Ejaculations of a Perverse Adult

xxxmas spirit

2011-12-19T10:44:00.000-08:00

My six-song Christmas EP is now available, thanks to the fantastic writer and photographer Ashley Inguanta, who encouraged me to create more material. Bring more glamour, obscenity and slightly sloppy DIY dance music into your holiday! Imma make it self-determined pricing, so pay what you will via paypal to timjy@sbcglobal.net and I'll send the download link! XOXOXO

Merry XXXmas... War is ON!!

2011-12-14T08:23:00.000-08:00

I am THRILLED to share with you ANOTHER new holiday classic.

This one is a very special gift for my atheist nearest and dearest.

This song addresses the question: Have the inclusive language-minded indeed, as Rick Perry and his ilk accuse, declared a war on Christmas? And answers YES! If a war is what they want, let’s give them a war! Declare war on Christmas! Death to all believers!

SMOOCHES! XOXOXOXOXO MERRIEST XXXMAS!!!

War on Christmas by Tim Jones-Yelvington

Sequins is the Reason for the Season

2011-12-11T17:43:00.001-08:00

Hello lovelies, here is a little x-mas bon mot to help you celebrate the holidays in style. Enjoy!

I Can No Longer Contain Myself

2011-12-06T12:44:00.000-08:00

We have come to the time of the year when people start making their lists of their favorite books of the year, and so I am going to make my list, here are the FIVE best books of 2011 according to TIM JONES-YELVINGTON:

1. They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, by Elizabeth Colen
2. They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, by John Jodzio
3. They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, by TIM JONES-YELVINGTON
4. They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, by Sean Lovelace
5. They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, by Mary Miller

I had to list our book, MY book, five times because it has five authors and each of them have their own book inside this book. This book has so many authors, IT CAN BARELY CONTAIN ITSELF. Ba-dum-bum.

Hey! Did you know I published a book this year, and that it was in THEY COULD NO LONGER CONTAIN THEMSELVES, a multi-author volume from Rose Metal Press!? And did you know that my contribution was called, EVAN'S HOUSE AND THE OTHER BOYS WHO LIVE THERE? And that I never got around to posting about MY BOOK on my neglected personal blog because WELL FOR NO GOOD REASON. Did you know that we had a release party in Chicago where I attached Pizzazz, the lead singer of the Misfits (from JEM) to a hot pink feathered hat and then I WERKED that shit?

The book received a number of really lovely reviews that I should have linked here on the blog, but since I did not, I will focus on the two loveliest, which I am calling the loveliest because they focus the most on ME!!

Here's an excerpt from Amy Kates' review at flashfiction.net:

The collection’s most palpable sense of want, of stifled desire, of lightning-quick loneliness lives under the roof of Tim Jones-Yelvington’s “Evan’s House and the Other Boys Who Live There.”

...and Terri Solomon's at Lambda Literary:

If you prefer a depiction of life that’s candy-coated, yet calorie-free, I’d avoid “Evan’s House and the Other Boys Who Live There.” It’s dense with the harsh realities of adult living. In one section, Evan’s boyfriend Patrick details his frustration and disappointment with his partner; Patrick is unable to control Evan’s drinking and his general self-destructive behavior.

“As I clutch his shoulder with one hand and dab the blood from his face with the other, I think maybe this is love. Maybe love is holding another person’s potential when they’re too weak to hold it themselves,” says Patrick, as he cleans Evan’s face from a bar incident Evan can’t remember. In the world of Tim Jones-Yelvington, this is love—a little desperate and codependent, but also wonderfully human.

Click the links to read the rest.

Jonathan Messinger also did a lovely capsule review for Time Out Chicago where he called my chapbook Elizabeth Colen's "punch drunk" counterpart, and I cannot imagine a more delightful description.

This is the part where I talk about how honored I am to be in this collection with these four other authors, and how wonderful their books are, and I am, and they are, and it was also awesome to get to read w/ the two dudes when they came to Chicago for our book release and I especially liked the part where John Jodzio took off his shirt and gave us a view of his divine nips. That bitch is a silver fox.

THEY COULD NO LONGER CONTAIN THEMSELVES IS THE PERFECT GIFT FOR THAT FICTION LOVER IN YOUR LIFE.

THEY COULD NO LONGER CONTAIN THEMSELVES IS A MAGIC OBJECT OF LUSCIOUSNESS.

THEY COULD NO LONGER CONTAIN THEMSELVES IS EVEN BETTER THAN A BAG OF BATH BOMBS FROM LUSH.

THEY COULD NO LONGER CONTAIN THEMSELVES RENDERS ORGASMS OBSOLETE.

Hey! Wasn't this post, which is about six months overdue, just marvelously, hilariously self indulgent and clever?

Buy my book.

Listen to Indie Lit's First Pop Record!

2011-12-06T09:07:00.001-08:00

Extra special holiday surprise!! -- Interested in previewing "indie lit's" first pop record? For anybody who paypals me $5 today (timjy@sbcglobal.net), I will send you a download link for a 5-song EP of material from my LIT DIVA EXTRAORDINAIRE project. I will also mail you a surprise book... spread the word!

We couldn't flush the toilet.

2011-12-01T08:31:00.001-08:00

This week does not seem to be a very good week for anyone, in a way that makes me believe in things like astrology, or at least some kind of cyclical collective energy that shapes the tempers or experiences of everyone.

I wrote something very, very silly as a judge for htmlgiant's Tournament of Book Shit, that should go up soon, that will be fun.

That has nothing to do with what I opened this entry talking about.

A good friend is coping with the yuck side of a chronic mental health stuff, my partner lost an old friend, a friend who was like family to someone else whom my partner cares about a great deal, my partner has work-related stress, I have work-related stress, yesterday one of my co-workers panicked for a split second thinking she might have accidentally sent a really rough draft email template intended for specific parties to our entire listserv, and she said, That would be so in keeping with today. (Evidently, with all of our todays). Two days ago, the water was not working at the building that houses our office, nobody could flush the toilet bowl or wash their hands. Unflushable shit. And then this morning, it took an hour to get to work on public transit, which should never happen ever. I had time to watch yesterday's episode of Top Model in its entirety, which is a sign of a very bad commute.

Speaking of -- Team Angelea, y'all. Triumph of the hood.

Last weekend, after I wrote that first confessional entry, I spent the following morning reading Interview magazine because I downloaded the Interview app on my ipad. It was delicious -- in one of the interviews, Daphne Guiness was throwing Isabella Blow's name around -- Issie this, Issie that, so so casually, I almost exploded. In another, Chloe Moretz was super adorable swooning over Ryan Gosling with Drew Barrymore, talking all about her obsession with the movie DRIVE. But then after staring at picture after picture of wealthy, beautiful young things who are scions of supermodels and movie stars -- folks like Patrick Schwarzenegger, who is clearly the first in a new and genetically superior race of human beings, or Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore's child, whose band seemed to be getting this lovely full page profile only because he is Thurston and Kim's kid.... they have not recorded a record and are not even sure they will remain a band after they graduate from college -- I felt ugly and fat and disgusting and never wanted to leave the house ever again. I suddenly understood just a tiny bit more why all the young women in my Women's and Gender Studies courses were obsessed with analyzing magazines. I might have to delete the Interview app.

Here is something else I never shared on this blog, and should have. Last spring, Jacqueline Klimas, a photojournalism student at Medill at Northwestern got in touch with me and requested to profile me for her final project. She found out about me via Orange Alert's Jason Behrends. So she trailed me getting ready and then performing at a reading, at one of my dance classes, working in my cubicle, watching television, eating dinner and cuddling with my boyfriend, and created this lovely photo essay. If this were in print, someday it would be a collector's item. I mean, really. Also, if you poke around in her photostream (pages 4-5, at present), you'll find some of the images she omitted from the final set of ten.

Love to you all.

I am going to attempt to make this blog "confessional."

2011-11-24T09:12:00.000-08:00

Gosh, you know, I have not updated this blog in so, so long. When I launched my website, my plan was to use this as the "announcements" page, so that I would not have to so frequently update the website, but so many things have happened -- readings, publications, even fundraisers, that I have not bothered to announce here, does anyone really read this? Is anyone reading? And then on the rare occasion that I do get my act together to write something w/ content, something analytical, I usually post it at Big Other, because, even though that place feels like it's running on fumes (hopefully I don't get fired for saying that), I still assume it has a larger and broader audience than this long dormant personal blog that isn't even running on life support. I blame my poor curation on facebook -- it is so easy to post an announcement about something there and feel like I have done my job, often I feel like facebook replaces or gobbles up the rest of the internet, which I think is Zuckerberg's goal.

Earlier this week, I got sucked into this very important conversation launched by J.S.A. Lowe at htmlgiant (and continued in Kate Zambreno's excellent post at her own blog) about confessional blogging, and about women's confessional blogs, or the feminized confessional blog, which is so much about formalizing a public mechanism for coping with or confronting the shame that is endemic to so many of us "others" in this culture, and is so often ridiculed, you know, the very same obsessive focus on the self that makes these blog projects so liberatory also draws some ugly shaming or re-shaming criticism.

And then my friend Mike Kitchell and I got into this conversation on gchat where we tried to figure out if whether could name any confessional blogs authored by men, blogs that are as intensely confessional, and that move between the confessional and the theoretical, that crackle as fantastically, as those by Kate Zambreno, or Dodie Bellamy, or Bhanu Kapil, and we could not think of any, and Mike was like, This is what I have been trying to do with some of my recent htmlgiant posts, and I was like, You know, I need to embrace the faggot confessional. My project has been so much about masking, transforming or glamourizing the self, and a kind of camp, histrionic, exaggerated, dramatized, or ritualized confessional is actually a critical part of my Lit Diva text's attempted pathos -- I think it would bring a fascinating tension or richness or something if I started using this space to talk about myself more. I have never liked the binary between "performance persona" and "true self" (that's me up there, y'all, the glitter's as much me as the unshaven bathrobed grossness that's sitting on the couch typing this, and "self" feels, emotes and has materiality, but does not transcend, does not "exist" separate from the processes, interactions and contexts that construct it), and I am hoping that maybe radical juxtaposition of artifice and confession will help fuck shit up.

I tend to think of myself as very open, I do not like the compartmentalizing of the self that the bureaucratic institutions that many of us interact with on a regular basis either require or encourage (or coerce, getting inside us and causing us to regulate and normalize ourselves without even realizing that is what we are doing), and I have written quite a bit about my embrace of gossip as an aesthetic practice, but when I look at my online "persona" on facebook, what have you, I realize that I am openly vulnerable basically never. Most of the time I am sort of just histrionically barking things about my favorite glamorous media products, like, DAPHNE ZUNIGA! BWAH! In 2001-2002, when I was depressed-ish and combusting as a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence, I kept a livejournal full of performative yelps for sympathy and attention (I have never taken it down, maybe if you're nice to me, I'll send you the link), but that was the last time I have used the internet as a space for sharing the kind of stuff we tend to associate with "interiority."

Sometimes I think the reason I don't share much vulnerability is because my life is basically fine now -- I mostly dig my job, relationship, artistic practice, family, friends, I don't really have anything to process or any real guts that need spilling. But then I remember that just a few weeks ago, I felt so overcome by anxieties about my professional and artistic practices and trajectories that I literally ended up biting my arm as hard as I could and leaving behind deep teeth marks because I couldn't figure out where else to stick all the feeling. The core problem I am facing is not a very interesting one -- it is all about trying to find some balance between work, art, my intimate relationship (while also knowing that "balance" is sort of bullshit), feeling spread very thin, and feeling like I am not accomplishing everything I am capable of accomplishing in any one of these areas, wanting more money, more recognition, more freedom, more time, feeling critical of these desires, wanting to be better at what I do, wanting not to disappoint people, wanting this ongoing performance project to become more self-supporting and sustainable. The work piece is probably the most confusing and scary at this moment -- I love my workplace and the work that we do and my coworkers and also don't really know exactly how to progress, where I want to progress, in order to develop more skills, expertise and yes, eventually make more money, which I feel is necessary to secure the freedom and mobility I want for my intimate relationship and artistic practice. I have a number of ideas about what I might do long-term, if I stay in this field of grassroots social justice work and/or philanthropy and the tiny lil' social justice-oriented corner of the nonprofit sector, to enhance the contribution I am able to make, but all of these ideas, in the immediate short-term, are eventually going to require a great expenditure of time, energy and possibly dollars on my part, and on any given week, I often find my motivation and priorities flip-flopping tremendously between my paid work and my art, which is sort of, you know, scary, what am I willing to put in to get the outcomes I want, what sacrifices will it require, I don't really want to sacrifice anything, I like all the things I am doing, but what I am doing right now really is not going to keep working forever, it barely works now.

And jesus, my body, I have not even mentioned this, my health, I really need to get the excercise thing under control in a sustainable way, I feel like schlubby shit like all the time and it has a very negative effect on all the rest of this.

And money, God. Makeup is so fucking expensive, y'all. And I have so many places I want to TRAVEL. Plus I owe Peter like $700 for plane tickets.

I actually really like meetings. I know this makes me a big weirdo. But sitting at my desk all days just DRAINS me. And I love watching people plan and bounce ideas off one another and disagree and resolve issues and whatever. I'm probably one of the only extroverts in the "lit scene," like in terms of where I draw my energy, it's from other people, I definitely need time to myself periodically, but too much solitude makes me feel sleepy and disengaged. Omigod, going to conferences like AWP and &Now is the best thing ever, but also the worst thing ever, because I go into such withdrawal after, I'm depressed for like a week at least. I think I am still missing San Diego and &Now and that happened weeks and weeks ago. I think this makes me so different than so many writers, who might enjoy these occasions, but also have to do so much to rev themselves up for all that social interaction. I often feel shy and awkward and anxious, but I also feed on it. Anxiety is maybe one of my biggest issues, because it fucks me up a lot, but I also think I sort of need it, I am maybe an adrenaline junkie, I need adrenaline almost as much as I need copious amounts of caffeine, and I feel like a lot of my adrenaline, my stimulation comes from the mix of terror and excitement that accompanies social interaction.

