Beach Sloth

I want to YouTube down the Rivers of America

2013-07-17T21:03:00.000-04:00

My first chapbook ‘I want to YouTube down the Rivers of America’ is out in bookstores now. I put them there. Later on the bookstore owners sent them back to me. Barnes and Noble does not respect alt lit. When alt lit is a great genre they’ll be sorry. Probably Barnes and Noble will be bankrupt long before alt lit gets its due or alt lit hears a proper apology from anybody.

Due to my store troubles I am selling each one directly to you the consumer. Let me tell you a bit about it first:

- Has short stories

- Has poems

- Has fun

- Has 8,999 words

- Has 43 pages

- Made of paper, staples, and love (lots of love)

- Bonus features probably, because why not, bonus features are fun

Payment can be done safely and effectively through a paypal account dedicated solely to this chapbook. Yes this email wants to support the chapbook. The chapbook is going out in the big world via a brown paper envelope. Gmail and paypal are there to support it. Hopefully you can be there too, to hold a piece of Beach Sloth history in your hands. Welcome to the first physical artifact of my online existence made by my very own hands. That used to be my body but I have merged to become one with the internet.

Paypal the following address $9:

pleasepaybeachsloth@gmail.com

*For simple PDFs, you can send $5 and I’ll email you a PDF copy instead. This is for international locations mostly, as I am unable to send the chapbooks overseas.

Send me your address via that email or via Facebook. If you are reading this you’re probably on Facebook and probably my friend. I’ll send the chapbook directly to your home. Have Beach Sloth in your home today, or at least a bound paper representative. That’s the best you are going to get. So get excited. I am. This is the first time I’ve offered a hand-made item. Before I worked with the ‘e-book’ format (still available here on Amazon) with mixed success as it felt too impersonal for my tastes. Hope this is considerably more personal. Thus far I feel it is. I want to interact on a whole other level, the IRL level. Help me do that. Thank you whoever has brought and whoever will buy one. I love you the most of all.

Help bring me out of the internet and into IRL. I cannot do this alone. I need your help. Bring my blog into the shining light of a brand new day!

The First Book of Philosophical Sexts by Quantus Copericus and Satanic Banana

2012-08-27T22:04:00.001-04:00

Buttercup McGillicuddy and Satanic Banana are behind this book of philosophy. As Buttercup recently released a list of girls entitled ‘crushes’ this is the logical progression of his ‘crush brand’. Is Buttercup the flirt of alt lit? I think he is. With these philosophical sexts he unfortunately ‘gives up’ some of his better sexts. Though I guess these are the ‘PG’ rated sexts. Buttercup is bolder. Satanic takes a more humorous surreal tone.

Inside of you inside of me is the first SEXT. This hurts. Buttercup is quite forward here. Satanic relates to the trees. Glaciers take it slow. Watch them crash into each other. For their love the universe explodes. Satan just wants the end of the world and a pizza. Yep she’s really Satan. Pizza is the most Satanic food. Buttercup goes into the whole ‘jungle creatures that die after mating’. Think that’s romantic. Death is romantic. Sex is kind of romantic, but death, damn.

Scientists mate. Buttercup explains his height and length. That’s a bit much. I wonder who Buttercup sent these texts to. Liquid nitrogen works on the heart. It makes it fragile prone to breaking. Wonder how a non-scientist gets hold of such materials. Reading sexts after the event can be erotic and depressing. Sext is funny that way. Text-based love can only offer so much.

How does Buttercup send a sext while in the middle of the act? Can you time sexts for maximum sextiness? I wonder how the science of sexts. Satanic knows this is difficult and results in gibberish. Sex while walking is big in the Pacific Northwest. Wish I knew why. The Pacific Northwest has figured out how to live. Both know batteries are finite. They must meet and stop the sexts. It needs to be IRL. I disagree. When you have sexts you can sext anywhere, anyplace.

Richmond is a lie. Poor Buttercup cannot lie to his parents. He looks on Facebook and suffers from Facebook sadness. Satanic never tells the truth for she is Satan. Satan lies to his parents all the time. Go Satan! The hump pun is important to Buttercup as he forfeits it to the Princess of Darkness. Quickly the camels travel into other times and religions. Dimensions of sex exist. Love is all about that.

