in a more common way, in a way we all suffer.

My first inspiration for writing a memoir was the whole "Mutant" thing. We are raised to be mediocre. Only by sheer accident does anyone achieve any form of real greatness. I've spent my life trying to understand the whole situation of social/intellectual mutation. I saw it happening when I was very young, but I didn't really know what it was or how to fight it. That can really screw up a kid.

I've spent most of my life alone. Trying to find out what a Mutant is and why we are what we are. As well as what it means to be a Mutant on a very personal level. I've gained many great abilities and learned how to find peers and allies. The work I've done so far has been received positively by the few I've shared it with.

But that's not enough. It is not enough to say your life has sucked. Or even to say that you have come to terms with your issues and have found inner peace and a place in the world. That is just masturbatory bullshit and that is not real work!

The reason I have not finished my memoir is because I have a lot of questions left to answer. Or at least to word properly enough to leave for the next generation of Mutants to work on. And because I just haven't gotten back to that project.

Can/should we create more Mutants? If we can, can we limit the negative effects through controlled mutation? Should we keep our mutation secret or is it safe to be open about it? Are elements of Mutant-ness hereditary or spiritual? Is there a better term than Mutant? There are a lot of questions I can't answer and a lot that I can't even formulate correctly yet. It is also hard to talk about such a thing without sounding insane.

For those interested in my research, I recommend the Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn. It's about home schooling or self-schooling, but it describes in non crazy ways how society is making us mediocre and how to fight back.

I know that you're involved or were involved with the Church of the Subgenius. I know the church considers its members "mutants." I'm wondering if your "mutant" philosophy came from them or if it's entirely your own creation.

Another question: Can you tell me about your time spent as a SubGenius?

I actually forget where I heard the term mutant used to describe people. It probably was the Church or DEVO, but DEVO is so linked with the Church of the SubGenius that is doesn't matter which. My use of the term isn't much different from that of the Church. I still embrace a lot of their teachings and still have a lot of respect for that philosophy. While there is a connection, I don't believe that Mutant is an entirely SubGenius term. I'm sure many of the books and articles on Social Darwinism have influenced the corruption of the term from its origins in biology. The Church and others like myself are just further offshoots.

I'm afraid I can't talk about my time as a SubGenius at the moment.

And why not?

Actually I could talk about the Church of the SubGenius, but it always ends up being a mixture of trying to tell the truth and sounding absurd, making shit up to sound more plausible and just talking about the boring stuff that doesn't really say anything. Like the guy who took a dump in the hot tub on X-Day. (Editor’s note: X-Day is the end of the world. It was supposed to happen on July 5, 1998 at 7:00 AM. I don’t think it happened. I think. I think the Church has an X-Day event every year. When the end of the world doesn’t happen, they say something like, “Oops, we made a mistake. It is actually supposed to happen last year." Less and less people come to these X-Day events each year)

Being an active member of the Church is a different experience for everyone (unless you are a Pink or Bobbie in which case your experience is probably pretty typical and not really related to mine). What I can say is that my time with the Church greatly expanded my being. In some ways I actually can't discuss.

What the heck is "Bobbie"? You need to explain yourself better for people who don't know these things. They don't know what "A Pink" is, although I'm confused about what it is in the context of being a member of the church and being a pink at the same time.

*sigh* This is why I tried to avoid talking about the Church in the first place. We're getting wrapped up in things that don't matter. If a reader is interested in trying to understand the Church of the Subgenius. Making most people (including most members) confused by our religion's inner and outer workings and strange terms is an important part of it's functionality. Spoon fed truth does not taste as good as hard earned truth. Nor does it get digested quite as well. This is especially true with spirituality and space demons.

(Editor’s note: Fuck Seth Schultz. A Pink might be a person who is not a member of the Church. A Bobbie might be someone who is a member the Church, but not really a member. More like a poseur. I don’t know)

I have a crossbow. Give me your life savings.

Having watched you try to use my crossbow, this threat feels pretty hollow.

I will aim for your heart. You will end up blind in your left eye.

What's it like to have multiple personalities and does having an extra one normally result in starting a cult that's disguised as a student group?

Having multiple personalities is strange. Luckily mine tend to exist simultaneously and are aware of each other, so I don't get that confusion of lost time and wondering why I'm wearing pants with a tail sewed on the back.

I suppose you are asking about Booga. Well, he was an exceptional character. I don't think the whole "start a cult" thing is normal to that sort of situation and in his case it was kind of an accident. By failing to do one thing (set up a SubGenius Devival at a college) something far greater happened (formed Mutants Against Majority Organization). Sometimes that's how Slack works.

Who is Booga?

Towards the end of high school I started getting into the Tank Girl Comics. Booga was Tank Girl's boyfriend. a mutant Kangaroo with a personality I very much related to. So I started using the name. In college I used the name almost entirely. Most people never new my real name.