I used to watch Star Trek the Next Generation a lot while I was growing up, and some of my favorite scenes were the scenes in the conference room. Is that what they called it? The conference room? I have had this fantasy for years of being very knowledgeable in my field of practice, so that when the Captain asks me a question, I will be able to rattle off a response super competently and effortlessly, like the characters on Star Trek. I am starting to feel more like this in my current work, I have been doing it long enough, there are definitely times I feel very in command of my ideas and interactions, but there are also still times when I'm like Buh-- Buh-- Buh-- As a broad generalization, I am still much better with conceptual conversations than with concrete management and logistics. I've got a much, much better grasp of the concrete, tangible details of folks' lives and work than I did when I entered this field, and I draw upon this knowledge a lot, but sometimes people will ask me a very basic question, for instance, say, about how they should fill out a certain field on our grant application form, and I feel like my answer will be less sharp than when I am talking about things like our grantmaking strategy, movement building, youth leadership development. I love to do things like analyze the patterns we are seeing in our work. I feel like if I can better hone some of the concrete management and interactive skills, it will be very useful for me, especially considering I think my long term goal is to become some kind of consultant. Many nonprofit folks become consultants as a kind of quasi-retirement, but I think it is my actual career goal, to the extent that I have one, I think consulting would very much suit my temperament and assets.

And then, you know, in terms of the artistic practice, dressing up, the sequins, etc, this has been on the one hand so liberating, makes me feel like I can tap into a power and fierceness I cannot access any other way, and then on the other hand, it only contributes to my anxiety, you know, I am not even close to famous but already I sort of feel this weight that comes from doing something notorious, even though I am not really selling anything, there is still this way that I am putting my body and "self" out there as a product (and at the same time, although I think of this art as very embodied, I do not necessarily think of these faces I give as "my" face so much as my canvases -- like any artistic product, they are very much mine and yet not mine at all) it is difficult not to imagine a number of external critiques. On the one hand, I worry about people I care about feeling alienated by the artifice, especially people who have known me for a very long time, while on the other hand, I worry I am actually not doing enough to make this total art, that if I were truly dedicated to this project, I would be doing more to carry the performance persona into my everyday life. At &Now, we were sitting at a table for a while talking to Noy Holland, and she seemed so nice and "down to Earth," and I found myself toning down some of the mannerisms that usually accompany my costumes, because I wanted her to like me, and to see the sweetness people have been telling me I emanate throughout my entire life, a sweetness that I am simultaneously terrified of losing and obsessed with obliterating, yet ultimately probably have very little control over either way.

This distinction between performance persona and an everyday, "true" self is an interesting one, because while on the one hand, I actively reject it, on the other, I cannot escape it, because although it is more ideological, constructed, discursive, than actual, that discourse, because it so dominant in our culture, has material effects, people are likely to believe in this distinction whether I embrace it or not, and that belief makes the distinction "real," in a way. I mean, doesn't so much of celebrity media coverage purport to unmask a "true" celebrity self that is hidden from the masses? I think this is why more total artists inhabit their performances to their furthest limits, because how else are you to challenge these tendencies, it is not easy to end the world.

I have nothing left to say about all this, so I am going to end by doing what I have been intending to do for months, which is link to recent projects, which I will space out over a number of posts, and I am going to begin with one of the most recent -- this year's Queer issue of [PANK], for which I once again served as editor. I am very happy with how this year's issue came together, and hope you will read it, "cover to cover."

2011-09-22T20:09:00.000-07:00

Spoiler Alert

2011-04-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

After the cataclysm, TJY becomes the last remaining DIVA OF DANCE.

2011-02-08T20:29:00.001-08:00

16 Sequined Encounters at AWP, in BIG OTHER

2011-01-25T21:24:00.000-08:00

I started a secret tumblr.

Here is a password hint:

"Bristol likes Levi to fuck her with his __________ mask on..."

SUPER SPECIAL GIVEAWAY

2011-01-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

edit: I am extending the deadline until midnight CST!

Every single person who pay pals $5 to timjy@sbcglobal.net by 4:00 (CST) today will receive a selection of FIVE books and/or magazines from my personal collection.

Anyone who pay pals $10 will receive a full season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD, after which I will send a selection of ten books/magazines as above.

2010-12-22T15:32:00.000-08:00

Why Sequins? (Manifesto)

My Facebook Friends are Tim Jones-Yelvingtoning (And So Should You)

2010-12-21T10:18:00.001-08:00

Robb Q. Telfer: That just made me tim jones-yelvington all over my new blouse!

Karen Oliveto: I am planning to Tim Jones-Yelvington with friends later this evening.

Erin Teegarden: My boyfriend and I are going to Tim Jones-Yelvington before the lunar eclipse.

Eun Young Lee: I am going to Tim Jones-Yelvington with my grandma to celebrate her birthday!!! <3

LIT DIVA EXTRAORDINAIRE

2010-12-16T08:54:00.000-08:00

Yo I’m a lit diva extraordinaire

And how I’m selling out my chapbooks

You say it ain’t fair

My shit is so tight

They ain’t no limit

Just like my ass

You wanna rim it?

TJY is an event horizon. TJY traps light. Paparazzi photographed TJY wearing a black veil. Paparazzi found TJY in a cemetery, under cover of darkness. They found him perched beside an unmarked grave. They found him sucking one of those super skinny cigarettes.

TJY shed a single, sequined tear.

A reporter asked him, “Who are you mourning?”

He answered, “After the death of the author comes the rise of the LITERARY DIVA EXTRAORDINAIRE.”

Which rise is chronicled in TJY’s new TEXT. Which TEXT cannot be bought in stores, for it must be FOUND. Which text TJY has launched a nationwide, seventeen city tour to promote.

TJY appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, where Dave hung him over a tank of water and asked the audience, WILL HE FLOAT? TJY sat on Craig Ferguson’s couch while Craig joked he gave TJY fellatio in the backroom of a leather bar. On The View, Elizabeth Hasselback said, I think the tea party makes some arguments worth considering, and TJY said, I teabagged your husband last night. TJY taught Ellen how to walk in heels. On the TODAY Show, TJY showed Hoda and Kathie Lee 9 simple ways to glue sequins to their face, just in time for the holiday season.

Each of them asked:

[WHAT ARE YOU?]

I am a total effect body wash. I am the dude that hubbed your bub. I am the seventh sign of an unhealthy scalp. I am the diarrhea you trailed in those wicked woods. I am the Aeron chair you rode down the stairs with a jubilant clamor.

[WHAT ARE YOU?]

I am tense, technological, embodied. I am the sugar train that left your station but came back later with a toot toot toot. I am a facsimile of an etching inspired by a photograph of God.

[WHAT ARE YOU?]

I am timeless scat. I am one-eyed, kohl-eyed, snaked. I’m the sticky on your gut. I am frenzied, gutted clutter. I am actor Chad Michael Murray’s enormous aureoles, and also the man who licked them. I am tight kicks, electric hand claps, an electric bass riff. I am the editor of the esteemed collection, “Very Short Stories Where Bad Things Happen to Babies.”

[WHAT ARE YOU?]

I am the glass shield that sits above the food on a buffet line. I am an overpriced decorative sock. I am prevalent use of groove. I’m the earworm hook from that song you wrote about my ladyparts. I’m a heave, I’m a shudder, I’m a ho. I am the most charismatic British gym queen you ever touched.

[WHAT ARE YOU?]

I am the composer and lyricist of the soon-to-be hit single SEXT ME, a spirited dance pop response to the Brett Favre sexting scandal that signals my emergence as a !!!MULTI-PLATFORM MEDIA PHENOMENON!!!

So we are out of the closet but into what? What new unbounded spatiality?

Sexting sexting 1, 2, 3

This one goes out to all the boys wanna get with me

I’mma text you a pic of whatchu wanna see

I’mma show you my coo-coo-coochie

You can have that shit for free

Refrain:

Sext me sext me 1, 2, 3

I’mma sext you and you can sext me

Sext me sext me 1, 2, 3

I’mma sext you and you can sext me

(I’mma sext you and you can sext me)

Repeat after me: WHAT NEW UNBOUNDED SPATIALITY?

Come on baby show me what you got

You can even make it a come shot

You’re just my kind of man

What’s a matter dontcha have a data plan?

I can’t hear you!

You can wiggle your dick into your camera phone

You can show me how you’re gonna make me moan

You know what I like

Sext me sext me sext me sext me

…the room the den the attic the basement the house the bar the university some new enclosure who’s door like Kafka’s door produces the expectation of a fresh air and a light of illumination that never arrives…

I’m bringing words

Back to the people

This my literary church

Go on and lick my steeple

conjugations

2010-12-14T20:48:00.000-08:00

Adam Robinson and Christopher Newgent Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Adam Robinson and Christopher Newgent are Tim Jones-Yelvingtoning. Adam Robinson and Christopher Newgent Tim Jones-Yelvington. Adam Robinson and Christopher Newgent will Tim Jones-Yelvington. Adam Robinson and Christopher Newgent could Tim Jones-Yelvington. Adam Robinson and Tim Jones-Yelvington were to Tim Jones-Yelvington. Should Adam Robinson and Christopher Newgent have Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned?

Tim Jones-Yelvington is not a person. Tim Jones-Yelvington is a verb.

2010-12-11T17:26:00.000-08:00

Molly Gaudry Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Allen Makere Tim Jones Yelvingtoned. Lindsay Hunter Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Kate Zambreno Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Zach Dodson Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Cynthia Barounis Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Carlos Torres Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Andy Farkas Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Boogie McClarin Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Thomas Kearnes Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Sosi Mikaelian Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. James Tadd Adcox Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Elijah M Jenkins Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Andrew Tibbetts Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Adam Ballard Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Carrie Brunken Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Allison Gruber Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Claudia Inter Stellar Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Matt Bell Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Diana Satruc Tim Jones-Yelvintoned. Kathryn Regina Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Erin Teegarden Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Brian Oliu Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Salome Chasnoff Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. TJ Forrester Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Steven Trull Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Peter Nicholson Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Ben Sher Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Matthew Didier Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. David Woodruff Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Angi Becker Stevens Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Kathleen Rooney Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Gabe Sopocy Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Robert Vaughan Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Carrie Murphy Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Rich Seeber Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Laura Szumowski Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Andrea Kneeland Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Rebekah Silverman Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Mel Bosworth Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Ken Tsang Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Erin Fitzgerald Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Mark Bowman Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Ian M McCarty Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Laura Stempel Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Donna D. Vitucci Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jessa Marsh Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Kevin Killian Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Meg Pokrass Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Ethel Rohan Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Ben Tanzer Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Peter Andserson Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Matt Walker Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Rosanne Shilskey Cornett Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Lindsay Tigue Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Evonne Rodriguez Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Patrick Allen Carberry Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Rose Hunter Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Robyn Pennacchia Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Richard Rodrigues Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Nick Demske Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Missy Bradshaw Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Kate Durbin Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jacob S. Knabb Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Alexia Rice-Henry Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jennifer Kane Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Roxane Gay Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Patrick Vaill Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. David W. Meredith Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Meredith Rose Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Stephen Tully Dierks Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Ellen Parker Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Fred Sasaki Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Rebecca Black Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Steve Yelvington Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Mmike Kk’itchell Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Alle Malice Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Paula Bomer Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. M Shelly Conner Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jereme Dean Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jesse Herbach Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Brandon Will Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Mary Hamilton Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Extie Ecks Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Samantha Irby Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Vee Katz Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Amanda Glasbrenner Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jax Jackson Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Beth Cox Thomas Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Lance Reynald Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jackson Nieuwland Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Elizabeth Colen Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Daniel Allen Cox Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Marie Walz Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Frank Labaty Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Marcelle Heath Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Yvette Wielhouwer Managan Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Leonardo Urbina Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Nancy Stebbins Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jeff Spelman Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jennifer Tani Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Dave Clapper Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Aerin Bender-Stone Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jenni Royer Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Yasmin Nair Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Katrina Gray Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Heather Austin Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Dana Jones Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Christopher Heavener Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Alec Niedenthal Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Chris Keech Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Kyle Minor Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jojo Baby Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Tom Faber Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. James Kennedy Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Katherine Randle Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Rachel Swirsky Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Kitana E Andrews Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. A Ruth Yelvington Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Amanda Marbais Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Adam D Jameson Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Mairead Case Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Rinku Sen Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Michael Schaub Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Hannah Wagner Jacoby Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Simon A. Smith Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Allison Dunn Burque Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jac Jemc Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Megan Milks Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Martin Seay Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jami Sailor Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Rashida Freedom Black Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Lauren Bauser Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Nicky Tidd Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Heather Fowler Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Heidi Norton Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jason My Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Justin Sirois Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Douglas Campbell Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Francesca Royster Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Cortney Simmons McClellan Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Mark Doten Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Sheila McDaniel Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Sarah Einstein Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Amber Sparks Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Trystan Angel Reese Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Alissa Bader Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Clifford Garstang Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Judith Kelsey-Powell Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Doug Paul Case Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Joel Lehi Organista Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Francesca Camillo Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Consuella Brown Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Joanna Gardner-Huggett Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Lara Brooks Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Shanti Perez Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Nancy A Carter Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Beth Happy Osborn Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Blake Butler Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Robert Alan Wendeborn Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jim Wall Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Meg Leary Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jason Behrends Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Benjamin Engel Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Eric Beeny Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Lily Hoang Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Abhiskek Afreen Chaudhary Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Scott Garson Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Pepe Nero Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Christopher Phelps Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Darby Larson Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Annie Weinberg Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Mary Miller Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Tara Laskowski Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Chelsea Hermsen Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Chelsea Ricker Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Brandi Homan Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. August Evans Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Aileen Lau Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Robb Q. Telfer Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Dora Fisher Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Sheldon Lee Compton Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Alex Poeter Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Mallory Harlen Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Adam Sheriff Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. A. Colin Raymond Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Paige Yelvington Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Tom Wilson Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Peter Cole Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Mason Strand Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Steven Luros Holliday Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. David Rylance Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Cristen Jenkins Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. John Fanestil Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. TreZure Moné Taylor Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Emma Smith-Stevens Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Joanne Archibald Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Deanna Zandt Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Luis Roberto Castelló Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Frank Edwards Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Alison Hanold Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jill Summers Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Lynda Wellhausen Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Kim L. Hunt Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Sean Rohwedder Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Sarah Virginia Schroeder Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Stacey Osiecki Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Tony M. Murchison Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Ross Middleton Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Kyle Curry Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Missy Lobes Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Jamie Kazay Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Robert McDonald Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Michelle Salazar Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Mario Garcia Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Matt Seigel Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Christopher Kelly Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Troy Urquhart Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Seth Dodson Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Alejandro Acierto Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Gema Gaete Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Gerardo Perez Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. John Jodzio Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Albulena Bruncaj Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Scott McClanahan Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Davis Schneiderman Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Karen Michel Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Alston D’Silva Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Ann Leicht Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Anna Jones Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Christian Bell Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Kyle Beachy Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Margaret E. Bradford Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Amber Smock Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Bridget Yelvington Eaton Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Donora Hillard Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned. Sam J. Miller Tim Jones-Yelvingtoned.

