bleak-mama:

Sam Pink

(Source: achoo-achoo)

beachsloth:

The End of Larry’s Wallet by Todd Hasak-Lowy

               Todd Hasak-Lowy is out of control. In this story he veers from view to view. Smaller things, smaller problems get more concern and worry than the larger, bigger picture issues. Here Larry loses his wallet. He freaks out about it. Obsessiveness rears its ugly little head as the character begins formulating colors codes to his life, staying he does not want to be in the red. Whether this is an illusion to the eventual annihilation of millions of people on the Indian subcontinent is a whole other matter. 

                Multiple realities take place within a single story, each with their own rich version of history. 

1.       Larry is a pathetic, though ultimately not doomed person living by himself after a series of mediocre events. He tends to tune out aspects of reality that do not interest him or are easily understandable by him. Thus his daughter Lucy, though he does care about her, is too complicated for him. Ditto goes for his other interest in the mother, Karen. Both appear to be far away from his average train of thought which is exclusively him. IKEA bothers him. Mustard bothers him. Indeed he views the world on a selfish, though not overly selfish, level. He’s compassionate but only to the degree that his limited attention will let him be. 

2.       Nuclear war is presented in a far less emotionally charged, far more ‘matter of fact’ way. Here the focus is less on the immediate (indeed the reader never discovers why or for what reason) but on the media’s reaction to this. Consumption of media is the main point of this section which is chopped up nicely alongside Larry’s embattled search for his wallet and ultimate inability to deal with his surroundings or people. The tone in this section is from afar, an unknowable place, less like fiction and more like reporting on abstract, matter of fact statements. 

3.       The writer injects himself in this story to reflect on the media response to his short story collection. People get really riled up about the story. However Todd, though upset and unable to defend himself against the public backlash against the story, does get quite a bit of free advertising for his book. For this Todd should ultimately be thankful and gracious that his story has been afforded this level of attention. 

In the story Todd focuses attention on the most mundane and most extreme details. Humor emerges from the fact that poor Larry cannot find his wallet while devastating personal tragedies happen to a named and unnamed figure on Television in front of 130 million. What is more amazing is how he appears to show the unemotional, or mixed emotional response of the media in reporting the news against the far more relate-able and mundane of a lost wallet. Even Karen tells him over the phone ‘Not now’ as pieces from the media about the devastation come through, showing the millions dead. From here it seems to state that in order for there to be any level of sympathy there needs to be a narrative, a person to connect to, however distant. 

Todd ends it with a smile to America’s news media in an insane type manner.

cuttyspot:

[words on DURING MY NERVOUS BREAKDOWN I WANT TO HAVE BIOGRAPHER PRESENT by BRANDON SCOTT GORRELL]

*

I just read during my nervous breakdown i want to have a biographer present

by Brandon Scott Gorrell

& for the most part, I truly enjoyed it

this book was released by Muumuu House

I don’t know how I feel abt the blown up words on the back of the book

‘low self-confidence’ ‘alienation’ ‘anxiety’

I mean, it’s kind of absurdly funny

& honest at the same

& sad

these words are ‘themes’ throughout the book

but shouting them specifically on the back felt a bit ‘gimmicky’ to me

which, shld this matter?

gimmicks?

has ‘it’ gotten to the pt where the self-conscious ‘sarcasm’ / ‘irony’ involved in this climate

allows gimmicks to exist because of their tinge of irony

anyways, maybe I’ll feel differently abt this element of the book in the future

the ‘i’ is heavy in this book

the ‘first-person’ speaker, I mean

which I personally usually enjoy

although I enjoy poets like Edward Mullany who strip themselves of the ‘I’

that can be extremely refreshing

the ‘i’ in Brandon Scott Gorrell’s poems frequently ‘takes on’ a ‘larger than life’ persona’

not in a ‘too serious’ way at all

in a very playful way

his ‘speaker’ seems very interested in ‘science’ & specifically ‘the cosmos’ & ‘physics’

‘the only things i find unpredictable are quantum theory and / particle acceleration experiments’

‘outer space’

& in several poems he ‘transcends’ ordinary limitations

or, more accurately, imagines transcending ordinary limitations

such as

*

‘i want to be a deer in the rock mountains of northern utah’

‘i will expand / into a giant flesh thing / the size of a volcano’

‘i will vaporize myself in the core of the earth’

‘sit inside my head and control my body’

‘fly into an infinite void and unfold into a soft, / purple aura that absorbs the solar system’

‘i am a 200 year-old android fighting death spheres with a / laser eye and two soundwave devices / my soundwave technology feels like a supernova explosions at / point blank range repeatedly for millions of years’

‘how I want to be a flower / incapable of cognitive dissonance’

*

you get the pt

often these ‘imaginings’ of transforming into these forces ends in violence

often they ‘reflect’ the speaker’s existential ‘despair’ or ‘lonesomeness’

‘reflect’ the speaker’s restless mind

who knows

the poems speak of the Internet a lot

‘the internet is a large room / with hologram people’

abt the monotony of checking the same websites over & over

abt the ephemeral but desired experience of getting a new email

there are a few ‘i said / you said’ poems in this book

essentially stripped of punctuation

usually abt the ‘i’ & ‘you’ being far away from each other

perhaps in a long-distance relationship

‘i said if i could teleport to your room i would’