During my time as Booga I had a lot of energy and a lot of bold ideals. But over time I realized that while I could make people listen to me at a passive level I could not pass on that energetic zeal.

Emitting that kind of energy without the feedback I desired became tiring and after a while that part of me died off. And with that, I stopped using the name Booga.

Who is Seth?

Well first off, I am Seth. A man, aged 31 years. I think a big element that explains a lot about me is innocence.

Imagine an alien child with nothing but good intentions dropped on this planet. He is intelligent, but lacks many of the biological instincts which make humans do the things they do. Because of this he did not mingle well with the humans around him as he grew up, so he also lacks many of the socially formed instincts or habits. And unlike superman or any other alien dropped on earth story, there is no super power or fourth nipple. To everyone else he is just another man.

This is kind of how I feel a lot of the time. I feel like the logic behind my decision making is vastly different than most people's. Even when I do the same thing other people are doing I feel like I'm doing it for a different reason. And so it is hard for me to connect with other people. There are very few people I meet in life who I feel like I actually understand and get along with in any sort of 'real' way.

Through growing up in this world with such different eyes I feel like I've seen things in ways others might not and I've wanted to express this in the hope of bringing on some form of positive change. But as anyone who has tried (alien or not) knows that this is a very hard thing to do. All of this has made me a bitter, tired and lonely man.

So I often spend my time distancing myself from the rest of the world, attempting to figure out dating rituals and get a girlfriend or plucking away at a few projects I feel might make a difference.

I am very depressed. I do not think it's for any particular reason besides the chemicals in my head. Do you have any suggestions for alleviating this depression?

If your depression is caused by chemical imbalance then I would suggest drugs. Preferably prescribed by someone who knows what they are doing. If your depression is caused by an inaccurate interpretation of yourself and/or the world around you then I suggest therapy. If however your depression is caused by an accurate understanding of yourself and/or the world around you then you have a tough choice; fix what is depressing or kill yourself.

Ok, I will kill myself after I’m done posting this interview on my blog.

no blogging for a month

2008-11-01T03:03:00.002-04:00

working on a shitty novel

Bust stats

2008-10-28T03:42:00.006-04:00

I want to do something boring and keep a record of the gender stats for the next issue regarding acceptances and rejections. Ridiculous people get touchy about gender.

Acceptances: 3 (all male)

Rejections: 16 (15 male, 1 female)

Duotrope still needs to update the listing to show that submissions are open again.

Bear and Boy Books and Lint

2008-10-23T15:15:00.007-04:00

And I stumbled across this: Amazon is selling Steve Aylett's great book, Lint, for only five bucks.

There is a ridiculous review that I wrote on that page.

Jaguar Uprising Press warning

2008-10-19T23:24:00.009-04:00

TTB says that you should not buy things through their website. You may never see your money again. You may never receive a book. The Industry is trapped in an insane asylum for insane wrestlers with no internet access. John McCain put him in there or something. I don't know. I don't know what the hell TTB was talking about. He was wearing a bandanna on his head.

Email TTB regarding Jaguar Uprising stuff: twotearsboye@gmail.com

He promised me that he would respond.

Bloggers: Spread this message. Post it on your blog or whatever. People should be warned about losing their money.

He was known for his indifference and for wearing a monocle

2008-10-17T12:53:00.011-04:00

New Robot Melon is out. I have a story in there.

What don't you like about yourself?

Favorite authors:

Raymond Chandler: Maybe the greatest prose stylist ever. I can't really get into other noir-ish authors because of him. He puts them to shame. I bought five Elmore Leonard books today at a library sale for a buck-a-piece. We'll see. Chandler's best novel is The Long Goodbye. Robert Altman adapted it. Elliot Gould makes a really weird Philip Marlowe. I "plagiarized" Chandler in my novel. I took a chapter and changed nearly every word, creating something entirely new. I left words like "the" and "he" and "it" and "and" intact. I'm always afraid I did something wrong by doing this. It was like writing an essay in sixth grade and copying a few paragraphs from an encyclopedia while using synonoms for every word so you won't be accused of plagairism. It's a lot harder to write fiction this way. It feels Oulipo-ish. I wrote another thing like this. A story for Lamination Colony. I rewrote the beginning of Naked Lunch.

Mark Leyner: Every word counts. No word counts. Irrelevance without any filler. I saw a movie a while back that he co-write with John Cusack and the guy who wrote Bulworth. It was called War Inc. It was pretty good.

Steve Aylett: Similar to Leyner. Bigger. Better. Funnier. Actually makes plot work. Genre-y.

Thomas Ligotti: Horror author. One of the few that I like. Short story guy. Like Lovecraft if Lovecraft was a much much much much better writer. His work makes my brain feel funny. Like I'm in another dimension. I don't think he writes fiction anymore. Just essays about hating the human race.