TONIGHT...

2010-11-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

I will be "coming out" as a multiplatform media phenomenon.

Meaning I am going sing. POP SONGS I WROTE. And other surprises.

Come cackle at my downfall:

THE REC ROOM: COMING OUT PARTY
November 3 · 8:00pm - 11:00pm
at BLACK ROCK
3614 N. Damen
Chicago, IL

It’s your big debut. Time to show the world who you really are. Time to let the community know you’re eligible; time to tell your family the news. No matter which way you’re “out and proud”, at some point you’ve had to confess, declare, emerge. So consider this your quinceañera, your debutante ball, your coming of age. Tonight, rec roomers present creative work related to all kinds of “comings out”.

With performances by:

Tim Jones-Yelvington
AD Jameson
Allison Gruber
Ian Baaske
Mairead Case
Brandon Will
Gregg Shapiro
Anndell Quintero
Ellen Wadey

Queer Pank

2010-10-22T08:10:00.000-07:00

I guest edited the October issue of Pank to feature Queer poetry and prose.

"Patroclus, in the plain and sad way he will become famous for, says that he’ll fuck her if she fucks him first. She is a little surprised; she hasn’t ever really imagined doing that to Chiron. But Patroclus is already on his back, lifting both of his knees, two fingers in his asshole. It’s all right, he says. I’ve done it a few times before, it won’t hurt me too much. She says, How do I. Patroclus says, Spit in your hand and make your thingy all wet, then put it inside me, here. She has barely entered him when she already starts coming. Patroclus bursts into laughter beneath her. Even his laughter is plain and sad. He is wincing. She is already imagining arrows in suggestive body parts, drowning, pornographic sketches, obsessive dreams, forest stalking. Patroclus asks, What, is this your first time? Or just your first time with a boy? Her come leaking out of his asshole, making its own shapes on the ground. Fragrance of dead leaves, seaweed. She says, What’s a boy."

--from "Graphy, or The Girlhood of Achilles," by Elaine Castillo.

Said Blake Butler on my facebook wall:

"The Pank Queer issue is mega excellent...Reading through piece by piece is delicious."

Read the radness: Pank: The Queer Issue.

This picture is one of the hottest things I have ever seen in my entire life.

2010-10-22T08:08:00.001-07:00

Me and a Cow

2010-07-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

2010-06-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

Wore stiletto boots for reading last night.

First time in heels.

Actually kinda liked the way they shape your posture and stretch the foot.

Used to dance ballet. Feel like I can handle that.

It is cool to squat and actually be more comfortable than in regular shoes.

Like doing Courtney Love-ish poses with spread legs.

Did not like the instability of the spiked heel. Felt like I was going to fall. Feels like skinny heel will break off from weight.

Requires balance and keeping weight to front of foot.

Did not know abt this part.

People talk mostly abt posture and what they do to your feet and back.

Mine were covered in black sequins.

2010-06-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

I want this to be my Wikipedia page.

Reasons I Feel Like a Fraud

2010-06-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

1. I've never written a successful character-driven realist short story.
2. I've never written a successful sentence-driven hybrid literary text object.
3. One of my best-received stories, a prize winner, is a joke. (I don't mean this as an expression, like, "What a fucking joke," I mean literally, like "That's a funny joke, haha).
4. Blake Butler said humor is for cowards.*
5. My most passionate manuscripts are sitting on my desk as drafts. Some haven't been touched for nearly a year.
6. A month ago, I wrote and workshopped a new story that has so far met with the same fate.
7. I don't know how to use threaded imagery.
8. I am too influenced by/interested in pop culture.
9. I am too influenced by/interested in teenagers.
10. I am too influenced by/interested in sex I'm afraid of having.
11. Some of my published flash fictions are probably (ideas for) long stories with no follow-through.
12. Someone I trust thinks sections from my chapbook should be expanded into a novel, and I might agree, but I don't know how to write it.
13. Presses have offered to consider longer works and I haven't had anything to send them (opportunity w/o preparation).
14. I've never been published in an establishment journal. (As in one w/ some level of name recognition outside "indie lit" community, ie, University publication with some history).
15. I'm undisciplined.
16. I don't have a daily writing habit.
17. I spend more time on Google Reader than writing.
17. I'm better known for my blog comments than my writing.
18. I'm better known for my costumes than my texts.
19. I don't know how to write or talk about aesthetics. Sometimes I'm afraid I'm not smart enough to post at Big Other.
20. I've never read Deleuze, Barthes, Bloom, etc.
21. I've never read Hemingway, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nabokov, Borges or Beckett.
22. During the htmlgiant gender conversation, I had to wikipedia Artaud.
23. I keep saying I'm going to make a website but haven't done it.
24. I keep saying I'm going to make posters for readings but haven't done it.
25. I keep saying I'm going to make "lit crafts" to sell at readings, but haven't done it.
26. Jason Behrends solicited me for the Orange Alert podcast two months ago and I still haven't sent him my recording.
27. I was supposed to review Joe Young's Easter Rabbit and never did.
28. Scott McLanahan sent me a review copy of "Stories II" and I still haven't read it, even though I love Scott McLanahan.

*This is a paraphrase, and Blake said this during a discussion of live readings, in response the argument that humor is safer at readings, he wasn't trashing humor.

This list is meant to articulate an emotional space, not my actual values or beliefs. Many of these items are derived from fucked up external validation systems. The goal of this particular post was not to deconstruct these systems, but please feel free to do so in the comment thread.

The best response to this post is probably: OK. Now get over it and get to work.

Blake Van Der Beek

2010-05-11T14:24:00.000-07:00

announcements, links, etc.

2010-02-03T14:29:00.000-08:00

I seem to suck at blogging elsewhere while also blogging here.

January/early February has sorta been my month of print. Several things I still haven't bothered posting (several of which have been posted a ton of other places, so it felt sort-of redundant):

~"Terr-Bear Loves Jimmy" in Ampersand Review. One of my oldest stories. Not sure I still sound or write like this?? This can be read in its entirety online, but I recommend purchasing the issue/supporting small presses. Includes writing by Jamie Iredell, Spencer Dew, Meg Pokrass and others.

~"Bathhouse in 5 Senses" in Sleepingfish. Issue co-edited by Gary Lutz. Contributor list is pretty incredible and humbling. Check out Derek White's badass "linear narrative sequence" constructed w/ excerpts from each piece.

~My story "The Lawn Guard" in Pank 4. This story placed second in Pank's 1,001 Awesome Words Contest. This issue is stuffed with shiny sparklies.

***

I will admit to being sad my nominated story was not selected for Best of the Web. Kinda taking it a little harder than I've taken anything writing-related in a while. I rarely personalize things. Still processing why this feels a little rougher. I usually try to keep shit to myself, but I feel comfortable being a little vulnerable re: this one, because I think sometimes that kind of openness can be helpful to others. I think we sometimes assume folks are impervious and more confident/well-adjusted than ourselves until we witness otherwise. That said, this is the only space in which I will exhibit said vulnerability, because this is the only space that is exclusively mine. I think it's tacky to do it elsewhere, as I'd more or less be shitting on other people I think are awesome. Please be clear this abt my own emotional state and has nothing to do w/ anybody else, esp. awesome selecting editors who decision-making processes I do not envy one iota.

All that said... I am excited to see some of the great stuff that was chosen, and especially happy to see recognition for strong younger publications like Everyday Genius, Necessary Fiction, Wigleaf, all of whose support I've seriously valued.

***

Christopher Heavener compares my reading persona to musician Karin Driejer Andersson (Fever Ray, The Knife) and J.T. LeRoy

***

One more bit of news. My chapbook "Evan's House and the Other Boys who Live There," a finalist in both Pank's first chapbook contest and Rose Metal Press's chapbook contest, will be published in Spring 2011 by Rose Metal as one-fifth of a multi-author volume. This volume will feature fellow finalists Mary Miller, Elizabeth Colen and John Jodzio, as well as a reprint of Sean Lovelace's fantastic "How Some People Like Their Eggs."

I got the go-ahead to tell people abt this early last week, but have been very hesitant to do so... in part because several of this year's semi-finalists were good friends and/or friendly acquaintances of mine, which made me feel a little uncomfortable, and in part because to my knowledge, none of the other folks have mentioned it publicly yet, and I felt weird about being the first.

But mostly because I couldn't think of any good reason to announce it. There's no preorder link, nothing to help promote yet, so it feels like announcing it serves little function beyond attracting attention.

Am I announcing it now because this week has felt a little shittier than last week? Yeah, that's maybe one reason. I am perhaps not as grown-up as I'd like to think. But still pretty mature. Hopefully.

I am excited and humbled by the book, and especially by the opportunity to appear alongside Mary and Sean, who are two of my favorites, and to discover Elizabeth and John, who are new to me.

I dug up my old undergraduate art history paper...

2009-12-17T07:57:00.000-08:00

...because I wanted to refer to some of its ideas in a Big Other post...

...and discovered the paper was totally hilarious! ...Some of its sentences are just godawful:

"The artificial light casts a spooky glow over the proceedings, calling forth drunken disorientation in its depressing manifestations."

Goddamn those depressing manifestations!

"Thus, it is simultaneously nostalgic and critical, representing a time that had already begun to fade into the temporal ether."

Gotta watch that temporal ether!

"Regardless of Lautrec’s own orientation toward the female performers of Montmartre, it is clear that multiple and uniquely modern discourses of class, sexuality and celebrity coalesced within these women’s bodies."

Coalesced WITHIN their bodies? Sounds kinky.

"Would that these women could emerge from Lautrec’s canvas to claim agency and tell their own stories of choices made within their alternately constricting and liberating circumstances during an era of social change."

So long as they remember to make choices in passive voice, they will certainly claim agency.

"I imagine May Milton, now reattached to the canvas from which she was once excised, gazing out at contemporary spectators and brazenly declaring, “Gotcha!”"

Lol 4 realz.

SINCE LAST WE MET

2009-12-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

Since last we met:

~My story Brendan Kills appeared in decomp.

~Video of friend of the blog Meg Pokrass reading her (pushcart-nominated) story "What the Doctor Ordered" posted to Monkeybicycle's website. Search her on youtube -- there's lots more where this came from.

~I became a contibutor at "Big Other" and made my first post -- "Why I Dig Dennis Cooper."

~A small piece of mine (also about dennis cooper) appeared in local activist paper AREA Chicago in a collective article on peripheral feminisms.

~FRiGG editor Ellen Parker asked for help pimping the "Write Like Joseph Young" contest, and I do whatever Ellen tells me.

~I went to London, Paris and the Netherlands (Rotterdam, Delft, den Haag, Deventer, Amersfoort, Amsterdam). It was glorious.

~I confirmed I will appear in December's Orange Alert Readings series on December 20. Warning: I might wear makeup.

....and speaking of makeup...

...I have lately been attracted to surfaces. I mean material, surface-level stuff, seemingly "shallow' stuff... like eye makeup, glittery things, spiky pendants, Adam Lambert, Lady Gaga, vinyl couture... am I getting gayer? Maybe?

I spent several weeks obsessively reading about the "club kids" era in NYC, the outlandishly-dressed social circle that revolved around convicted murderer/party promoter Michael Alig, protag of the film Party Monster (and focal point of former "celubutante" James St. James's memoir "Disco Bloodbath.") I'm still not sure what fascinates me about them... the club kids were wildly transgressive but not at all revolutionary. They upset all sorts of conventions re: heteronormativity especially, but the were utterly amoral and had no aim or goal or mission beyond chaotic parties. Moreover, they were completely narcissistic, materialistic, hedonistic... all lookatmelookatmelookatme. Haven't we seen this all before? What about this is fresh or new or intriguing? Why did I spend weeks unable to turn away?

Yet... one gets a sense... or at least I get a sense of chaotic community reading abt and looking at them, and of a sort-of anarchic personal freedom that has maybe always attracted me even as the social movement communities I align myself with are far more oriented toward some more visionary collective liberation.

Many Queer folks have, I think, historically and currently, rejected the distinction between productive and unproductive labor and between surface aesthetics and "deeper meaning" ... I think as some theorists understand this: Because we do not (necessarily) reproduce, we are situated outside and/or have some alternative relationship to heteronormative and capitalist modes of production. We are seen as unproductive, and so many of our "shallow" rituals -- ie urban nightlife -- are politicized by some theorists and critics, are seen as a celebratory embrace of outsider status and a challenge posed to capitalist heteronormativity (of course there's all manner of capitalist and heteronormative ugliness in GLBT and queer nightlife, especially its current manifestation, but that is not really the focus of this post).