‘i said i want to move into the internet’

the speaker seems ‘self-deprecating’

‘i avoid making eye contact with myself in the mirror’

^ that line ‘killed me’

I remember stopping when I hit that line

I put the book down & thought abt the notion of not being able to look at oneself in the mirror

truly intense

think abt that 

*

despite Brandon’s deliberate ‘simplicity’ & his I-don’t-take-myself-too-seriously ‘swagger’

his very keen insight & intelligence shines through as well

like the poem ‘face annihilation’

I wrote ‘political’ next to its title

whatever that means

in this poem he references ‘homeless people’ ‘rainforests’ ‘massive shortages’ of water in ‘africa’ ‘soldiers in iraq’ ‘economy’

I usually wouldn’t like a poem that references all those things, to be honest

but I like this poem, primarily because of its shift in register

an ‘oscillation’ from the other content in the book

a similar tone though – that of a lack of pretense

in this ‘political’ poem Brandon writes:

‘pharmaceutical corporations have convinced a large / number of people that they think incorrectly; that they / must take pills to change the way they think, otherwise / they will fail at work, school, and personal relationships’

*

the last poem made me feel sad

I’m pretty sure I literally had moisture in my eyes

but the piece is so subtle, abt a ‘john and the space alien’ having a conversation

John ends it by saying, ‘I can’t really think of anything I can do’

in response to ‘doing something’ that will help ‘them’

their condition

& it seemed so desperate yet so emotionally-charged

he has a bold frankness throughout these pieces

a fearlessness (to ‘express’ his ‘fears’ & his ‘anxiety’)

largely, this book seems to be a keen exploration of the condition of ‘the internet culture’

the ‘emptiness’ it can potentially cause

the ‘addictiveness’ of it

the reliance on it for ‘happiness’

here are my other favorite moments from the book:

*

‘you said would you scratch my mosquito for me’

‘you said the internet fell asleep’

‘brandon wonders if repeating ”nothing” would help him / make his mind blank’

‘your connection with yourself is stronger than my / connection with you / / forever’

‘i am an organic extension of my computer’s hard / drive’

‘we went to a booth and had small, two sentence conversations’

‘when i die my interpretation of reality will not be stored in / a usb stick’

*

find his book here:

http://muumuuhouse.com/store.html

animalitoinexpresivo:

Pensar en el cuerpo

http://www.vice.com/read/what-i-think-about-when-i-think-about-my-body

beethoventhemovie:

formerly abandoned first paragraph of future novel, found in my gmail drafts

Megan Boyle

mariecalloway:

vicemag:

—We’ve got a new story from Marie Calloway

vicemag:

BOYLE’S BRAINS - PEOPLE I MET IN TRUCK DRIVING SCHOOL

By Megan Boyle.

This May I passed a trucking school on my bike and enrolled shortly after. For four weeks a small group of men and I watched instructional DVDs and took tests in a classroom Mondays through Thursdays from 5:30 to 10:45. Fridays we’d meet in a relatively empty industrial area under a bridge and take turns practicing pre-trip inspections and air brakes tests on an 18-wheeled truck.

Jay

Fifty to 65-year-old administrative assistant who handled my paperwork and told me how the school works. Made self-deprecating comments about not understanding technology and offered me a bottle of water. Asked what size t-shirt I wear and I said “Small.” He looked concerned, said “Are you sure? They shrink in the wash,” then began insisting I take a blue polo shirt instead of a white t-shirt. Another administrative assistant helped us look for the polo shirts in a closet. Jay repeated comments about the shirts shrinking in the wash and the other assistant passively defended the shirts’ integrity. They watched me place a small and medium polo up to my torso. It was quiet for a moment. I looked at the non-Jay assistant, said, “I don’t know, things shrink in the wash,” then looked at Jay and said “I’ll take a medium.” He looked happy. 

Wally

Class instructor. Moved slowly and looked like he had a permanent twinkle in his eye. Once heard him humming The Addam’s Family theme song as he approached the front of the room with a trucking DVD in his hand. He stood beside the TV, stared into the back of the room, and continued to hum for a few moments after the DVD started playing. I don’t think anyone else was aware of this.

Muslim Guy

Sat next to me on a foldout chair in the truck yard on my last Friday. I hadn’t seen him before. Advised me to invest in a house that needed fixing up, then stand in a Home Depot parking lot at 6 AM and “wait for the Mexicans to help you.” Told me about a business plan and said, “Don’t tell anyone about this.” The business plan was stupid as hell. Showed me MySpace pictures of the inside of his t-shirt store that went out of business. I said, “It looks… big.” Shortly after that he announced he was Muslim then went into the truck to do his air brakes test. The last thing I heard him say was, “It’s hard for a convicted felon to get a job.”

Mark

Skinny 40 to 50-year-old who sat in front of me and frequently said things aloud to no one. Sometimes I’d say things back. One day we were the only people left outside on a cigarette break and somehow ended up having a pause-filled conversation about superheroes, which I thought would end with each successive thing said. Came late to class after cutting in front of a man at a gas station who started hitting him. Wore an AC/DC baseball shirt sometimes. 

CONTINUE