Kelly Link: She lives near me. She's great. Genre-y. Not genre-y. I don't know what else to say. I took her new book out of the library today. I hope I will not be dissapointed. I will be dissapointed. I am dissapointed by everything these days.

Carlton Mellick: He tears shit up. Later work much much much better than early work.

Tao Lin: Tao Lin Tao Lin Tao Lin Tao Lin.

D. Harlan Wilson: Writes books that I want to read. Irreal. Stranger on the Loose best story collection. Dr. Identity best novel.

The next three authors seem to share the same face but grow out of three different facial expressions:

Paul Auster: Last two books have been ~~the~~ shit. Early books were cool. The New York Trilogy worked well with my obsession back in the day about language not being able to convey emotion. Later work like Moon Palace had lots of exposition. Lots of coincidances. I am ok with this. Paul Auster was the coincidance and exposition guy. It worked well for him. He was the only author who I gave a license to use either of these things. Like I gave Will Self a license to write big words that would make me use the dictionary all the time. No one else is allowed this license. Most of Will Self's novels suck except My Idea of Fun. Too long. He should publish another short story collection. Will Self=greatest short story writer who uses annoying words that I have never heard of. I can't really tell most of Paul Auster's novels apart. I probably read most of them in a month. They are like a blur. I cannot distinguish the mid-period stuff.

Jonathan Carroll: Like if mid-period Paul Auster wrote fantasy without crazy heaps of exposition and coincidences. Seems like he is probably a nicer person than Paul Auster. Most of his books are also a blur. Minor characters in some novels are protagonists in other novels. Uses a town in upstate NY a lot for setting. His books used to cure my depression. His characters felt like friends. He put them through hell, but it felt good to read about them going through hell. Just took his new novel out from the library. Read about halfway. It's ok. Better than his last novel, which I did not like. I have liked all of the earlier ones. I think I might be growing out of him. I think I'm growing out of a lot of authors. I need new authors to grow into. The writing is good in the new novel, but it is confusing. Not "What the hell is going on?" confusing. More like "Why the hell are the characters doing these things?" confusing. Feels like someone ripped out a bunch of random pages. Took me a while to like Carroll's endings. Dissapointing at first. Open-ended. Like poetic open-ended endings to bad movies that leave it open for the sequel. After being dissapointed a lot, I started to really like the endings. Carroll explained them by saying something like this: "My endings are like life. Everything does not work itself out in the end."

Steve Erickson: The only author who I'm not growing out of in the trio. Reuses characters like Carroll. Different realities without explanations. Makes it work. Makes it awesome. Does funny things to my brain. Like Ligotti, but not as dark. If you are familiar with Erickson, you might think to yourself, "Ligotti sounds totally fucked." I didn't like Erickson's last book the first time I read it: Zeroville. Felt different. User-friendly. Reread it and loved it. Not my favorite novel by him, but not my least favorite.

Sam Pink. I am you.

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We've got a truck on fire, can't find the switch to turn the ski lift off, and can't stop the dancing chicken. Send an electrician.

2008-10-14T03:05:00.013-04:00

My existence is telling people that we do have a bathroom and condoms and we do not have coffee.

I'm doing a reading at the Bizarro Con next month. Jess Gulbranson is reading after me. I feel sorry for him. He wouldn't even be able to avoid being upstaged if he read a story entitled, "My Los Lobos Playing Metallica-Induced Hard-On Destroys the Universe.

A few mornings ago, I asked myself: "Is that the sun or the moon?" It felt apocalyptic.

I have this fantasy where I get laid as the result of my writing. It seems like the ultimate compliment. I think a lot of writers have this fantasy. It's probably one of the reasons why I write. It's pretty stupid. I think it ranks pretty low on the "reasons why I write" scale. There are easier ways to get laid than sitting in my room by myself and tapping my keyboard. But I don't think they would be as satisfying. I have not fulfilled this fantasy yet. It's too bad all the women who like my writing live far, far away from me.

I wonder if some people have a fantasy about getting laid because of their blog. Now that's REALLY pathetic.

I'm probably going to participate in National Novel Writing Month next month. So I will probably stop blogging. Not that I've been doing it very much lately. National Novel Writing Month is the new blogspot. My novel's protagonist will be Mike Young's weird, evil laugh. The novel will be called Hunky and Full of Spunk.

I haven't been liking novels and stories lately. I am going through a phase. I went through a similar phase around the beginning of the year. I called it "book depression." I could not find any novels or stories that I liked. It was really depressing.

Now I am going through the same thing, but I am not bothered by it. I'm reading a lot of non-fiction. I am not desperate to find fiction that I like. I have stopped looking. Fiction that I like will come to me. I will not pursue it actively. There are a few recent novels and short story collections that I intend to read, but I do not have high hopes.