Koalas are deemed to be ‘sext worthy’. I doubt the potency of Koala hotness. Those things attack you. Screw Koalas. Alligators, now they are beautiful. Remember alligators must be more romantic to make up for their appearance. Koalas coast on their looks. Fuck Koalas. Buttercup has a weird Halloween costume fetish. Is this a gateway to becoming a furry? Having met Buttercup I can say ‘Yes’.

Leaves fall. That’s the autumn lifestyle for them. When leaves land on the ground they know the tree no longer loves them. Poor leaves find themselves in the rakes of suburbanites. On the side of the road they provide shelter to gross insects, later to be disturbed by energetic children. Afterwards the two become frogs to eat those very insect, right in front of a courthouse because they are classy, hence the genital top hats.

Hope Buttercup and Satanic have sexts left in them after this highly erotic exchange. Wonder if either ever uses these in actual sexts if the recipient will have previously read them and will be completely turned off. This is how one suffers for art I guess. Sexts are the newest movement in alt lit as alt lit gets closer and closer to being an overly complicated flirtation device.

Sprezzatura pt. 2: the first brief estrangement of buttercup mcgillicuddy and lk shaw

2012-08-27T21:49:00.000-04:00

Prezi is ridiculous. Usually business people use Prezi when they want to seem ‘artsy’. Wonder why Buttercup chose such an ‘out-of-control’ version of Powerpoint. For that is all Prezi really is: Powerpoint gone illogical. None of it corresponds to reality. This is the most business-like alt lit has ever been. Indeed after this I wonder: will alt lit become acceptable in the boardrooms of America? Can I finally reveal my alt lit pseudonym among the business people I work with each and every day? I long for the day when Beach Sloth will be in the boardrooms of America, right along there with ‘synergy’ and ‘Pizzazz’. Goddamn I love Pizzazz.

Lucy states every Sprezzatura starts out with her being unable to understand the technology. That’s okay. Nobody understands Prezi. Most of its appeal lies with its complete inability to be figured out. Yeah Prezi is like love in that sense, if love could be offered as a proposal on some projector in an anonymous office park. Pleas for help are met with ridicule from Buttercup. He calls her a ‘Luddite’. I’m a Luddite actually. Despite my online presence I have a pre-paid phone that people find humorous. Those people who laugh generally use their phones for checking Yahoo news or some other nonsense. Yahoo News is the Entertainment tonight of news.

Glad Lucy fights against the Prezi machine. Prezi is what ‘Rage against the Machine’ rages against, besides its number one fan Paul Ryan. Buttercup compares it to a milkshake. I love milkshakes. Every time I drink a milkshake I think to myself ‘Wish I had enough money to get delicious food all the time’. Later on I eat dried food in my cupboard. Yes right now I live a dried-fried diet. Also whatever snacks I manage to take from work or ‘free events’. I am the Post-Modern gather.

A video comes up of Lucy singing a song to Buttercup. Now Buttercup feels bad. Here he was telling her what a Luddite she was and here’s this: a testament to their true internet. She writes songs for everybody apparently. I am amazed. Who will ever write a song about me? Will it be Lucy or is she in a committed sing-writing relationship with Buttercup? It is hard to tell.

Buttercup waits on the internet for people. At times the internet is a giant airport. People wait all over the place to depart, to wait for new arrivals. It is a confusing place. Glad that Lucy and Buttercup work through their issues. Hope their online relationship continues to blossom in whatever format they choose.

Babe, Terror – Knights 8.3

2012-08-26T23:55:00.000-04:00

This is hazy. ‘Babe, Terror’ creates a deeply strange sonic universe that vaguely references pop conventions while it loops again and again until the repetition becomes utterly hypnotic. ‘Knights’ is hypnagogic pop at its absolute strangest. Evolution of these loops is so subtle. What makes it fascinating is how it creates an environment where this feels perfectly acceptable. Sure that beat will continue onward. Emotions have been bled clean of this leaving behind a nearly blank slate of sound. Minimal is one word for it. Insanely, indescribably catchy would be another.