I am not really taking the time here to be coherent or accessible or explain whatthefuck I'm talking about... but hopefully it makes some kind of cracked sense.

What I know is... I have developed a newfound fascination with "glamour," particularly outlandish and sometimes grotesque or even cartoonish manifestations of glamour and its images and sensations. And also, I do not necessarily buy into the notion that material interests and an interest in surfaces lacks depth, meaning, value, whatever. I think I will continue (begin) to explore this through language? I think it is taking me somewhere I do not understand.

which books should I bring abroad?

2009-11-16T10:56:00.001-08:00

I haven't done a poll in a while, and kind of miss them.

I'm going to Europe and am obsessing over which books to bring. I'll only be gone ten days, so anticipate bringing 4 or so, and probably I'll only be busy doing Europy things and will finish two at most, right?

Anyway... vote.

I'm Here for Your Entertainment

2009-11-06T08:33:00.000-08:00

"Adam Lambert chose me. I actually despise American Idol (there’s a reason people hate amateur talent shows — why would I want to watch that?) and have never made it through an entire episode. I became interested in Adam Lambert after I saw his Rolling Stone cover plastered all over the city. It’s truly an iconic image. I started thinking I might want to write about him, and then I saw the submissions call for Storyglossia’s musical obsession issue, and that was the push I needed to get going."

"Adam Lambert is himself an adept engineer of others' responses. On a recent magazine cover, widely remarked upon and visible in public space, a neon green snake slithers up his thigh. This image, with its attendant suggestions of sexual prowess, original sin, was Adam Lambert's own idea. He is an artist fully conscious of his own iconography."

"I too have always loved costumes, have latched onto various personas as though they were mine from birth, a quality that comes in handy when getting famous people to take of their clothes."

"When I say I became obsessed with Adam Lambert as I wrote, I’m not exaggerating. Within about a month, he became the third most played artist on my last.fm profile, a profile I’ve kept for over three years. I really did create an Adam Lambert “mii” on my Wii, and one night a month or two ago, my partner was playing a flight simulator game, and our Wii stuck my Adam Lambert mii in a two-seater airplane with him, and for a moment I was legit jealous… of my partner. I was like, “Bitch, step back from my Adam Lambert mii.” I’ve got all the parts picked out for my Adam Lambert Halloween costume. I actually went online and ordered the same eye liner Adam Lambert says is his favorite. I’m probably incriminating myself more than I really want to here."

"He lined my eyes, extended my lashes, spread cream across my cheeks. I watched myself becoming something unfamiliar, feline, some jungle animal that stalks glossy, long-limbed creatures."

I remembered a magazine article where the reporter called Adam Lambert's a "show pony voice," and felt the expression "show pony" gallop across my tongue, tingly. I watched him bend over to color my lips, felt his breath, looked down his torso to where his abdomen met his hips, his legs spread in a plie second position, thighs filling his pants. I thought about ponies, their haunches, how they buck and thrash.

"I think one of the themes of these stories is iconography, what does it accomplish for us? And what does it mean to develop these incredibly intense emotions that have more to do with our own fantasies and ideas than with real people? One of my favorite writers is Dennis Cooper, and one of things I appreciate about him is how he explores the darker impact of our becoming obsessed with our narratives about the people we desire, what we believe they represent, rather than experiencing them as individuals."

"Briefly, before I think better of it, I'd like to pose a question to the blog's readers. Purely hypothetical, of course: Is it possible to fuck a voice?"

Read the interview in Storyglossia's blog.

READ my story "Seducing Adam Lambert" in Storyglossia's "Music & Obsession" issue.

2009-11-04T13:02:00.000-08:00

I really like this paragraph from What if the Dungeon Closes, translated into German then back into English using an online translator:

I described an iron grid-accident, the blocking. I thought of the customers of Marlena, lonesome men, asked itself how they passed. They would listen to old, registered insults in tense apartments. They would become her own donkeys, whip dissatisfied because they always exactly knew where the whip would land. This reminded me of myself, Internet sexual sides warbling, five words missives to Adonises carved from tone lighting, then my falling stomachs movingly and, better remembering, my news extinguishing, my profile extinguishing, new the next day creative.

The original, for comparison:

I pictured an iron grate crashing, locking. I thought about Marlena's clients, lonely men, wondered how they'd get by. They'd listen to stale, recorded insults in cramped apartments. They'd whip their own asses, dissatisfied because they always knew exactly where the whip would land. This reminded me of myself trolling internet sex sites, firing five-word missives to Adonises carved from clay, then grabbing my sagging stomach and thinking better of it, erasing my messages, erasing my profile, creating a new one the following day.

etsy presents

2009-10-22T13:16:00.000-07:00

LITERATURE: THE SKIRT

2009-10-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

My mom sent me this after she read this.

So now I really want to do a live reading of this where somebody pours this all over me.

Would be awesome, I think.

2009-10-20T11:36:00.001-07:00

I think I would have more tolerance for animal rights activists if they didn't make totalizing comments like this shit that seem to dismiss critical social justice issues affecting scores of, you know, human beings.

hat tip: shane jones twitter

2009-10-20T07:48:00.000-07:00

Somebody thought I was insulting Where the Wild Things Are. I was just being silly. Once Upon a Potty makes me giggle. Perhaps I'm still in the bathroom humor stage. Or maybe it's that I never went through the bathroom humor stage as a child. When I was six, I used to roll my eyes at boys on the playground singing that Popeye the sailorman garbage can song, like "Grow up."

I appreciated Where the Wild Things Are quite a bit. I experienced it as a film about disillusionment... realizing that children are lonely and disappointed, and so are adults, and you will be lonely and disappointed your whole life, and families and communities, in particular, will never meet your expectations ...but there's a glimmer of hope in it, I think. Sometimes you and your friends will build awesome forts, and jump on top of one another and fall asleep in a big pile, and there will be various kinds of love to get you through the loneliness.

I related to Max a lot more than I expected. I was not much of a wild child, I tended to feel very invested in my identity as somebody who made adults lives easier, particularly my mother's. I was always well known by my mother's colleagues as the kid who could entertain himself for hours without disrupting others. However -- when I did get angry, I had a lot of trouble processing that emotion, and I've absolutely damaged gifts I've given my mother in fits of rage, like Max does to that little heart thing he gave his sister. Once when I was mad at my mom, I ripped up the lyrics to a silly song I'd written about her. I think often my anger was directed at friends, family, communities, etc who didn't meet my expectations for them, a lot like the Wild Thing Carol. I can absolutely see myself stomping off to obliterate my own artwork when the other kids didn't play the game the way I wanted them to play it. I had multiple parties where I locked myself in the bathroom because my friends didn't act the way I wanted them to act.

2009-10-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

Following the success of Where the Wild Things Are, I believe somebody should produce Once Upon a Potty: the Movie. The boy and girl versions of the story should be shot in split screen. On each side, different parts for making weewee. The girl who potties could have been played by former Pepsi girl Hallie Eisenberg, if she hadn't gotten old. Maybe Eisenberg can play the girl's mommy.

My Last Post...

2009-10-16T23:22:00.000-07:00

...was perhaps dishonest, in that I argued something hyper-rationally -- in terms of language and definitions -- that is ultimately a values issue. I believe for a publication to declare they do not accept gratuitous sex and violence, then immediately reject all sex and violence in general, regardless of its purpose within a narrative, is to declare all sex and violence inherently gratuitous, that is, without purpose, meaning, etc, and this is a belief system I find appalling. Kind of indicative of much of what's fucked in our culture w/ regard to sexuality. The sort of thinking literature ought to challenge, not reinforce.

something I believe

2009-10-16T22:54:00.000-07:00

Gratuitous, by definition, means w/o "apparent cause, reason or justification." Graphic sex and violence are not in and of themselves gratuitous sex and violence. If a publication's guidelines say 'no gratuitous sex or violence,' this should not mean said publication automatically rejects any graphically violent or sexual content. If said publication is going to reject work based primarily on sexual or violent content (as opposed to other considerations, of which there clearly many), they should do so only if the sex and violence are genuinely w/o purpose, intended primarily to shock and exploit.

If a publication's policy is in fact to automatically reject all graphic sexual and violent content, then this is how their guidelines should read, and they should exclude the qualifier "gratuitous."

2009-10-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

They say he was hiding in a box, but I know the truth. I know February stuck him underground (and broke the balloon).

Last night I went to the ACM party. I met my friend Donna Vitucci in the flesh for the first time, she was wonderful and warm and personable. I conversed w/ some folks I already knew but am enjoying getting to know better: Rebekah and Tadd from Artifice and Mairead Case from Neighborhood Writing Alliance. Also Aaron Burch, a little bit. And I got to officially meet a couple of those people I see at things and recognize and am "friends" with on Facebook, but whom didn't necessarily know me, like Kathleen Rooney and Mary Hamilton, who were both very nice. The program was well-planned w/ dj sets for drinking/conversing interspersed w/ readings in groups of 3. I encountered the many faces of Erica Mikkalo (Erica Mikkalo is perhaps a changeling, is perhaps Odo), some of which uncannily resemble Donna Vitucci, Aaron Burch and Kathleen Rooney. When Erica Mikkalo resembles Aaron Burch, she is a dirty man. Lesson: When you handle Erica's pole at its base, it functions more effectively, and everybody can hear what Erica is saying. Critical if one wants to better understand idiots, donkeys and elephants.

2009-10-14T06:32:00.000-07:00

My guest post on Queer Visibilities appears today in the Pank blog. Please read & comment -- this is intended to generate conversation.

I finally made it to Quickies (hip and fantastic Chicago reading series) last night and enjoyed it quite a bit, although I do not think my life is well-suited to events that last until 10:00 on weeknights. My partner ate dinner w/o me and left it on the stove for when I got home ...And I've got another, similarly late evening tomorrow... my fabulous friend Donna D Vitucci is in town for the Another Chicago Magazine release party, and I am looking forward to meeting her.

satire

2009-10-08T09:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I received some unexpected good news.

It's exciting to be in such fine company w/ the other winners and other finalists.

***

I've been thinking about satire. I think I undervalue it. Smart, broadly drawn, topical, comic, absurd, etc. stuff feels very easy to write (as compared to, say, heavier emotional realism), and I think for this reason I haven't always taken it as seriously. But some of my more satirical pieces (the best example available online is prob my Monkeybicycle piece) have received positive responses, and I feel almost weirdly guilty about that, like they don't deserve the attention.

I also worry that satire might not be durable -- once its point has been made, once the joke is over, etc, there isn't anything left. And also, there's the timeliness, the specificity of certain issues. How can satire last past the political context in which it's written? Of course there are plenty of examples of satire that holds meaning for multiple generations. What sets those works apart?

I'm thinking about this because my piece that placed second in the Pank contest is, from my perspective, satirical, and although I felt confident-ish and quite tickled when I first wrote and submitted it, in the months since I'd gone into "harshest critic" mode and begun to dismiss it as a one-note joke. ...So because of this, the win caught me completely off guard, and has me doing some reassessing my own ways of judging stuff.

...I didn't want this post to get all me-me-me-me, and I'm afraid it veered off in that direction anyway. What I intended to do was pose a broader question regarding satire, its value as lit.

Thoughts?

the pedophile label strikes again

2009-10-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

This Kevin Jennings business (check out Amanda Marcotte's coverage at Pandagon -- for some reason I'm getting an error message when I try to open her individual post, but if you scroll down the page, it's pretty easy to find) makes me want to link to a post I wrote back in 2006:

Toward a Feminist Defense of Cross-Generational Sex

new stuff

2009-10-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

I've got two new pieces up -

"Slime Me" in Necessary Fiction

"Advice for Locating the Whirl" in elimae

...I'm long overdue for a more substantive blog post. I'm feeling sort of backed up on writing & online lit community stuff in general. I've been feeling a little burnt out (and am very busy at work), but am almost recharged, I think, so stay tuned. I've got some blog posts and/or reviews promised to other folks, so hope to get on top of finishing those this week.

I've been on a little bit of a new music binge this week -- lots of neo-new wave/80's revivalist/electro-pop/dance pop/neo-disco-type stuff of late. I've been enjoying boys who ape the Pet Shop Boys and girls who imitate Dale Bozzio.

I participated....

2009-09-21T10:14:00.001-07:00

...in the "Writer Interviews Reader" feature at Randall Brown's flashfiction.net.

Check out my answers to Meg Pokrass's questions about her Smokelong Quarterly story "California Fruit."

Other Peoples' Photos of Places I've Been Since Last we Spoke

2009-09-09T08:39:00.001-07:00

Bauman Farms - Gervais, OR

Multnomah Falls - Columbia River Gorge, OR

Gilbert House Children's Museum - Salem, OR

Oregon State Fair

Silver Falls State Park, OR

Minneapolis Airport

"Seducing Matt Mitcham" in Annalemma

2009-09-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

My story "Seducing Matt Mitcham" published this morning in Annalemma.

This is the first so-called "long short" of mine to appear online, and I'm excited to have it out there.

"Seducing Matt Mitcham" is the first of two stories featuring the same narrator that will be published in the next month or two -- the next will appear in the Storyglossia musical obsession issue.

This is the second story published by Annalemma's gorgeous new online iteration. Annalemma is doing good things. While you're there, also check out the new Tai Dong Huai story, published last week, as well as strong older content from Joe Meno, Nick Ostdick and others, that originally appeared in Annalemma's print edition.

short story collections I've enjoyed

2009-09-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine is currently incarcerated and asked me to send a list of short story collection recommendations to pass along to his mother, who buys and sends him books. I made a somewhat exhaustive list of things I've read and enjoyed (most I've read this year), and decided to reproduce it here unedited, for the hell of it.

To explain my annotations: my friend has a strong preference for realism (but I was trying to recommend non-realist stuff anyway) and also has in the past asked me to recommend good literary fiction by gay writers.