There is something about the narrative in fiction that hasn't been maintaining my interest lately. For instance, I can find a blog post interesting, but not a story posted on a blog or not an autobiographical blog post that is written like a story - with characters and description and action and dialogue. Right now, I prefer writing that is like a one-sided conversation.

It is a good thing that I work with another editor on Bust or else I would have a lot of trouble filling an issue (although sometimes I think he is pickier than I am).

For the past year, I have either loved a book or hated a book and there has been no in between.

Except for maybe the last book I read: Chuck Klosterman's novel. I haven't decided whether or not I liked it. I liked it until the ending, and then I no longer knew. It's called Downtown Owl. It's like a pop version of literary fiction. There is no plot arc. It is one of those books which is often described as a book where "nothing happens," although something happens at the end. Things happen, but there is no conflict. The character have few goals.

On page 71, a high school english teacher talks about the novel, 1984: "You're all 106 pages into the story...or at least you're supposed to 106 pages into this story. I'm sure many of you feel like nothing is happening. Don't be alarmed. All great books are like this. All great books feel boring until finished reading them."

This man is not a very good English teacher.

I would have liked this piece of dialogue to occur on page 106, but Klosteman disappointing me.

I assume he is saying his novel is a great book here. But his novel is not boring.

The end of the novel leaves every loose end in the book hanging. Thus is life. But fiction is not life. Fiction is an artificial reproduction of life. I don't like novels that are too much like life.

Chuck Klosterman is the narrator. The narrator is God.

I wouldn't have ever read this book if I didn't like Chuck Klosterman's non-fiction so much. The jacket flap text makes the novel seem boring. I wouldn't have enjoyed this book as much if I hadn't read already of Chuck Klosterman's non-fiction.

Back to "book depression." I don't know why I'm going through this. I have gone through phases in my life where I can read and enjoy almost any fiction assuming it's not too terrible. My attention span is fucked. I'm not willing to give things a chance. I need to be entertained by the very start. I am not willing to give anything the benefit of the doubt.

I prefer movies and serial TV now. The plots are usually tighter than in novels, which have more padding. The dialogue is usually not as good.

I like movies with artificial dialogue. Movies that make me believe the screenwriter slaved over each word. Movies where the dialogue sounds artificial. But the content of the dialogue should still sound like something a person in "real life" would say. But not the way they say it.

I don't usually like dialogue like this in novels, unless it is noir-y. I like when they dialogue sounds like something someone would say in "real life." I want the other prose to feel as if it has been slaved over.

But I love words. So preferring film over prose cannot last forever. That's why I continue to read non-fiction. To get my word fix.

That sounds really stupid.

I read two books by Roger Ebert. The Great Movies and its sequel. I want to read more books written by people who are great writers and who are passionate about something that I am interested in.

why kill time?

2008-10-09T23:50:00.010-04:00

My stomach hurts. I shouldn't eat rice with curry sauce so close to waking up. I am writing this blog entry to pass the time until my stomach stops hurting. I am at work. I am about to eat a few Rolaid chews. They taste a little like Starburst candy.

I went back to being a vegetarian. Maybe a week ago. I did it so Tao Lin would like me more. No, that's not why I did it.

A large amount of books are waiting for me at the library. I went a little crazy and ordered too many at the same time because I am afraid that I will be heavily fined soon. And if I do not pay off the fines, I will not be able to check out books. I wish the mailman who removed my library books from the mailbox had walked the five feet it would have taken him to return them for me.

I guess I'll stop watching television and movies until after I finish reading all the books. I only watch television and movies through the cable company's on-demand service, through downloads, and through streams on the websites of TV networks. I watch too much. If the first season of a show is really good, I will continue to watch additional seasons even if they are weak, hoping they will once again be as good as the first season. This only happened one time: Lost. My Achilles heel free time-wise is that I love serial stories. Reality TV and sitcoms might be shit and clog up the airwaves, but there's some good serial shows floating around.

I wanted to pick up my books from the library this morning. But I felt weird. I did not want to drive because I felt the same way that I did before I got into my car accident. I felt that way most of last night. It sucked. I did not do very much last night. I hate wasting night's off.

Last night, I woke up and went with my roommate to a diner. We met his friends there. I ate a Spanish omelet, which I did not like. I ordered it because I really like the words "Spanish" and "omelet." I wanted to say them out loud to the waitress.

I went home. I had a kind of absurd literary argument with Mike Young for forty-five minutes on g-chat. He's doing a reading tomorrow night. I will go if I can force myself to wake up three hours earlier than usual, but that is unlikely.

I read some stories for Bust. I accepted two. One solicited and one out of the blue from my favorite writer.

I'm faxing the proof approval form to the printer tonight once it gets kind of late and less people are likely to come in the store. I am waiting because the fax is in the back room.

So the new issue should be out in two weeks or so. It has taken longer to put out this issue than any other issue. About nine months. The issue is cursed. Hopefully the next one will be more timely. It is looking promising so far since we've already accepted two stories for it. The submissions will open again after the new issue comes out. Submit, human.