‘Lifantastic I’ is perfect. While it appears calm on the first listen it slowly reveals the sounds of inner churning. Glitches form a large part of the song’s appeal as little element stutter and start up. Shadows of sounds appear to filter into from an unseen location. ‘Savagestic’ sounds like Tones on Tails track even the lazy drum machine beat gives off the illusion of a 80s instrumental gone very wrong. ‘Lifantastic II’ goes even further down the ‘music drinking cough syrup’ vibe. Things slow down even more as the same beat keeps on plodding along. Vocal distortions remind me of DJ Yo-Yo Dieting’s bizarre sense of humor. How it ends is with a drunken loop going on over and over again until it becomes completely indecipherable.

‘Knights’ is the sound of music that has lost its way and doesn’t care. This is bizarre strange stuff that gets stuck in your head like so much new-age airport Muzak. Yet there’s something here nearly psychedelic in nature that keeps it utterly engrossing.

Illuminati Power Hour 14

2012-08-26T21:36:00.000-04:00

Is Steve Roggenbuck the ‘Insane Clown Posse’ of alt lit? An entire vocabulary grows around Steve like delightful patches of moss. ‘Live my life’, ‘truly’, variations on ‘frick’ it is all part of Steve’s universe. The support growing around Steve makes a dictionary necessary, even a documentary. No clown makeup exists yet in Steve’s world but give it time. Pikachu hats are the beginning. Imagine the ending. You are not dreaming hard enough. Picture the most insane kind of face paint, of flarf paint, and you’re halfway there.

Ben Beutel-Gunn introduces Steve using a Super-Nova like amount of energy. A dry erase board shows the illuminati power triangle. I am an internet dad. My kids love Steve’s online presence. They are friends with Steve on Facebook. Good thing I know where my kids are late at night. At night my kids hang out on the computer tweeting and watching me tweet. Hardcore porn is on deck for the broadcast. Steve mentions he stays up until 7 am on the internet. Seeing that ‘sexually explicit’ picture I know what he stays up doing: he tweets at people.

Juice comes up. Everybody loves the juice. Who doesn’t? If you hate juice you hate life. Life requires you to juice it. Drink real juice. Taste the nutrition. Steve Roggenbuck loves juice. Hope Steve gets a juice sponsorship. ‘Juicy Juice’ is Steve’s passion. Remember the dorm life? Colleges pay students to drink juice. Worry that college make up fake currencies through ‘flex dollars’ or anything else. Kangaroo schools started with Harvard University. Everybody else is a fake marsupial.

Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch is beautiful to Steve. Watch it. Think of everything Air Bud has accomplished. If a dog can do it so can you. You are an exceptional person. Picture yourself as a famous sport star. Striker, Shooter, and Zack are Air Bud’s children. Worry about Rocky Raccoon and his kidnapping tendencies. Hope that in the movie Air Bud escapes his kidnapper. Later on the mailman and Air Bud create a bonding relationship. Someone in the crowd screams ‘Hey they are putting Air Bud in’ when they see Air Bud take the plate.

Find your voice Steve extolls the community. Alt lit is a big growing family. Some of them claim to be related to me. That’s fine. I’m already a dad IRL. It is time to be your own person or animal. Once you get a voice you got to speak in it. Look at yourself from multiple angles. Figure out which one you want and do it. Steve decides to break down walls with his Spreecast presence. You get the side view of his head and his full face. Parts of his head are all over. Multiple cameras try to take in Steve’s aura. There are so many of Steve. No technology can capture Steve Roggenbuck’s enthusiasm for life.

Moons move quickly. Time flies when you’re on the internet. Steve asks about the moon. Ben Beutel-Gunn asks about a ‘Waxing moon’ to one Moon Temple. You can fill in the blanks there. This is a clearly ‘suggestive’ Illuminati Power Hour indeed. Parties are important. Popsicle stand references are made. Feel this is what life is about: Popsicles.