Also: I already sent him three of my favoritest favorites, "Ugly Man" by Dennis Cooper, "In the Devil's Territory" by Kyle Minor and "If the Sky Falls" by Nicholas Montemarano, so they are absent from the list.

Short Story Collections:

Especially good, in my opinion:

~Fugue State by Brian Evenson (really masterfully creepy in a psychologically troubling, what is the nature of our reality kind of way)

~Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock (I think you might especially like this one. Really immediate, cutting, fucked up and funny)

~Good, Brother by Peter Markus (OK, this is not a short story collection, it’s more a novella, but I read it recently and thought it was gorgeous, so am recommending)

~Michael Martone by Michael Martone (interesting formal experiment – book composed entirely of contributors’ bios)

~Cathedral by Raymond Carver (you’ve probably already read this)

~Birds of American by Lorrie Moore (you’ve probably already read this as well)

~Mt Appetite by Bill Gaston (He’s a Canadian writer, just really solid, lovely stuff)

~Insects are Just Like You and Me Except Some of them have Wings by Kuzhali Manickavel (have you read K’s book yet? It’s hysterical. She’s brilliant, I think)

~Big World by Mary Miller (you’ve already read this, right?)

~How it was for Me: Stories by Andrew Sean Greer (I like his stuff a lot – he is gay)

~Short story collections by Peter Cameron (there were two, they were out of print for a long time and are now back, but selected stories from both are now available in a single volume called “The Half you Don’t Know.” I haven’t actually read it, the collection I read was one of the two out of print. He’s often painfully funny. Also, gay, though this only periodically crops up in his stories).

~Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel (if you haven’t read it yet, always a favorite of mine)

~Love’s Body, Dancing in Time by L Timmel Duchamp (she’s a dyke feminist sci-fi writer with a heavily literary bent. Might not be your thing, but some of the stories in this collection I love).

~The Torturer’s Wife (really intense collection by black gay Jamaican… deals with a lot of violent material, gay bashing, political violence, etc, in a sort of lyrical, dense language-y, occasionally magical realist Toni Morrisonish kind of way)

Also worth reading:

~Things that Pass for Love by Alison Amend (some of the stories in this are among my favorites I’ve ever read, others I thought were well-crafted but less memorable, and I didn’t feel like the collection as a whole totally cohered)

~Havana Noir (this is part of a noir series Akashic Books publishes, I really dug it)

~Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis (have you read her yet? She’s a big weirdo, but brilliant and always intriguing)

~Here’s Your Hat What’s your Hurry by Elizabeth McCracken (this is a bit older now, but I liked it a lot)

~Bed by Tao Lin (mmmm… you might find him insufferable. I find him very funny, and also think his characters have a lot more going on emotionally than he’s given credit for).

~The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret (have you read him yet? sort of an expert at magical realist-ish flash fiction)

~ It was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature by Diane Williams (I think she’s fascinating, but I don’t know whether youd like her. Think some of Kim Chinquee’s weirdest and most impenetrable stuff, only funnier and a bit more random … like, she loves to randomly name characters out of nowhere, like “I was just talking to Raymond, and he said…” and uses constant non-sequiturs and sometimes even tense changes).

~ A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: Four Chapbooks of Short Short Fiction by Four Women (Kathy Fish, et al. Have you read it yet? It’s pretty wonderful)

~Scent of Cinnamon and other Stories by Charles Lambert (gay brit, nice collection, slightly uneven, I thought, but I dug it, and what I liked I really liked)

~Like You’d Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard (he writes great stories abt historical explorer types dealing with inane human drama and inadequacy)

~Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link (I had high expectations and only really loved abt half of this, but Im really glad she exists, and every story is at least interesting)

~Drift and Swerve by Sam Ligon (you’d really like this I think, much of it strong, immediate realism abt folks with tough lives)

~Elephants in our Bedroom by Michael Czyzniejewski (I didn’t flip for this like everybody else, but he’s definitely good).

~Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson (he’s been getting a lot of attention, and deserves it)

~Civilwarland in Bad Decline, by George Saunders (haven’t become a worshipper of Saunders like some, but he is clearly amazing).

~You are not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett (another gay writer. This one was published by a big house, got a lot of award noms, etc. Certain stories I loved, particularly when he writes abt the intersection of mental illness and sexuality. Others I found too chilly and MFAish for my taste. You might really like him).

~You Must be this Happy to Enter by Elizabeth Crane. (She is hysterical. Kind of warped and loopy a la Miranda July, but warmer maybe, less alien).

My short fiction to-read shelf :

~The White Road by Tania Hershman
~Where the Long Grass Bends by Neela Vaswani

~The Withdrawal Method by Pasha Malla

~Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme

~A Relative Stranger by Charles Baxter

~Instruction Manual for Swallowing by Adam Marek

~Women up on Blocks by Mary Akers

~Dangerous Laughter by Stephen Millhauser

~The Burning House by Ann Beattie

~Words from a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie

~Oblivion by David Foster Wallace

~The Rainbow Stories by William T Vollman

~AM/PM by Amelia Gray

~The Apocalypse Reader, edited by Justin Taylor

~Taking Care by Joy Williams

reading

2009-09-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

Going to Oregon for several days and bringing the following... way more than I'll have time to read, but I can never make decisions. I like to have multiple things in front of me when choosing.

~Period by Dennis Cooper
~The Other City by Michal Ajvaz
~Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream by Kathy Acker
~Phosphor in Dreamland by Rikki Ducornet.

...Although I still have a stack of short story collections to read, I feel myself gradually shifting back toward novels, albeit somewhat skinny ones, for the most part.

Anybody know the correct way to pronounce Ducornet?

I Saw "500 Days of Summer"

2009-08-19T11:05:00.000-07:00

and I agree w/ Richard Corliss from TIME:

"And yet I resist you. I detect a cool calculation in your chocolate Valentine heart. Your tone is a little self-conscious and preening. You're like the girl or guy who's been most popular at school since kindergarten: you'd be cuter if you didn't know you were so darned cute. I suspect that you're at least as much in love with yourself as Tom is with Summer. Maybe I'm just suspicious of your superficial take on romantic obsession. You make the whole process — the appetite loss, that strange warm-sick feeling, the borderline stalking, the whole splendid misery of surrendering to someone who tolerates but doesn't totally reciprocate — seem essentially narcissistic. Tom may be less in love with Summer than he is with the very notion of love. Which is his notion. And Summer, the object of his affection, is just that: an object. Since we're never inside her head, we don't know what drives her to reject the precious gift of Tom's love. She has no independent existence; she's just something Tom has to have. She may as well be a first edition of Action Comics, or a girl on a porn site. And because the emotional drama is so one-sided, I just can't love you.

I guess maybe I'm not Tom but Summer. I like your looks, and heaven knows I appreciate the energy you put into wooing me, but I don't want us to be a couple. So be well, stay swell, have a nice multiplex run, and maybe we'll get together at the Box Office Weekend Report."

A Few of my Favorite Eccentric Ladies

2009-08-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

it looks good and dirty on shiny light strip
and if you don't get beat you got yourself a trip
You can see the walls roar see your brains on the floor
become God become cripple become funky and split

Laura Nyro - Poverty Train
by DwightFrye

I can't come out
And play Paddy with
The Precinct boys no more
But you and me baby
We'll be lovers again

you don't know me but I've been watching you all day
and I've come to the edge of the water now to have my say
the picnic lunch is off
throw your parasol away
put your belly to the board, Mimi, and paddle out to sea
then turn the board around, Mimi, until you're facing me
then you wait for the waves to start building
for the valleys to deepen
and the mountains to increase in height
and when the right times comes, Mimi
you grab the edges of the board with your hands
lift yourself up and stand there
and see as far as you can see
stand up, Mimi
STAND UP

Some say that knowledge is ho ho ho.
Some say that knowledge is ho ho ho.

He had the keys to a place where we could practice
It felt almost like Dirty Dancing
Minus the United States and instead of a resort
it was the Folkets Hus basement

Our noses have begun to rust

Be a lighter person
Brighter person
Nicer
But you've heard it all before

I killed my dinner with karate
kick 'em in the face, taste the body;
shallow work is the work that I do.

You don't mean that say you're sorry
You don't mean that say you're sorry
You don't mean that say you're sorry
You don't mean that I'll make you sorry

But you can't bring me comfort
By filling up my eyes

nothing's quite the same
since I asked him to swim with me

Well, I'm holed up in the bell tower
Looking for four walls to bounce off
Looking for a donkey I could
Maybe pin a tail on

You take me up against the freak in me
Just tell me what you
X X X expect of me

Well just the other day I won the lottery
I mean lots of money
I got so excited I ran into my place and i said:
HEY! Is anybody home?
Nobody answered but I guess that's not too weird
Since I live alone.

2009-08-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

Friend of the blog and "My Dinner w/ Lydia Davis" contest winner Meg Pokrass appears in Michael Kimball's life story on a postcard project.

new little weird thing

2009-08-03T11:20:00.000-07:00

August issue of elimae is live, featuring stuff by Forrest Roth, Ann De Witt, Robert Lopez, Josh Maday, Evelyn Hampton, Len Kuntz, Marguerite W. Sullivan, Eliza Victoria, Rhoads Stevens, Meg Pokrass, Jared Walls, Taryn Andrews, Christopher York, xTx, Rob MacDonald, R.L. Swihart, Tirumal Mundargi, Howie Good, Kimberly Ruth, Bruce Harris, Andrea Kneeland and me.

Monkeybicycle Front to Back - Part 7: Valentine by Michael Czyzniejewski

2009-07-31T13:24:00.000-07:00

Michael Czyzniejewski is a wonderful writer. I previously blogged my love for his story, "On the Other Hand," which appears in Best of the Web 2009.

One of Czyzniejewski's favorite topics is the gulf between married men and women. He often uses irreal and/or absurd devices (for instance, the title story in his collection "Elephants in our Bedroom," in which a husband literally houses an elephant in the bedroom he shares w/ his wife, then waits for her to say something about it) to expose and explore couples' miscummunication, lack of communication, as well as male insecurity. In "Valentine," a husband becomes suspicious of his wife's yearly visits to the gynecologist and goes to ridiculous lengths to assuage his concerns. Gynecology becomes a big 'ole symbol for everything the narrator finds mysterious about his wife, everything that threatens him, everything he fears will expose his own inadequacies. It is difficult for me to evaluate "Valentine" apart from the context in which I originally read it, as one of several thematically similar stories in Czyzniejewski's collection. "Valentine" is funny, well-written. I believe we are meant to sympathize with the narrator, yet also remain critical of his outlandish behavior, and in this sense I believe Czyzniejewski is successful. He writes wonderfully comic, three-dimensional clueless dudes. I feel a bit more alienated, however, by Czyzniejewski's treament of the wife characters in his stories, most of whom remain aloof, impenetrable and a bit cipher-ish. I feel a little bit depressed wondering if most heterosexual men and women really do remain this foreign to one another at the most basic of levels, and I'm also reminded of all those sitcoms where married men behave badly, and we spend the entire time yelling at the television -- "Just talk to her already!" I think what Czyzniejewski does, he does well, but I would love to see him use his considerable talents to dig deeper, explore relationships w/ greater complexity. I believe intimate relationships are just as fraught with dramatically compelling miscommunication and misunderstanding when the couple actually speaks with one another, and when both individuals are gnarly, three-dimensional characters worth getting to know.

2009-07-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

Anybody with links to great articles, website, videos, blog entries, etc, dissecting, analyzing and/or obsessing over American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert specifically, or young rock idols more generally, please post them in the comment thread or email them to me (knockonformica@gmail.com).

I've an idea brewing.

addendum: Freddie Mercury also. I think I need to better understand the persona Lambert's invoking.

Flashfiction.net

2009-07-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

Randall Brown has started a new website to aggregate information about flash fiction and related short short forms. Give it a look.

Dachshund Contest -- last day!

2009-07-25T08:34:00.000-07:00

Today is the deadline in the dachshund contest!!

Send me a piece of writing using one of these photos as a prompt.

Winner gets a copy of Best of the Web 2009.

Nicholas Montemarano

2009-07-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

I just discovered one of my favorite short stories, "The Usual Human Disabilities" by Nicholas Montemarano, is available to read online.

I've been meaning to blog about Montemarano for a while. His collection "If the Sky Falls" placed last in my April "which books should I read next" poll (I've finished reading all but the Oates, which I'm halfway through) yet ended up being one of my all-time favorite short story collections (along with the Kyle Minor collection that placed second to last, which I've already given love here ...I won't mention which book was my least favorite except to say I think dead fish are smelly).

Montemarano is emotionally honest, empathetic, ethical, inventive with language and at times takes risks with form -- a wonderful combinations of characteristics. I've noticed many reviews of his work focus on his more metafictional pieces, where narrative erodes and gives way to something more akin to nonfiction confessions, as in "Story," which originally appeared in Doubletake (I tried finding it online, but... well you try finding a story called "Story" from a defunct publication)... in my college dramaturgy course, we were taught to think about devices that take you ouside the story as an attempt by the writer to deliberately emotionally alienate you so that you may experience the material with intellectual distance (Brechtian theater), but this is the exact opposite of Montemarano's intentions... when he disrupts his narratives, he does so in the pursuit of greater emotional honesty. Another thing I love about Montemarano's writing is how he uses long but precise sentences. In multiple stories, actions placed in extended comma series (I think that's what you call them) evoke the strenuousness of labor (see: prize-winning story The Worst Degree of Unforgivable, which actually now that I look at it again uses semicolons, not comma series, but whatever.... you get the idea) while also possessing an incredibly beautiful sound and rhythm -- a great tension. ....highly recommend reading.

Literary Feud: Brandi Wells vs. Meg Pokrass

2009-07-22T21:16:00.000-07:00

A new literary feud threatens to turn ugly.