I was just interrupted by a customer. He wanted to fill up his car with gas. I got a head rush when I stood up. Now I feel weird again.

I need to force myself to go to sleep earlier. I need more sleep when it is colder outside. I need to admit this to myself so I can have a better quality of life when it is cold outside. But I always get preoccupied with things and go to sleep late.

It feels weird to type "late" since I go to sleep in the afternoon.

Back to last night: I started feeling weird after reading the story by my favorite writer. It was long. It hurt my eyes to read it on the screen. I should have printed it out. It kind of destroyed my brain. This is when I started to feel weird. I couldn't do anything productive after. I had planned to proofread some stories for my grad school writing samples and edit my admissions essays. I guess I'll do that tomorrow night.

Instead of doing those things, I watched a movie on demand. I started to watch Hitman, but it was stupid, so I turned it off. Then I started to watch a Christopher Guest movie, but I wasn't in the mood for it, so I turned it off. So then I watched Jaws, which I liked a lot. But it started to drag while the characters were floating around in a boat and trying to kill Jaws. It was very slow. I got bored. Maybe the slowness was supposed to make it more suspenseful. But I was tired, so it made it more boring. I turned of the movie with the intention of picking up where I left off in the near future.

Then I started to feel a little better. I proofread a story because someone solicited one from me, then I sent it.

Then people started emailing me at the same time. I emailed back. I received new emails every few minutes. It was like I was instant messenging with multiple people at the same time, but with email. I got kind of caught up in that. And that's the reason why I'm tired right now.

Last week I was at work and thought, "I wish all the babies in the world died right now at the same exact moment." I felt bad about thinking that. I wish death upon people all the time. I'm a bad person. I cannot stop myself. Sometimes I get into stupid religious-mode and think, "God is going to totally fuck me up because of my thoughts. My afterlife will not be any fun." This is another reason why I like to work the graveyard shift. There are less people to see. Less people to wish deaths upon.

i would hate to waste some of my tough-guy favors on you

2008-10-06T01:09:00.013-04:00

I like this piece in Harper's: www.harpers.org/archive/2002/02/0079074

My name was in the police log after my car accident.

I've given "my" cat a new name. His new name is Doctor Mengele, which sounds really cute when I say it in a cute kitty cat voice. It fits his personality. I like him a little more now than when I first moved in. He's pretty nice when he's tired. Otherwise, he's a dick. He needs kitty cat tranquilizers. He reminds me of an insect. When I sit on the couch, he repeatedly walks on me over and over again. He doesn't sit down on my lap like a nice cat. Sometimes he scratches me with his claws. He seems to hate people, but loves walking on them. I miss nice cats.

I have been having trouble finding anything funny for a while. I have no self-aware sense of humor. I don't laugh at comedies anymore. I don't know when something is humorous in my own work. I'm not sure when something that I write is a good joke or is not a good joke.

Sometimes people tell me something that I have written is funny and I am amazed.

I wrote a story for the a contest called The Ultimate Bizarro Showdown, which is happening at the Bizarro Con in Portland, Oregon. I had trouble with it because I didn't know if it was funny. I gave it to my roommate and he cracked up the whole time. My roommate's friend read it tonight and he did the same. It's so strange to watch someone crack up over something that I didn't think was funny. Even if the story sucks, I was still annihilate Jess Gulbranson in the competition.

Jess Gulbranson is toast.

"...I knew there was something wrong with finding a human jawbone in my backyard." Did you say that, Jess Gulbranson?

I've always written humor. I do it without trying. I need to make a conscious effort to stop writing jokey-things. When I try to be funny, I am not funny. It comes off this way. Trying to be funny is a way to write bad fiction rather than good serious fiction. It would be amusing if trying to be funny resulted in good serious fiction.

I used to laugh at my writing all the time while I was in the process of doing it. I never do that anymore. It may be the result of my transition from doing Mark Leyner-esque work to more plot-driven work.

Or maybe it's my medication that I take. A mood stabilizer. I used to take a lot of it, but it fucked with my creativity, so I stopped it. After having problems with TMJ disorder, I started taking a little of it to lower my stress so I would get less stress-induced head pain. I used to relieve my stress by punching things while I was asleep. Now I relieve my stress by clenching my jaw when I'm asleep. I am extremely high strung.

I don't know if taking a little of the mood stabilizer has fucked with my creativity. Maybe a little bit. But I am wondering if it has fucked with my self-aware sense of humor.

This is bad. I can't tell whether a joke that I write is good or if it is cheesy.

I need to take my mood stabilizer though, or else my head will probably hurt all the time and I will never be able to write fiction. So this is the lesser of two evil cliches. Ever since I started the mood stabilizer, I've had to deal with much less pain.

I guess I sometimes still laugh at Sam Pink's stuff. But don't tell him I said that. Tell him this instead: "Fuck you, Sam Pink."