Jack Gooding watches Steve go to the bathroom. Tyler states ‘I’m 12 years old and I’m calling the cops’. People wonder ‘what is going on’. Apparently internet democracy leads to watching people go to the bathroom on cam. While he is doing his thing he explains his process to going to the bathroom. Think this is perhaps the most insane moment of Alt Lit, beyond shoving Cassandra Nguyen into a freezer, beyond a whole 24 hours of Steve Spreecasting. Note the ‘Pee Cast’ is rated R for ridiculous.

Notifications on Facebook are part of Steve’s lifestyle. You do this and Roggenbuck will be prioritized on Facebook for you. Select him as a best friend. Here Steve wants to become your best friend on the internet. What other friend likes more comments on a Facebook wall then Steve? As this point Steve is the size of a small county in Montana. Add him as a friend soon before it is too late. When he reaches at 5,000 friends that’s it game over no more friends can be given.

Facebook is hard Steve says. The Spreecast ends. This is a beautiful take on Steve’s brand. We get a look into Steve’s twitter aspect of his overwhelming MEMEPLEX. Check out his tweet ‘Facebook is other people’. Re-tweet if you want. He’d appreciate it. Learn to love the ways of the twitter. Glad this is posted before the Spreecast ends. I have blogging speeds to maintain.

Stare by Andrew Duncan Worthington

2012-08-26T21:01:00.000-04:00

The human brain is a big bundle of nerves. When you look at a picture of your brain your brain goes ‘Oh sweet brain’. Brains flirt with other brains. Our body parts are part of flirting. Yet the brain gets turned on too easily. Good thing this does not happen in a library. Libraries are where the bored go to concentrate. For the most part I avoid the places. All those books left unread makes me sad. I want to go into a library and read all the books. People usually use libraries for Wi-Fi more than any other reason. Andrew uses his brain to actually read. That explains his frustration with the businessman in the library. In libraries businessmen check their Blackberries because they always need to check their Blackberries. Often I wonder if the only criterion to being a businessman is to check a Blackberry.

Life outside one’s mind can be tough. Why else do we even have technology? It keeps us focused yet unfocused. Every piece of technology helps us communicate yet helps us avoid self-reflection. Only with work can we can these Word Documents to convey actual thoughts and meaning. No wonder Andrew wants to destroy all Microsoft software. Apple would still exist. Or maybe it too would be doomed. We’d write on pieces of paper using our hands. That sounds insane to me. Glad we have technology. Hope someday our technology will match us emotionally and help us through particularly troubled times in our life. Empathy is the final frontier of technology.

Modest Mouse used to be huge. What happened to them? Relevancy is too fleeting, like so many fleeting foxes. Hope my interests stay relevant. Is there a subculture dedicated to understanding old Modest Mouse songs and how can I join? He goes to a movie theater without 3-D. This must be a terrible theater. Everything is in 3-D. Think that’s the newest craze: experiencing real life without actually living there. Wonder what kind of escapism movies offer if you can’t interact with it but just passively sit there. To me that is a waste of time. I want to spend my time knowing and meeting new people. Any idiot can blankly stare at a glowing screen. It takes someday special to interact with that screen. That’s what the internet is for.

Poor Andrew ends it on a sad note. There he is on his bed. Most of the bed is free in case anybody wants to join him. According to him that’s unlikely. I doubt it though. Beds are perfect places to greet guests if you’re a sloth. Sloths are highly sleepy creatures.

From the head of ‘Please Keep This Bag Away From Children’ is the feel-good chapbook of the year.

Action, Figure by Frank Hinton

2012-08-26T20:08:00.000-04:00

‘I want my childhood back’ Lili states. This may be the heart of the book. Aging is terrible. A curse is associated with accumulating years. One realizes their youth wasn’t wasted enough. With the sheer passage of time it becomes obvious that life is not based on success. Characters in this book want to live. Success is a by-product of life not the goal. Searches here involve the mundane of looking for work, pleasing parents, and the surreal journey of looking for others to complete us through bombed-out lonely streets.