Meg Pokrass and Brandi Wells are at war to see who can publish most.

Meg Pokrass calls Brandi Wells an impish she-witch. Brandi calls Meg a waifish lit bitch.

More mud's getting flung than in a Peter Markus novella.

Keep up with the feud here.

Monkeybicycle Front to Back: An Aside

2009-07-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

I just googled myself for the first time in a while and realized the Monkeybicycle front-to-back series (next post coming soon, I promise) has gotten a lot more blogosphere attention than I realized.

In response to my review (and Roxane Gay's comment in the comment thread), Jay Wexler wrote an alternative ending for his story "The Advisor." Badass.

2009-07-21T11:04:00.001-07:00

It seems a widespread, multiblog effort is underway to promote Best of the Web 2009. Lots of great posts by writers and contributors talking about their work. Check it out.

I briefly considered posting a link to the Dachshund contest in the comment threads for all of these posts, but as I started to do it (I left maybe four comments), it started to feel crass and self-promoting, which was the opposite of my Dachshund contest goal. It's far more important to me to help strengthen a larger community and also contribute to systemic change than to call attention to my own shit. Sometimes there's a very fine line with this sort of thing.

Anyway.... buy Best of the Web, it's great.

Short Story Month essay collection

2009-07-20T18:02:00.001-07:00

My name has appeared for the very first time in a Dzanc Books' publication! ...I received in the mail a copy of the Short Story Month essay collection, which includes Aaron Burch's Hobart blog entry about Peter Selgin, in which he briefly mentions my review of the Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions.

When Short Story Month was happening, I remember feeling completely overwhelmed by the number of posts by Emerging Writers' Network, Hobart, Matt Bell and Steven McDermott in my Google Reader, and thinking, "Dear God, when I finally finish the ginormous stack of short story collections already sitting on my desk, I am going to want to be able to come back and check out these fantastic recommendations." So I'm thrilled to have these blog entries collected in a book I can easily reference in the future when I'm ready to seek out new stuff. And I can't wait to return to these essays after having read all these stories -- what a fantastic resource.

The Short Story Month essay collection is, I believe, still available to folks who support Dzanc. In addition to publishing wonderful writing, Dzanc does important work within the community. ...Head on over and make a donation.

conference learnings

2009-07-20T09:15:00.000-07:00

I attended my first academic writing conference this weekend. I learned a lot I didn't expect to learn. Much of what I learned was what I didn't realize I already knew. I feel like everything I've been doing, both to develop skills and to build community with other writers, is exactly what I should be doing, and I felt surprisingly "ahead" in this regard in comparison to some more exclusively academically-focused writers who still operate with a far more cloistered and garreted mindset. Writers inside the academy are sometimes very... academic. This might seem obvious, but I don't think I'd ever thought about what this really means. One sometimes imagines (or at least I've imagined) MFA programs existing at the fringe of their institutions as little enclaves of freakishness. Perhaps this is true some places, I do not know. Clearly academic writing communities and the independent/small press communities and online lit communities are far from fully separate, but at the same time, they are a great deal more separate than I realized. The cultural difference between this weekend and something more like Pilcrow Lit Fest was striking. For instance, nobody stood on a bartop this weekend, and there was minimal whooping and hollering.

Here are a few things I learned (I may change my mind as I write, and some of the bullet points will not be accurately described as learnings) this weekend:

~I find craft classes a great deal more useful when abtract lessons about craft retain some focus on language and sentences. Otherwise, "craft" starts to become prescriptive and stifling, and you also kind of miss the point as far as what makes a given piece of writing thrilling.

~Some writers of long fiction, both longer short stories and novels, feel weirdly threatened by short shorts and by the internet, some going as far as to say the novel is "under threat" because of short attention spans and the rise of the short short. It is incredibly annoying when, rather than speaking to their personal feelings of anxiety regarding these issues, these threatened-feeling writers of long fiction try to academicize their feelings and concoct bullshit theories about the so-called "short short age" that are ultimately unresearched and based entirely upon anecdotal evidence and experiences, experiences that would be entirely valid would said threatened-feeling writers just identify their experiences as such, own their own anxieties and stop framing the conversation in the bullshit abstract. This would, I believe, allow for a more productive conversation about the relationship between the short short and the novel. Additionally, shorter work is valid as its own form, and to imply it's valuable primarily as a way to develop one's voice and capacity for language so that one can eventually write better long shorts and novels is totally obnoxious. Also, I do not understand statements like, "technology is an uncreative medium, because technology is inherently left-brained." ...like at all. It's utter nonsense bullshit to me. But I neither understand nor acknowledge the distinction between the so-called left brain and right brain, so I might not be the right person to respond to this.

~Some academic folks completely ignore the independent and small press community, and not so subtly imply the Academy are the only folks preserving literature as the commercial sphere declines.

~Somebody needs to come up with something fresher to say on panels about publishing than, "research your journals, keep good records, read guidelines, include an SASE, etc." Although I did learn one interesting thing during that panel -- Garnet Cohen from Hotel Amerika said she has her student readers pass along to her anyone whose cover letter lists three publications, regardless of how the student reacts to the work. I feel like intern and student reader bashing is one of the most widespread forms of submitter paranoia, and I wonder how many other academic journals employ this or a similar method.

There were other things I learned I will probably mention in later posts. I'm very glad I participated.

dachshunds when spelled looks like it should sound like docks and shunned.

2009-07-17T17:32:00.000-07:00

There are at least three dachshunds in Best of the Web 2009. One is hung with fungus and sizzles on a Cadillac's hood. The other two become piles of Esquire magazines.

There are many dachshunds on the internet.

Here are a few of my favorites.

LITTLE KNOWN FACTS ABOUT DACHSHUNDS GLEANED FROM WIKIPEDIA:

~ the breed's name is German and literally means "badger dog"
~Many dachshunds, especially the wire-haired sub type, may exhibit behavior and appearance that are similar to that of the terrier group of dogs.
(ed note: Fans of Chris Guest are already aware that GOD LOVES A TERRIER.)
~the dachshund is the only certifiable breed of dog to hunt both above and below ground.
(like your mom)
~they are featured in many a joke and cartoon, particularly The Far Side by Gary Larson.
~if a dachshund is brindled on a dark coat and has tan points, you will see brindling on the tan points only.
brindle my points
~the ONLY disqualifying Fault in Dachshunds is Knuckling over.
knuckle my trunkle
~Dachshunds can have a blue and a brown eye.
Like Kate Blah-sworth
~Dachshunds are playful.
Like your dad. ;-) ...say hi for me.
~Many dachshunds do not like unfamiliar people, and many will growl or bark at them.
~Some writers and daschund expertshave theorized that the early roots of the dachshund go back to ancient Egypt, where engravings were made featuring short-legged hunting dogs.
~Dachshunds are popular pets in the United States, ranking seventh in the 2008 American Kennel Club registration statistics.

UNEXPECTED LAST MINUTE CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

Write something using one of the above photos as your prompt. Send your something to knockonformica@gmail.com by next Saturday. My favorite dachshund-derived writing will be posted on the blog, and I will also buy the winner a copy of Best of the Web 2009. If you already have Best of the Web 2009, I will buy you something else instead. Special love will be felt for anyone who uses one of the little-known dachshund facts as a sentence in your dachshund-derived writing.

Happy badger hunting!

2009-07-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

This is today.

I am going.

On the Other Hand

2009-07-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

I just read "On the Other Hand" by Michael Czyzniejewski in Best of the Web 2009 (originally appeared in Waccamaw), and I think it might be my favorite thing I've ever read by him, including all the stories in "Elephants in our Bedroom." Two mens' hands are accidentally switched after a car accident, and the one who is not our narrator becomes a bit wackjobish and stalkeresque. This setup would probably be enough to power the story through to its conclusion, but then Czyniejweski moves in an unexpected direction in the story's final pages, and the story becomes something even broader, deeper and stranger having to do with identity, intimacy and fear. Has anyone read this?

It is possible Joyce Carol Oates is not my cup of tea.

2009-07-16T20:23:00.000-07:00

I was twitching. I was looking around and I was thinking and I was reading, seeing, wondering, and every verb was ending with ing, and I felt soaked with gerunds like a musty rank red tampon reeking of an animal woman scent and no! Should I say this? Should I say what I felt, reading? Perhaps it was unwise, I ventured, speaking ill of a writer held in such lofty, luminous regard, for who am I? Who am I? Saying and thinking such thoughts, to declare this prose wild and unwieldy, ponderous and pretentious and -- dare I say it? Sloppy! Like a reeking mucky river of muck, clutching and grabbing and clawing at my ankles, my eyes bleeding upon the page, red running rivulets. But no! I thought, I cannot, shall not say it. To criticize a figurehead? For life, if nothing else, is our accommodation of others' expectations.

Monkeybicycle Front to Back - Part 6: Souffle of Engorged, of Long-Suffering Flesh by Nora Robertson

2009-07-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

Another favorite.

This piece so seduces me on a sentence-by-sentence basis that I'm disinclined to analyze it. It's sentences get me off, sentences like--

~"Whip a pint of heavy cream into a frenzy of stiff peaks."

~"I'm your slut, your slit, your bitch."

~"The rest of the day, a tug in my groin suggested esparadilles, a sangria top, accessories."

~"Now all I can do is masturbate, an insomnia of flesh shivering for release, next to your supine body."

...Still, I should probably say something more substantive.

The food-sex connection has already been thoroughly worked, but I never tire of it -- I think it's because gluttony and lust remain so closely linked in our culture. Robertson's piece gleefully celebrates both.

There are three threads here. One is instructions for making chocolate mousse ("mousse makes me think of frozen desire"). Another is the narrator's agonizing decision whether to buy two dresses she believes she oughtn't ("I saw the whispering dress, Marilyn Monroe shoulders and a layered cotton skirt cinched in tight.") The third involves the narrator's relationship with her lover ("...our hips buckled together, swollen spots rubbed raw"). I dig how Robertson sharply juxtaposes these three elements without any obvious connective tissue. Like ingredients thrown together and whipped into something delicious and hot. Yum.

News

2009-07-13T21:01:00.001-07:00

A couple months back, Molly Gaudry posted in her blog a poem called "Some days even a cup of coffee is violence," composed of sentences from blogs she reads regularly. The poem was a fascinating exploration of writers' melancholy, and inspired me to take a crack at constructing a narrative piece using "found sentences" from blogs in my Google Reader. I ended up liking the outcome better than I'd expected, and decided to try submitting it a few places to see how it fared. I promised to keep this blog's readers, including Molly, updated on the piece's fate.

I am now very happy to announce "My Mother's Funeral" was accepted for the first issue of Artifice Magazine, forthcoming in January 2010.

Here's a list of places versions of this story (I chopped a bit off excess stuff off nearly every time I submitted, constantly honing) were rejected -- for the sake of full disclosure and because it might be of interest to this blog's readers... hopefully none of these pubs will be pissed off I mentioned them, I don't think any of them are the type that would be.

~Abjective
~eyeshot
~DIAGRAM
~Blake Butler/Lamination Colony's "Not a Contest" contest

...and pending at 5_Trope and Corduroy Mtn.

Chapbook (and other Slim Small Press Volum) Catchup Day

2009-07-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

Today was chapbook (and other slim small press volume) catchup day. I read a whole bunch of things in one day and now am a little bit exhausted. I read, all in one day and in the following order--

~A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: Four Chapbooks of Short Fiction by Four Women, by Kathy Fish, Amy L Clark, Elizabeth Ellen and Claudia Smith.

~Phantasmagoria by Thomas Cooper

~Typewriter by Jimmy Chen

~Haircut Stories by Lydia Copeland

~The Collectors by Matt Bell

~A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons

~Everything was Fine Until Whatever by Chelsea Martin

1,001 Awesome Words

2009-07-10T08:17:00.000-07:00

To know Pank is to love Pank.

I know and love Pank.

I'm entering Pank's 1001 Awesome Words Contest.

Are you?

Happy Birthday to Me - Support Social Change

2009-07-08T10:40:00.001-07:00

My birthday is on Sunday.

To celebrate, I've set up a birthday page in the "Causes" application on facebook to raise money for Crossroads Fund, the organization where I work.

Crossroads Fund raises money to support grassroots community organizers and social justice activists working on a variety of issues (criminal justice, immigration, racial justice, economic justice, LGBT/Queer stuff, women and girls, workers' rights, education, gentrification and displacement, etc) in the Chicago area.

Donate to my cause.

Monkeybicycle Front to Back - Part 5: From the Desk of JoJo Self

2009-07-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

...gosh I seem to be turning these out rather slowly. ...I suppose there's nothing wrong with letting this become a months-long project though, is there? I can help keep Monkeybicycle 6 on the radar or whatever.

Corey Mesler's story "From the Desk of JoJo Self" is one of my favorites from Monkebicycle 6, and perhaps because of this, I have been avoiding this review, wanting to do the story justice. A few of the things I like about this story--

~Mesler's voice. Distinctive. Confident.

~Its fantastical elements: a magic desk swallows the craptastic sci-fi/fantasy manuscripts of agorophobic loser JoJo Self and delivers them to the desk of editor/frustrated writer Herman Newtix. Mesler's whimsical treatment of this premise reminds me a bit of the films of Charlie Kaufman.

~I became involved in the story... partway through, I realized I had stopped reading critically and was reading for fun, to find out what would happen next. This is worth something, I think, when a writer can invoke that sheer, childlike joy derived from storytelling.