I need to shave my head. I will do that now.

the blog you wrote is going to get you punched in the face

2008-09-29T03:09:00.008-04:00

I live on top of a bunker.

I found this out a few days ago. I asked my roommate, "What's up with that house next to us? Do we live on top of them or something?"

Last week, I noticed the house next to us. It is kind of hidden. While our house is at the top of a small hill, the one next door is at the bottom of a small hill. It is built into the ground.

It's kind of cool that I've been kind of living on top of a house for a couple of weeks without knowing it.

Not that it's much different than living below the people upstairs who I have never met, but at least I knew they were there.

My roommate told me he was offered a room/apartment/whatever in the bunker by the landlord, who owns both houses. My roommate chose the main house because the bunker "doesn't make sense." It has "weird angles."

Lately, I have been watching too much TV on the internet. I miss the TV strike. Comcast has a new site, I think, where they stream shows. Damn you, Comcast.

Tim and Eric Awesome Show Good Job is probably the best show on TV right now.

I sent the printer the next issue of Bust, so it should be out in a couple of weeks.

I realized why I have been sleeping so much. I was on an antibiotic for my cough. I still have my cough, but I finished my antibiotic. Thanks, my doctor.

The webmaster of www.facialticks.com emailed me. He requested an unbiased site review on my blog. He offered either a product sample or payment to do this. If I choose the product sample instead of the payment, the product sample is mine to keep. I don't need to send it back!

The product sample is an ebook about facial ticks.

An ebook about facial ticks is mine to keep!

It's tempting, but I think I'll take the payment. Thanks, webmaster.

The site is selling a product for children with Tourette's Syndrome. The product eliminates facial tics within 72 hours without dangerous medications that cause harmful side effects.

I am confused, but I will write my unbiased review anyway:

www.facialticks.com COCKSUCKER is a nice site CUM DUMPER. I think ANAL SPLURGE they are FUCK STICK selling a product CUNTBEAR that could possibly beneficial to children ANAL FUCKFEST. The site design FECAL FUCK could use some CLITBEAR work, but the design is better COCK TOES than amateurish. Regardless, they are still FUCKBEAR selling what could be a BITCHFUCKDICKSUCK beneficial product.

waste

2008-09-27T02:51:00.014-04:00

I just finished my final admissions essay for grad school. Well, I finished the last first draft. I will let them simmer for a week or so and then edit them.

I hate writing formal essays. They are incredibly annoying. I love writing informal essays. They are the easiest things to do ever.

I'm going to work on fiction in the meantime. It has been a while. I think I've only written one story this month. I have a couple of ideas for short pieces that I want to work on.

I really want a big project. I need a big project. But I'm on hiatus from a big project. I'm not sure if starting a new one is a good idea. I think that if I started a new one, and then switched back to the old one, it will be even harder to get the narrator's voice right.

Fuck it. Maybe I should do it. I'm feeling desperate and excessively lazy.

I think I want to write a novella about a shanty town, like the one in Desperate Living. I have no idea what the plot would be. I guess I will start brainstorming after I finish the two short pieces that I mentioned. Or during.

I have been sleeping too much lately on my nights off. I find this troubling. Maybe it is the change of temperature. Today, I set my alarm to wake me up. It was the first time in a while that I set my alarm to wake me up on my night off. I slept for about eight hours. I was still tired when I woke up. I stayed up for a little while, ate drank some tea with caffeine that doesn't do harsh things to my nervous system, and waited for the caffeine to kick in. It did not kick in. I went back to sleep. Napping is the new cup of coffee. At least for me. And it is not really that new since I haven't been able to drink coffee without painful consequences since last year.

I napped for three hours. I like sleeping, but napping for three hours is just a waste, especially after a decent night's sleep. I think I need to set my alarm before naps.

I also had a night off the night before last. I woke up with TMJ induced head pain, which was caused by stress. I napped for four hours. My one accomplishment that night was finding out that I liked the television show, Entourage.

The night after, I drove over what appeared to be an empty container of Ben and Jerry's ice cream on my way to work. Perhaps it would have appeared to be something else during the day.

When I got to work, TTB informed me that we were out of gas. I found this very funny. It has never happened before. TTB is probably to blame. I put up "Sorry, we are out of gas" signs on every pump because I did not want to bother to run outside every time a person tried to pump gas. Some people cannot read.

I think that I'm a slacker when it comes to jobs that make money and a workaholic when it comes to jobs that don't make money - like writing and editing.

I like working overnights at a gas station because of all the downtime. And because I get insomnia at night and sleep like a baby during the day. I wish I wasn't like that. I love the daylight. Plus trying to have a social life is annoying. Occasionally, I see my friends in the morning. I usually wake up right before work time. On my nights off, it takes me a few hours to get the urge to go out and do fun things. By that time, most fun things are near completion.