Characters in this story worry about adulthood. Being a Twenty-something is the worst possible experience. Twenty-somethings are young enough to remember an easier time but not old enough to make any impact on the world. Hence the characters play on playgrounds as an attempt to bridge the gap between childhood and adulthood. Action figures are a way of imposing order on the world. Little plastic figurines are a way to control order using child voodoo. Pressures exist for jobs, mortality, keeping in touch with families, etc. Getting messed up is the main way they deal with the problem. Nobody finds it weird that they are busy consuming drugs. Playing with action figures in a public bathroom, yes, that needs to be lied about. Fictional cities in the center of a room are quirky. Quirk is a substitute for maturity. Hinton shows the effects of this quirk over time.

Innocence is shown in Frank’s simple pleasures of life. Life sucks him into the world despite his desire to never leave university life. He’s in a form of arrested development. Video games cheer him up. They let him live life over and over again without consequence. Games encourage him to die give him multiple chances to get it right. In Frank’s life nothing is right. He’s awkward. Friendships are hard for him. People keep leaving. Original tenants, inhabitants of the house, left to join society while he hides in the basement.

Youth culture is depicted vividly throughout the book. To be a twenty-something is to be alone. Characters generally enjoy the amount of time they spend by themselves. Much of the book focuses not on interactions with others but seeing the world through the characters’ eyes. This is about them and how they deal with not being able to deal with life.

Humor resides beneath this sadness. The surreal elements here are quite funny. Lili views the world differently. Sudden random breaks to and from her mind make it rather funny. In particular the party scene at her house captures the contentment of a close group of a few friends. On the opposite end Lazuli’s party is an example of being on the outside of a party, failing to fit in among the happy ones. Or moving through a club and getting disconnected with reality. Both turn out the same way, empty.

Though Hinton is an anonymous unknowable online figure this is an extremely honest portrayal of finding one’s way completely alone. Is anonymity the best way to be honest with others? After reading this I’m inclined to say yes.

Review of my kids’ Twitter Accounts

2012-08-24T21:29:00.001-04:00

Regulars of Beach Sloth may be aware of my kids’ twitter accounts. They are pathetic things. My kids can’t tweet a good tweet. I show them every day how to construct the funny. ‘Add a little flarf here, a dash of stupid there’ to engage them. Even Dora the Explorer’s twitter account fails to excite them. Where do I go from here? I love my kids but their twitter accounts are worthless. We live in the 21^st century. Your online persona gives you worth, more worth than mere money. As I see my children work in the beet fields, beating up beets, I worry. Can they see what I do? Of a future where people are judged by the content in their blog? If they can’t even compose a good 140 characters I worry for their future.

Below are some of their tweets. I include descriptions of each one of them in hopes that others may learn from their many, many twitter mistakes.

Samantha is my youngest so I’ll cut her some slack. At only four years old she’s a really good worker on my beet farm. Beets are her life. Right now I have started her on a strict regimen of the Beach Boys and Panda Bear to help her find her childlike wonder. Animal Collective is next as they are a tad darker. Her twitter persona is that of a five year old girl who loves empty cardboard boxes. Here are some of her more memorable tweets:

1. I just found a box. Oh boy!

2. Wonder if I’ll ever have enough money to buy an empty box

3. If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does someone later turn it into a box

4. Has anybody ever crossed the ocean in a giant box?

5. What did people store things in before they had boxes?

6. Wish I was a small as a toaster so I could fit in that box. That’s a nice box

Score: 5.9

Tyler is my middle child. He’s going to be six soon. Right now he is really big into action cartoons. They absorb his fragile eggshell mind. For him I’ve started him on early David Bowie, before he got all coked out in the 80s. Bowie seems to be having quite an influence on him. Tyler loves James Chance and the Contortions and a lot of No Wave bands, so I have high hopes for his twitter. Unfortunately his dancing to James Chance takes away from his beet picking. His twitter is pretty good though. There is no unity but some of these are truly 'eye-opening'.

1. Are the Power Rangers powered by diesel, gas, or electric?

2. I don’t get this ‘Boondocks’ song ‘Stomp him in the nuts’. Is this about almonds or walnuts?

3. Why does 2 + 2 equal 4?

4. ‘Go Dog Go’ is really preoccupied with movement.