I'll admit when I began reading, I had concerns. I sometimes have trouble identifying with sad sack male geeks, especially when they neglect their personal hygiene. I've an "ick factor" to contend with ...I will own this as my own personal issue, perhaps a byproduct of fagalicious shallowness. Although, in my defense, I must also note that in real life, the whole woe-is-me socially marginalized hetero male geek thing sometimes masks some ugly-ass misogyny. Yes, there are many geek misogynists, and I bristle when I hear them compare their marginal social status with systematic disenfranchisement of women, people of color, poor folks, Queer folks, etc, as though they are at all comparable ...And so when Mesler introduced the character of Candy, I was a bit worried she would prove to be a one-dimensional cipher in a geek boy fantasy wish fulfillment scenario. Thankfully, Candy is a woman of action, with plenty of chutzpah, and the story came alive for me when Mesler switches to her POV as she travels to New York to confront Newtix. Admittedly, everything Candy does she does to assist others, which some feminist critics might "problematize," but I was willing to forgive this, because I felt Mesler respected her and imbued her with some dignity. Candy was my favorite character.

I enjoyed this story and hope others enjoy it as well.

Contributor's Note

2009-07-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

Tim Jones-Yelvington was born in Belleville, Illinois, and, at the age of two, relocated to the Chicago area before again moving, this time to the New York area, at the age of ten. Jones-Yelvington attended public schools until the age of 12, when he relocated to a fruity progressive Manhattan private school after an incident with a gay basher resulted in his breaking an elbow. It was during his years of schooling that Jones-Yelvington acquired a love of reading, which he excercised this weekend by completing George Saunders' Civilwarland in Bad Decline followed by Michael Martone by Michael Martone, reading both in their entirety. Although he is intermittently fascinated by amusement parks, Jones-Yelvington lacks what he interprets as Saunders' full-on obsession. He does, however, value Martone's absurdity and his attention paid to the seemingly mundane, what Martone's mentor John Barth may or may not have referred to as "a rich tapestry of details" (Martone, p. 130). This evening, Jones-Yelvington looks forward to "cracking the spine" on something new, perhaps "Faithless: Tales of Transgression" by Joyce Carol Oates, or Samuel Ligon's "Drift and Swerve," and welcomes his own readers' opinions on which to read first.

I'm obsessed with this sentence.

2009-07-02T07:35:00.000-07:00

"He was the kind of boy I used to close my eyes, reach into my underwear and build from scratch."
--Dennis Cooper, from "Brian AKA 'Bear'" in Ugly Man.

This is a post where I will briefly put on display parts of myself that are not wholly flattering.

2009-07-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

You know those personalized rejections that totally push your buttons with perfectly well-intentioned compliments that make you feel like you've totally missed the mark?

One of my biggest, reddest, shiniest buttons is being told a piece of writing is conceptually strong, or a great idea, that it is idea-driven (I think one of my least favorite words is clever, it totally makes me twitchy) when I thought I had written something emotionally-driven and honest.

For instance, the other day, I received workshop feedback on a story I believed to be one of the most visceral, deeply felt stories I'd ever written, telling me my prose was "breezy." I flipped my shit a little bit.

...So I'm slumping a little bit this morning over a button-pushing rejection, but I'm glad, because I generally find slumpy moods result in highly productive phases. ...I really don't want to write stories that are anything less than the best versions of themselves they can be, that are good instead of remarkable, and so when I receive the kind of feedback that pushes my buttons, after a brief hour or two of wailing and gnashing and asking, "What do I have to do to write something really truly special? ...Why won't somebody just tell me what single ingredient my work lacks (as if there could ever be one single ingredient, and as if anybody but myself could ever tell me what that ingredient is were such an ingredient to exist)," I remember that what I'm supposed to be doing is developing my own judgement and pushing myself to write more and write better and to travel into the places that are most scary and most vulnerable because these are the places where I most need to locate myself. And then I get back on the horse and work harder and try to kick some ass.

My New Shoes

2009-06-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

Road to WTF

2009-06-24T14:05:00.001-07:00

Several years back, I bought an issue of an ill-fated publication called "Women who Rock," and it came with a sampler of songs by women purported to rock.

Many tracks were great. Others were not.

One stands out as particularly ridiculous -- it was called "Way to Mandalay," and was performed by a Renaissance Fair-inspired group called "Blackmore's Night."

I keep it on my ipod, because whenever it comes up on shuffle, as it did a few minutes ago, it still cracks my shit up.

Here it is-

...utterly ridiculous. I've always thought it sounded less like a legit song than a theme song for one of those syndicated genre programs that local stations tend to air on weekend afternoons.

Shows like -

or...

Let's take one more look at those Blackmore folks.

She's like Stevie Nicks, only shitty.

I think I want to try on his hat.

Monkeybicycle Front to Back - Part 4: Math by Kim Chinquee

2009-06-23T15:07:00.000-07:00

I like Kim Chinquee quite a bit. In my favorite Kim Chinquee stories, the austerity of Chinquee's prose belies the emotional complexity of the characters' situations. And she often writes killer last lines.

"Math" is not my favorite Chinquee story, but it might be my own limitations as a reader... I didn't quite "get" it, beyond the competency of the writing and description of the surface actions.

This character seems to be feeling dislocated... perhaps even apathetic and disaffected.

I thought there was something strange about the classroom, which at times seemed like a classroom of college-aged artists studying things like collaboration, and at other times seemed like a group of elementary school students doing crafts. I kind of like this ambiguity.

I may not have read enough to say this, but it seems like as Kim Chinquee becomes more established, she is writing more about her life as a writer. Some of these stories are quite good. I especially liked "Grade Books" from Quick Fiction 14, in which a writing professor denied tenure refuses to forfeit her office before the designated date.

I like the last line of "Math" quite a bit. As she often does, Chinquee ends with a somewhat oblique but vivid image-

"I smiled at the instructor and helped the boy, eagerly cutting, watching them paste."

I like the sound of the word "paste" inside my mouth.

Monkeybicycle Front to Back - Part 3: I Need a Kidney, and Dick Cheney's is a Match by Cody Walker

2009-06-23T14:53:00.001-07:00

Dear Cody,

Fuck no you can't have my fucking kidney you motherfucker.

And what kind of douchebag name is Cody, anyway?

I agree cougars are "rad," and yes, I keep one as a pet. I've enclosed a picture for you to savor during dialysis.

Sincerely, Dick Cheney

Monkeybicycle Front to Back - Part 2: The Advisor by Jay Wexler

2009-06-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

Crap crap... even though I finished reading Monkeybicycle 6 over a week ago and have read two books since ("The Torturer's Wife by Thomas Glave and Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper - both fantastic), I have yet to write any followup posts in my Monkeybicycle series... so here I am, finally, with number 2.... I promise the others will not be so long in coming).

In Jay Wexler's "The Advisor," a bookish volunteer for a presidential primary campaign gets in a bit too deep with his wackadoodle candidate, who discovers the narrator's academic aptitude and soon has him researching and providing opinions on the most esoteric and archaic of philsophies.

Wexler builds character subtly, through telling details and actions. Ostensibly, candidate Tom Robertson is the unhinged party in this scenario, but our narrator reveals plenty of his own quirks, like his predilection for bonsai care and his tendecy to defend and seek validation from a candidate who proves to be an incompetent wingnut. There are shades of political commentary here as well -- Robertson, a pseudo-intellectual totally out of touch with the electorate, reminds me of the Bush-era democratic party's irrelevance. And I feel it's no coincidence that in his climactic act of nutjobbery, Robertson drops and destroys a television, symbol for all things noxious about contemporary politics.

This story was funny. I enjoyed it, but must admit that while I understood the value of having Robertson drop the television on our narrator's bonsai (the bonsai = his own irrelevance), I still wanted to see the television crush Robertson's little white kitty cat. I guess I'm a sadist like that.

Amongst the privileges of a desk job...

2009-06-22T13:54:00.001-07:00

...(which allows me to obsessively check Google Reader) is being the first person to pre-order "The Failure Six" by Shane Jones.

booyah.

A Selection of Search Terms that have Brought People to this Blog

2009-06-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

cross generation sex stories
giant ejaculations
gay cross generational relationships
barbie fetish
bralessness
ejaculating stories for boys
full mouth ejaculations
gay male urethral cleansing
grandparents on gay boy
lack of feeling when ejaculationing
men play with dolls
perverse old gay men boys
onanizing kids
perverse questions to ask a guy
sounding rod urethra
weekend of a perverse couple
weird perverse submissions

Help my Friend Katelyn...

2009-06-17T11:13:00.001-07:00

...vote in her poll.

Read Me, Hear Me, Pank Me

2009-06-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

Read (and hear!!) my story "Fugitives" in the June issue of Pank, alongside new work by Summer Block, Mark Budman, Kevin Brown, John Farmer, Heather Fowler, Katherine Grosjean, Caitlin Johnson, Sarah Layden, Laura LeHew, Sara Faye Lieber, Cortney McLellan, Laura Marello, Daniel Pinkerton, Emily Rosko, Kowshik Sarangan, Shappy Seasholtz, Audri Sousa, Robert Swartwood.

My story "Painted Faces"....

2009-06-15T18:41:00.001-07:00

...originally published in Keyhole (online) and later published in "Skip, Patch, Eye, Brownie, Chalk: Coming of Age Stories" (Bannock Street Books) has found a new home Boise, Idaho's "Freak Alley," as a special promotion for Bannock Street.

Sarah said a bunch of teenagers, two guys on their way to a comedy club and cooks from a Greek restaurant watched her paint the story, and that the cooks in particular kept coming out to read.

To quote Sarah: "This is what flash is supposed to be."

Very cool.

3 or 4 Things I Know for Sure

2009-06-09T13:53:00.003-07:00

1. This is what I want for my birthday.

2. I am over halfway finished with Monkeybicycle 6, but had fallen rather behind on my "Monkeybicycle Front to Back" posts. This shall be remedied. Good stuff, this.

3. I watched "I'm a Celebrity, why the Fuck am I Watching this Show" out of a morbid fascination with Patti Blagojevich, but must admit to being disappointed. She's rather ordinary, rarely speaks... she's no Janice Dickinson. No Cruella DeVille. There's no theatricality to her evil, which I suppose just serves as a reminder that her kind of evil is an everyday kind of evil, and ultimately the IL political system is what needs changing.... we can't label Blago and wife as villains in this fetishsitic, objectifying kind of way and sweep the problem under the rug.

4. I swear I knew a few other things earlier today, but have forgotten all of them.

sign the petition

2009-06-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

from Gael Guevara at Sylvia River Law Project-

Hi Everyone! Please forward far and wide!!!
Sign the petition! We currently have gathered 262 signatures. Let's overwhelm the NYPD with twice the number of signitures and let them know we want changes and we want them now!!!

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/NYPDTransPolicy/

"This June, New York City will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots: an historic moment when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) New Yorkers stood up and fought back against police harassment. It is in this spirit that we ? members of New York City?s transgender communities, activists, advocates, and allies ? ask you to support changes in New York City Police Department (NYPD) policies that would improve our safety in interactions with the police. Specifically, we ask that you urge the NYPD to adopt the ?Proposed Policy for the Treatment of Transgender People in NYPD Custody? and the associated changes to the NYPD patrol guide"

Also, please also consider endorsing the Trans Day of Action early - march and rally on June 26th. contact Mya Vazquez at mvazquez@alp.org

Monkeybicycle Front to Back* - Part 1: Gum Gutter by Martha Clarkson

2009-06-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a series of posts about Monkeybicycle 6, the most recent issue of the journal chosen by "My Dinner with Lydia Davis" contest winner Meg Pokrass as her prize.

++this post contains mild spoilers++

Martha Clarkson's "Gum Gutter" is an ingratiating story delivered in a relaxed, conversational voice. This story about a woman's Thanksgiving day encounter with a police officer who claims to be ticketing her for littering (but is in fact slipping her his phone number) at first appears to be as casual as an anecdote delivered over brunch. What makes it more than just an anecdote is the angst Clarkson layers beneath the surface -- alienation from family, romantic dissatisfaction and job loss. Almost as an afterthought, the narrator mentions she was canned from her post as a psychology prof after bedding a student, which contributes a nice bit of unreliability. But my favorite thing about this story is the subtle humour in the narrator's interaction with the police officer. Clarkson writes great dialogue filled with tiny absurdities, like when the narrator somewhat desperately accuses the trees of littering by dropping their leaves into the gutter, and the police officer responds to her completely earnestly. Or when the narrator, after having just moments before declared her dislike of the gum flavor she's being ticketed for spitting into the gutter, pops a new piece into her mouth and offers one to the officer, who accepts, then delivers my favorite line in the story - "that is not a flavor I would select." This is quality characterization, communicating a lot about both narrator and officer in a not a lot of words.

Buy Monkeybicycle 6 here.

*because "cover to cover" was already taken.

2 Things

2009-06-01T08:45:00.003-07:00

~My copy of Monkeybicycle #6 arrived this weekend. You may recall that "My Dinner with Lydia Davis" contest winner Meg Pokrass, whom discriminating readers of internet lit recognize as "the only firecracker worth driving across state lines to purchase," chose a subscription to Monkeybicycle as her contest prize, and that I promised to read Monkeybicycle #6 cover-to-cover and blog about its contents, and hopefully provide additional Monkeybicycle-centric content (ie writer inteviews, etc.) ....now that my copy has arrived, we can finally get cracking. Stay tuned!

~Glimmer Train announced a very odd new submissions category. I'm not sure what to make of it-

New category: Best Start

Best Start is meant to encourage new writers. This category is different from our others in that the piece should be an engaging and coherent narrative, but it does not need to be a complete story; it just needs to be an important part of a story in progress.

...these are a few of the basics:

Open to writers whose fiction has not appeared in a print publication with a circulation over 3,000.
Word count must not exceed 1,000.
The best 50 pieces will each win $50 and make Glimmer Train’s Best Start list, which will be announced our September bulletin.
Competition closes on June 30.

We want to see a slice of a story you’re excited about tackling!