I have probably mentioned this before. I repeat myself a lot.

I miss college when I had a lot of nocturnal-ish friends. Nearly everybody I know is a nine to fiver. I feel isolated. Time is strange for me. The morning occurs on the same day as the previous evening for me. Sometimes I get mixed up when talking to people with normal schedules.

For a while, I was going to sleep soon after I got home from work. It was nice to be awake in the early evening, plus I needed to do it because that was usually the time when potential housemates were conducting interviews. Since moving, I reverted back to waking up right before work, which is also useful because I have been looking for a different job, although very passively, and job interviews usually occur in the morning.

I'm so lazy about finding a new job. I've only interviewed for one since I moved. I kept seeing signs on the road next to hotels. They were looking for someone to fill a third shift person. It turned out all the hotels were owned by the same company, so they were all advertising for the same position.

It doesn't look like I got the position because they never called me. I had two interviews. The first one was great. A conversation. No bullshit questions like "What is your greatest strength?", "What is your greatest weakness?", and "Tell me about your worst experience with a customer and what you did to solve the conflict."

The second interview was filled with bullshit questions. I did not expect them. I thought the job would be a sure thing. That no other person in my area with a college degree would have tons of experience staying up all night and actually want to do it.

The interview did not go badly, but it did not go well. Sometimes I have not gotten jobs when the interview went well. Sometimes I have gotten jobs when I thought the interview went badly. This did not happen.

It's always the same questions. I don't know why I never plan out my answers. I always tell myself that I should. I will from now on. Immediately following getting each interview appointment, I will plot out my responses corresponding to the specific job. It's not as if they need to be the truth. I'm just really bad at lying on the spot. I always tell the truth. If I had a lot of time to think about my answers to the questions, I probably wouldn't have to lie. I have probably experienced something in my "career" that would make a good response to each question. But I do not have the time to figure this out at the interview.

To the "What is your greatest weakness?" question.

I answered: "Most people probably say that they're a perfectionist. So I'm not going to."

The interview laughed.

There was a long pause while I thought of something to say.

I said, "I am incapable of working nine to five jobs because I am a night person and cannot drink caffeine because of medical reasons."

Bust question

2008-09-24T14:26:00.006-04:00

The new issue of Bust Down the Door is ready for the printer. I just need a log-in for their site, unless I can remember the one that I used last time.

I'm thinking about releasing an e-book version of the issue. I'm not sure about the idea. I think I would like to charge one dollar for it. I would do this because I'm afraid that people will not buy the print issue if they can read it for free on the internet. But I'm afraid that a lot of people will buy the online issue and I will not be able to recoup the cost of the print issue.

What do you think? Will people still buy the print version?

I would like the issue to be read as much as possible, but I want to break even.

Plus I will need to put spaces between the paragraphs for easy web reading. That will be annoying. I wonder if there is a way to do it with a few button clicks. It would make a lot of sense. I hate formatting web submissions and vice versa when something was written for the web.

I was very tired this morning. I went to the library to return a couple of books. I accidentally put them in a mailbox that was next to the library instead of the book return container. My friend shouted at me, but I am not a good listener. Neither a librarian nor a postal clerk could help me out. I hope the mailman who opens the mailbox walks the five extra feet to return my books. If they are not returned, I hope I do not have to pay a king's ransom. They are old books, so that might be a good thing or a bad thing. Samuel Beckett's End Game and a poetry book by Richard Brautigan called June 30th, June 30th. The poetry book is out of print.

Once I left a book on the bus and it was returned. That was nice.

I really like the goodreads website. It's nice to be able to remember what books I read. I only list books that I have completed because I tend to give up on books prematurely and this embarrasses me. I do this less when I pay money for a book rather than take out from a library.

Micah Hacim is the co-creator of the zine, Chiaroscuro, and gets ready for work in the morning while listening to Oingo Boingo's Little Girls

2008-09-19T10:37:00.008-04:00

I used to write in a livejournal. I didn't update it very often. Mostly about book releases and reviews and interviews and announcements for new stories. I might have written about my personal life two or three times a year. I didn't feel very comfortable doing it. Mostly because I've read a lot of people's livejournals and have been tremendously bored by accounts of their lives.

I didn't want to bore anybody with accounts of my life. So I didn't.

Soon after meeting Mike Young, I started my own blog. I noticed that many writers had blogs. I joined the herd. I thought it might help my book sales.

My book sales have gone down drastically since I started a blog.

The economy has gotten totally fucked since I started a blog.

My rule for my blog was I wasn't allowed to post stories and I wasn't allowed to make it an announcement-only blog like so many others.

I occasionally post story things, so I have disobeyed my rule. I guess it's pretty rare.

I have made some friends through my blog, which has been nice.

I have tried to entertain the readers of my blog, but I occasionally don't care and post about boring shit.