5. Does anybody really benefit from knowing where Waldo is? (Note: this tweet is his best so far, combing existential questioning with our own preoccupation with discovery)

6. Do people fart in heaven or has gas been eliminated there?

Score: 6.8

Skyler is my eldest son at age 9. Right now he’s getting into Aphex Twin, LFO, and other Warp Records acts. He finds Tortoise to be therapeutic. Most of his tweets involve what he ate today. What he tells me is he is building a ‘food persona’ so people send him free food. Not sure if this is going to pan out but he at least grasps the idea one must create a persona.Unfortunately his twitter is absolutely horrible, especially considering his age.

1. Can't wait until I'm old enough to try hard drugs, like caffeine

2. Don’t go chasing waterfalls. You’ll fall and badly hurt yourself.

3. ‘Orange you glad I ate you’ the last words my orange heard before I destroyed him

4. Uh, I don’t understand homework. My homework is picking crops outside.

5. How did corn end up starting a rock band?

6. Red Hot Chili Peppers would help to spice up my thin gruel

Score: 4.2

Hope this allows you a little view into my twitter universe. Let me know if you want to follow my kids. Not sure how I feel about that. I still feel my kids need guidance with twitter. Maybe strangers will help them become better at their personas. Time will tell. Hope the internet can help me raise my children. Despite their failings, I love my children. I take care of them every day and read them alt lit before they go to bed. They love me and I love them. Online personas are only one part of their life. When it comes to giving hugs nobody can outdo my kids.

Picture – True EP 7.3

2012-08-23T23:47:00.000-04:00

Picture creeps up on you. Listen to it one time you’ll return to it over and over again. On the surface it appears to be an electro EP. Yet this is a tasteful EP. It sort of drags you into an environment scrubbed shiny clean. In that way it is not too dissimilar from much of Cascine’s roster. Underneath the immediate surface is a level of humanity, of sadness, that’s rather appealing. The fusion between the electronic sensibilities mixed with a sense of EMO pop craft makes it rather enjoyable.

‘Everything Time’ is reminiscent of ‘The Postal Service’. It starts out quietly. Beats come in sounding nearly ridiculous in their dance quality. These many different aspects make it an extremely successful song. How it ends it with a sad dance track as the singer remains completely silent. Really the opener is the best track on the whole EP; it has so many different parts to it. From this opener all other tracks are formed. Following this comes ‘True’ which has a similar template. ‘Third’ takes a grander approach, filling in as the soundtrack to an uncreated video game. It has a very animated sound to it. ‘Malmo City Tunnel’ ends it in a wash of sound. On the closer it focuses more on atmosphere than outright melody.

This is an extremely unified EP. Picture does a good job of picking out a specific sound and going with it. At no point does Picture deviate from this template. Picture’s unity leads to a great sense of clarity about the EP as a whole.

Dreaming by Moon Temple

2012-08-23T22:00:00.000-04:00

Moon Temple begins with a simple ‘Aloha’. Jason is a special part of this chapbook. Long ago he got the Golden Fleece with some help from a couple of friends. In his spare time he founded the beautiful city of Ljubljana, Slovenia, a city so nice they gave it an impossibly difficult name. Ljubljana is pronounceable only in dreams.

She misses someone. Longing is a tough emotion. Few sympathize. We experience people differently. It is fine. Each person has a specific set of default emotions. Hers are displayed in these observations about a ball getting thrown around. A site is created by Moon Temple for future use. Daily edits keep it alive. These edits are known as memories. The site is a mind.

Keep calm and carry on. Redness infects her face every time his name is mentioned. This is commonly referred to as blushing. Blushes are emotional rashes. She claims to have ineffectively pretended to be uninterested. Faking apathy is hard.

Cheap hotels are romantic. Wonder why Moon Temple would go to a hotel with a false name. Figure that’s because Moon Temple is too unique and people could easily track her down. She wants to go into the pool after the pool closes. That’s irresponsible. People have to properly chlorinate and clean that pool every night. Long ago that was my job. Holding hands on a dock in the Pacific Northwest sounds far more mature.