...The email did not include any further explanation behind the thinking that went into the formation of this oddball category (maybe the website guidelines do -- I probably should've checked before blogging about it). I'm not necessarily criticizing this, just trying to understand their thinking - since none of these stories will be complete stories, and none will be published in the magazine, it seems fairly clear they're setting themselves up as arbiters of potential and saying, 'new writers, send us your half-finished stuff and we will tell you whether it has merit according to Glimmer Train.' Kinda weird. Thoughts?

2009-05-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to Meg for this bit of brilliance.

I for one am eager to experience the promised 'other delights.'

in which I go off on my part-time employer's non-union-busting union-busting meeting

2009-05-29T14:44:00.000-07:00

(this is the first time I've ever tried to write intelligibly abt labor and the economy -- labor movement and immigration rights allies, please call me out if any of my armchair theorizing is totally fracked).

Art Levine in the Huffington Post (hat tip: alternet) reports that an increasing number of corporations are using aggressive, "Wal-mart tactics" like firings and intimidation to prevent the formation of unions. These are the sort of tactics the Employee Free Choice Act is designed to prevent, by eliminating the secret ballot process and shortening the amount of time during which employers can fuck with shit.

Perhaps because of anxieties produced by the Employee Free Choice Act, my own part-time (retail) employer held a mandatory "union awareness" meeting twoish (I think) weeks ago, the first meeting of its kind I've seen after almost a decade of working for this company. They did not employ agressive, Wal Mart-style tactics. Rather, they went in for some classic "Office Space" style doubletalk and manipulation, a Bill O'Reilly-worthy "no spin zone" wherein they announced they were not there to tell us unions were "good" or "bad," but rather present us with comprehensive information so that we might make up our own minds. Their version of comprehensive information was a chart that compared "union culture" to our own corporate culture, characterizing our company as a place where hard work is compensated and management's door is always open, where feedback is solicited through "round-table conversations" and management values those who go "above and beyond" in their commitment to the "team." By contrast, our managers not so subtly implied that unions are unable to guarantee anything in the way of compensation, while closing off employees' access to management. Union organizers came off sounding a bit like creepy muggers who stalk you in alleys on your way to car to coerce you into signing union cards. Not surprisingly, the general principle of unions as a mechanism for collective bargaining and action and for protecting the collective welfare of employees was completely absent from this "comprehensive" conversation.

If the responses of my colleagues are any indication, our employer has nothing to worry about. Some of my favorite comments include (paraphrased) -

~"So if we unionized, I would lose all the raises I've gotten from working here for ten years?"

~"When I worked as a flight attendant, the maintenance workers were unionized but the flight attendants weren't, and when the maintenance workers went on strike they made it really difficult for the rest of us."

~"If we already have laws that protect workers, then why do we need unions?"

~"Who runs these unions, anyway? We've all heard stories about Jimmy Hoffa."

...Let's talk about that last comment for a second. Chicago is a weird-ass city where unions are concerned. We've got the worst of the worst here - some of the most corrupt, mobbed-up unions in the country. But we also have some of the best, most democratic, diverse and worker-driven unions, like the UE, the union that lead the worker action at Republic Windows and Doors last fall. There are also a lot of great worker organizing projects in Chicago and all around the country that for various reasons work outside union structures, often because of the contingent nature of the work or the undocumented status of the workers, in professions like the temporary staffing industry, cleaning services, taxicab driving or restaurant work, professions that represent the expansion of the low-wage service sector in contemporary global capitalism.

...Which brings me back to my employer. Right now they have nothing to worry about. Most of our staff remains thoroughly convinced that "we have it good." And in a sense, we do have it good -- when it comes to labor conditions and pay rates, everything our employer does is safe, relatively comfortable, above-board and in accordance with labor laws. But at the same time -- 8, 9, 10 dollars an hour may be above minimum wage but it does not constitute a living wage, not in Chicago, and I highly doubt many of my colleagues are able to have their housing expenses only constitute the recommended one third of their budget. Health benefits are not available to part-time employees and an increasing number of individuals seem to be combining part-time jobs rather than securing full-time employment. A year or two ago, our employer eliminated a longstanding system of standarized shared commission, and although most of us continue to make something comparable to what we were already making, some have suspected that this policy was used to bring new part-timers in at a lower rate than what they might have made previously. One of my colleagues joked that the only thing that really makes our employees any different from grocery store workers (who are usually unionized) is our elitism -- our company's name communicates a higher-end, middle-class ethos, and most of our part-time staff is highly educated, many occupying full time jobs in administration, social work, education, design and similar professions.

In fact, it seems to me that given such phenomenons as the outsourcing of middle-class jobs, the current recession and the entry of my generation of boomers' children into the labor force, there are increasing numbers of middle class or middle class-raised folks entering the service sector, either temporarily or more permanently, and I wonder if this isn't part of what's making employers nervous, the unsustainability of more and more educated folks working without medical benefits or living wages (clearly this is directly connected to the inflated cost of housing and our fracked up medical system)*. --I don't think it's any coincidence that self and Fortune Magazine-professed "great companies to work for" like Starbucks and Whole Foods were the folks lobbying to alter the Employee Free Choice Act legislation to require that 70 rather than 50% of employees sign union cards. ...I hope the Employee Free Choice Act passes, and I think it will be very interesting to see what happens over the next few years.

*I do not think it's ethical, sustainable or right that anyone lack access to medical care and a living wage, regardless of class/education -- I'm speaking here primarily of educated folks as potential source of employers' anxiety.

here we go again...

2009-05-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

seriously, what is with the Amazon fuckwittage?

linkage

2009-05-29T09:52:00.001-07:00

the not a contest contest

the meredith mashup

2009-05-28T11:52:00.000-07:00

Things I Learned this Weekend (and on Into this Morning)....

2009-05-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

1. The new issue of The Legendary is badass. In addition to my story "Grace," it includes work by Dawn Allison, Frank O'Connor, Barry Graham, Josh Stockinger, Michelle Reale, Rosanne Griffeth, Brent Powers, Michael Andreoni, Helen Peterson, Terry Pearce and Gavin Broom.

2. The new issue of Keyhole can now be ordered. This issue includes my "long short" Everyday Zoology. I am excited because I really love Keyhole and this is my first print publication and my first long short publication. This issue also includes work by Crispin Best, Ryan Call, E.K. Entrada, Brian Foley, Scott Garson, Terence Hawkins, Michael Jauchen, Gary Moshimer, Edward Mullany, Alice Pettway, and Matthew Simmons.

3. The Dollar Store Show reading series is awesome. I especially liked Mary Hamilton's story about a heartbroken teddy bear who gets dumped by her girlfriend, moves to Las Vegas, works as a waitress, becomes increasingly unhappy and stressed, seeks relief through a colonic and becomes infatuated with the angelic blonde designer of a hair towel. I also enjoyed Edward Thomas-Herrara's piece, a list of past lovers and objects of infatuation filled with wonderful comic details.

4. The panel conversations at Pilcrow Lit Fest are engaging and informative. I attended panels on live readings (what makes a good reading, what makes a bad reading), small press publishing and writing sex. I think the small press publishing panel was my favorite of the three. Felt the most relevant, and nice interplay between the panelists. When I first saw how many people were on each of these panels (like as many as seven or eight in some cases), and how short the timeframe was (45 min), I was nervous, but thankfully, the panelists were not given time to provide any kind of overview of their own projects or work, which can be a major time-eater, and instead, this information was spread more organically through the conversation, which kept things moving.

5. Opium Literary Death Match is a blast. Jill Summers is brilliant.

6. Amy Guth (I'm too lazy to look up the keystroke to add the two dots above the "u") is amazing and hot. Like potential gay icon hot. Or possibly she already is a gay icon and I'm just out of the loop. I'm fairly certain she must already be an icon of some kind to somebody.

7. Bringing your crazy friend who chats up strangers and then invites herself to hang out with them with you to Opium Literary Death Match is a great way to wind up spending an entire evening hanging out with David Barringer and Todd Zuniga.

8. David Barringer and Todd Zuniga are very nice and very chill. **edit** Todd Zuniga is rock star cool. He feeds granola bars to hungry trixies and they follow him around like rabid fangirls. I am fairly certain that crazy friend entertained more than alienated them, I hope this is the case.

9. With assistance from Lady Gaga, I am now able to run/jog steadily for a solid 25-30 minutes. When I stop, the feeling I am near death only lasts for a half-minute at most, and then I feel crazy euphoric, like I can do anything and everything ever.

10. This crazy euphoric feeling is a good one to have if you intend to spend another five hours dancing at Berlin.

11. If you jog for a half hour and then spend five hours dancing at Berlin, the resulting endorphins will almost resemble a more pleasant form of intoxification. You will arrive home with leaden abdominals and legs about to buckle. The next day, when you suck in what itty bitty bit remains of your gut (seriously? how can there still be any roundness there? what does it take to fully flatten your abdomen??), you may feel as thought your midsection has disappeared. Be sure to eat something substantive even if you are worried your gut will re-accumulate.

11. Dancing at Berlin is way, way, way more fun than getting wasted and feeling anxious and craving sexual attention and affirmation at Berlin.

12. Berlin is a lot more fun before the after-hours herds arrive at 2 AM. For instance, you can actually move around the room and use your arms and legs when you dance.

2009-05-20T16:52:00.000-07:00

This from Salt Publishing, a small press in the UK that has published great folks like Charles Lambert, Tania Hershman and Vanessa Gebbie:

Subject: JUST ONE BOOK

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

As many of you will know, Chris and I have been struggling to keep Salt moving since June last year when the economic downturn began to affect our press. Our three year funding ends this year: we've £4,000 due from Arts Council England in a final payment, but cannot apply through Grants for the Arts for further funding for Salt's operations. Spring sales were down nearly 80% on the previous year, and despite April's much improved trading, the past twelve months has left us with a budget deficit of over £55,000. It's proving to be a very big hole and we're having to take some drastic measures to save our business.

Here's how you can help us to save Salt and all our work with hundreds of authors around the world.

JUST ONE BOOK

1. Please buy just one book, right now. We don't mind from where, you can buy it from us or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you'll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. We need cash now to stay afloat. If you love literature, help keep it alive. All it takes is just one book sale. Go to our online store and help us keep going.

2. Share this note on your profile. Tell your friends. If we can spread the word about our cash crisis, we can hopefully find more sales and save our literary publishing. Remember it's just one book, that's all it takes to save us. Please do it now.

With my best wishes to you
Jen
Director
Salt Publishing
http://www.facebook.com/l/;http://www.saltpublishing.com

2009-05-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize that Shane Jones was already "back" when I wrote my last post because work is crazy right now and I have accumulated 823 unread posts in my Google Reader.

Shane Jones, if you're still out there somewhere...

2009-05-19T14:23:00.001-07:00

....my co-worker loved reading "Light Boxes." She said at first she was worried it was going to be too "weird," but then became completely engrossed in the story. She said her favorite part was the "List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness." She said something I no longer remember about how she liked The Girl who Smells of Honey and Smoke, how she takes control of the story, and I said, "yeah, isn't it cool how February turns out to be depressed dirty hipster writer guy (no offense)" and she said, "yeah, when I got to the part about their relationship, I flipped back to the photo of the writer and I was like ohhhhhhhhh yeah...." and then we both laughed a lot. My co-worker is the kind of girl who attends roller derby bouts and buys tablecloths with retro-stylized floral patterns, if you catch my drift.

The single word entry you posted as your last blog entry is still visible in my google reader, as I suppose it is for anyone who subscribed to your blog. ...but I feel it should be acknowledged once more that Light Boxes is the opposite of that word.

2009-05-19T08:07:00.001-07:00

Ravi Mangla's new blog "Recommended Reading" is worthy of your attention. Ravi interviews writers like Kevin Wilson and Clancy Martin about their reading tastes. Highly recommended for geeky lovers of desert island list-making.

2009-05-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

I met Kyle Minor tonight at his reading here in Chicago. He struck me as very nice, sincere and introverted. ...the same review of "In the Devil's Territory" that I posted here I also posted on Good Reads, and after Kyle read it, he added me on facebook and sent me a "thank you for the kind review" message, which I thought was very thoughtful of him and which gave me a bit of a rush, so then I sent him a message to tell him I was going to try to make it to this reading tonight and he sent me a message in return to tell me that if I came to the reading to be sure to introduce myself, but of course I didn't introduce myself right away because approaching people in informal public spaces makes me anxious, so instead he approached me while I was sitting waiting for the reading to start, and he ended up taking a chair next to mine... and then he was very quiet, and I was very quiet, because although energetically I am mostly an extrovert, I am very bad at starting conversations with people I do not know, especially with very quiet people, and in addition I am completely in awe of Kyle's writing which caused me to completely blank. Of course I could've asked him any number of questions, such as -

How many cities have you been to so far on this tour? Have you been home in between? Are you exhausted? Have you been to Chicago much, or at all, previously? How do you like Chicago? Do you enjoy reading? Do you have a particular copy of the book you use for readings? Is it marked up? How do you decide which story to read? How much of the book have you committed to memory?

...but I sometimes suck at thinking up and asking basic questions like this... so I was quiet and then Kyle Minor was quiet and then Kyle Minor got up to look at books and came back with a book by Richard Price and sat down and asked if I was familiar with Richard Price and I said I have not read him, and he was about to say something about Richard Price but then the reading finally started and we never had this conversation about Richard Price and after the reading I said, "great job" and he said "great to meet you" and I said "you too" and ran out of the bookstore and home.

Still, it was great to meet Kyle Minor, and I am going to use this as a learning experience so that next time I can be better prepared to ask seemingly inane questions like "how was your flight," assuming the person has flown in a plane, so that I will seem less withdrawn and more interested in the other person because I am extremely interested by people in general and by Kyle Minor in particular.