I often post about my life, which I think is pretty dull. But the dullness is occasionally broken up by little things of interest.

Like a couple coming into my work and asking if we had lube. The woman said, "It's for his ass." The man said, "No, it's for hers." I told them that we didn't have lube, even though we had vaseline. It did cross my mind that vaseline is lube. When I think of the word, "lube," I think of a tube of something that is bought in a sex shop. So they asked me if I knew where they could buy lube. I said, "Maybe Stop and Shop, but it closes in fifteen minutes." They rushed off to buy it. They came back a couple of nights later to tell me that they made it to Stop and Shop, but they didn't use the lube that night.

So things like that break up the tedium.

It feels like I'm burning up ideas that I could use for poetry by writing about them on my blog. But that is ok. I'm not a poet.

I also think it's more entertaining when a writer describes boring stuff in their life than a non-writer who is doing the same thing on livejournal.

Writer=someone who gets excited about language

I have included that definition to avoid a pretentious us vs. them mentality.

I like blogger.com a lot for some reason. I like the white on black look of my blog. I sometimes go to my blog and just stare at it. It is a precious thing to me.

Livejournal blogs are kind of diarrhea to the eye.

I don't care if it's a little more difficult for people to read if they're livejournal users. I think I like this for some reason. My blog seems like a separate entity rather than one of ten million blogs on livejournal.

I have a lot of fun writing on my blog. It is a different sort of writing. I don't obsess over every little thing. I just let the words pour out. It is relaxing. It is like a vacation from serious writing.

It took me a little while to be open about myself. I don't know what it is about writing in public that turns off my inner editor. It should really be the opposite. I think that I'm addicted to writing in public. It's like writing in a coffee shop while someone looks over my shoulder, but without the creepiness of a creepy person who is reading my computer screen without my permission. If someone did this in public, it would feel like an invasion of my privacy and make me feel uncomfortable. I'm still trying to determine why it has the opposite effect when I'm almost doing the same thing on the internet. It is like if Ms. Writing Alone in Your Room had a baby with Mr. Live Via Satellite.

This is a strange phenomena that should be studied by a scientist. The scientist should finance this with the government's money. It will be a waste of money, but less of a waste than most of the other stuff the government spends our money on.

Everything that I write here is a first draft, although I occasionally fix typos and add a few sentences here and there when I forgot things.

Blogging also satisfies me a little when I'm going through a fiction rut like I'm experiencing now. Without a blog, I would go insane.

I need a new project.

I need to stop thinking about needing a new project until after I'm finished with my grad school admissions stuff.

It is very likely that if I had a new project, my grad school admissions stuff would not get done. I turned a twenty two page grad school essay that I wrote on my blog into two pages. I even had a four page limit. I just kept cutting and cutting and cutting.I am hoping to get the other stuff finished lightning fast - maybe within the next couple of weeks.

It is a good thing that I have a blog.

TTB sells Oprah's bookclub selections in a yuppie mall

2008-09-18T23:03:00.006-04:00

My right eye itches. Not long ago, it was itching so badly that I couldn't open it. I am thankful that I can now open it. I was hungry when I couldn't open it, so I walked to the kitchen. This was a little difficult to do without depth perception. I microwaved vegetarian corn dogs from Trader Joe's. I do this weird thing where I eat a lot of vegetarian food even though I'm no longer a vegetarian. I guess I got used to it from when I was a vegetarian. Plus I discovered recently that vegetarian food is pretty cheap at Trader Joe's. I used to not eat it so much because it's really expensive at most grocery stores.

I am not interested in politics. I used to be interested in politics, until Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and still won the election. After that, I thought, Why should I care? I felt like what the people thought didn't matter. And then the 2004 election came around and the republicans seemed to have stolen the election with dirty tricks.

What's the point of voting? My vote doesn't count. I'm not going to vote in the next election. Maybe I would if I didn't live in a state where the majority always votes for the democratic candidate. I also wouldn't vote if I lived in a state where the majority always votes republican. Although I did when I lived in Utah.

Plus I'm not sure if I'm registered to vote. If I register, I'm afraid that I will be called for jury duty.

I have never served jury duty, although I have gotten a bunch of notices for it. I always received one a few days before I was supposed to move to another state, so I always ignored it.

I looked up the difference between a democracy and a republic this morning. I was interested because I thought they were the same thing, which is strange since the two parties are totally different. I found out that the government of a democracy rules according to their whims and the government of a republic seem to rule according to laws. I think the two parties are confused. They seemed to have mixed this up.

I watched a show called the UFO files on the History channel a few days ago. It was about our presidents' knowledge of UFOs. According to the program, some presidents are less knowledgeable than other presidents. Republicans seems to be "in the know" about UFOs, while Democrats are not told about these things. Ronald Reagan may be the one exception.

I am going to rewrite an application essay for grad school tonight. I will probably have to do a different version of it for each school. I am going to start on that now.