Going between worlds is important. Our world can be boring. We create worlds in our minds. These are our dreams. Jason is good with dreams. Her mom likes him. Moms are the gatekeepers of children. No wonder she states that is rare. Moms have high standards for their children’s friends/lovers/etc. Dad, eh, they do their best. I’m a dad and I’m blogging for my kids.

Dreaming is tough with cats running around. I wonder why cats are up when we sleep. They are asleep the rest of the day anyway. She sleeps to his heartbeat because her dreams need a pulse. Sleep to sunlight sounds good. I feel bad when I do that. I worry about wasting rays of sunlight.

Mailing yourself is rough. The Velvet Underground warns people about that kind of cost-saving idea. Remember what happened to that guy’s head? Avoid that fate. Rise above. Get a couple hundred bucks and travel across the country. Skype if you are so inclined. Or follow Moon Temple’s guide to maxing out credit cards in New York City. As she is using a false name it should be easy enough. New York City is full of stupid and expensive things to do. That’s called its economy.

I like this chapbook. Dreams are my favorite things. One day I hope to be living my dreams. Until then I’ll do the next best thing.

mt fuji an ebook by moon tzu

2012-08-23T21:00:00.000-04:00

Pause. The VHS Tape needs time to rest. It is old technology. New technology defeats it. Poor VHS has errors nobody cares about anymore. Static hiss and fuzz wrap themselves around this old tape. Who cares about it anymore? Everybody wants glitches, mistakes, skips. Late at night the tape thinks to itself, alone in a world without a friend. Mount Fuji is on that tape. Does anybody remember that mountain? Big mountains are the latest craze. Wimps hurt themselves on Mount Fuji. The moon rises above Mount Fuji, giving it a friend. Like Mount Fuji it is lonely. A space program dedicated to it is gone, a remnant of a more prosperous era. Garbage is strewn across its surface. The moon dreams of golf games played on its surface. Who can visit it now? Who wants to visit it now? Mars is cool. Moon suffers from the ‘been there, done that’ syndrome.

Cities are dirty. That’s their charm. See most cities. Any clean city is doing it wrong. Look around you. Get disgusted. Yep you live in a city. It is fine. Embrace the dirtiness around you. Know it is yours and you own it. Cut the grass. Live on a small lot in the city. Define the universe in lot dimensions and square footage. You rule this territory. Never forget that. While your domain is small you conquer everything within it.

Dreams take over. This is natural. He lives in a lighthouse. Staring at the sea can make one sleepy. I should know. I’m a beach sloth. That’s my life. Avoid getting too close to the light bulb. It gives off no warmth. Everything is fine in bed. Use your bed as your permanent residence. Give your bed its own PO Box. Have people send you things. Backyard parties can be difficult. If you hear the word ‘pretentious’ directed at you leave. Or become one with the ground and fertilize new crops. That’s how it works.

Love the haiku ‘i am more human when i am anonymous no one can know me’. This may be my literal mission statement in haiku form. I know this definition is not limited to me. Without a face to these words these words are easier to write. I want to be judged on words not on my appearance. Glad I am not alone in this goal. The ending haikus confirm what it means to be human. Stay up late. Feel alone and productive.

I like the calm of this chapbook. It is tailor-made for the late night lifestyle. Feel calm and feel reassured.

Derek Piotr – Deliver 7.4

2012-08-23T00:53:00.000-04:00

‘Deliver’ gets a full-blown album treatment on these seven remixes. Here we get to see the takes on what’s a rather dark little track. Pretty sure Derek Piotr, in all his nightmares, never expected these approaches. While some do not stray too far from the original mood others take a totally different approach.

First we are treated to Derek’s creepy original. One of my favorites follows right after. ‘Best Fwends Remix’ is a fun approach to the source material. They take the tempo, amp it up beyond belief, and transform it into a total rush of a track. ‘Pinkcourtesyphone’, Richard Chartier’s pet project, takes a distant look at the song giving it a mysterious aura. In particular the last minute or so has the vocals treated as if they were recorded on a tape in a cavernous church. My favorite has to be the extended mix by Backyard Gypsy. Everything one could want in a remix is here. It is a giant dub dance mix that uses the original ‘Deliver’ sounds to great effect. While it goes on it is strongly reminiscent of Rhythm and Sound’s approach. Really enjoy this one a lot; it is by far the best track on the whole album. Backyard Gypsy also paces the song well. It is nearly hypnotic in nature. Get lost in its slowly-morphing repetition.

The ones with a dramatically different take on ‘Deliver’ are among my favorites. Overall this is a fine collection with an assorted amount of variation on a single track.

Jack Gooding: Winner of the LIEF BOOKS IMAGE MACRO CONTEST

2012-08-22T22:10:00.000-04:00

I remember when I first met Jack Gooding. There he was, in the chat room, advising Steve Roggenbuck to ‘take his shirt off’. Ever since then many have taken up Jack’s call for partial nudity of America’s greatest living online MEME/poet. Personally I’m thankful for Steve’s support, but the love between Steve and Jack is something very different. Is it love or something perhaps deeper? How deep is their love? I really need to know because we’re living in a world of fools, bringing us down, when they all should let us be.

Jack Gooding is no fool. Currently attending Oxford University in the UK studying advanced meta-physics of nano-biotechnology he often gives lectures about the benefits of technology to man. Many of Jacks’ creations are already in use. Jack Gooding invented the toothbrush in a past life. Now in the present he creates tiny robotic insects that fly into our ears and tells us we smell nice. Boosting is a major part of Jack’s online and offline persona.

Sure Jack may study technology in school but online he lives it. Online he has appeared in many Spreecasts. A few have complained about his shirtless wolf-mask life but those are the true ‘party poopers’. For only a select few understand the performance art of Jack. His work in the chat rooms of the world cannot be underestimated. They are beautiful works of art. Read his ‘TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF’ repeated over and over, like a desire of enlightenment through partial nudity.

The UK has its own alt lit scene. Maybe Jack likes it. I do not know. What I know is he loves the American alt lit. He follows so many on Twitter expecting nothing in return but ‘LOLs’ and true fulfillment. Excited to see he is getting through school the top of his class. All of Jack’s classmates know him as ‘the genius dude who walks around half-naked in a wolf mask’. You think getting that sort of reputation is easy? Heck no one works at that sort of thing. And Jack is a worker. He’s dedicated to a beautiful tomorrow.

His award-winning Macro shows off his ‘work ethic’. While he might be so vain, thinking this blog post is about him, it is. I am happy to cover this important element of the alt lit scene. Sure I have mentioned him on this blog before, his tireless efforts to attend many ustreams and Spreecasts (he is in the UK so he has literally given up sleep for the occasion) but never before have I gotten this close to the mystical men-wolf hybrid. I am excited for a future with Jack Gooding on the internet.

The Best Alt Lit Stories of 2012 by Various Artists

2012-08-22T21:01:00.001-04:00

This is the finale, the end of the lines. Happy that there are so many new things I’ve never seen before.

Richard Chiem survives a car crash. This is good. Cars are evil metallic creatures. A hospital experience comes forth. From the hospital an entire family is summoned. Reading how the car crashed re-affirms my simultaneous awe and fear of cars. I like the approach for the Halloween party. The ability to handle the accident in a rather strange way is definitely a positive feeling. Rather than simplicity let the event or accident define, one can define what occurs around them.

Spencer Madsen writes about a lovely young bored couple. Dilan manages to get himself excited talking about possessions. Amelia looks at the freckles on her hand. While he talks in frenzy she calmly figures out a way to remove freckles from her hand. Neither person dies. These are minor problems in a larger world.

Matthew Donahoo gets into my head. This is a scary story. Everything depicts the dull Zen of office work. Dull Zen is the best emotion. It stems from the simple, repetitive tasks commonly referred to as work. People pay Abigail money to be bored at work. Parts of her life come really close to home for me. When one has a poetry blog there are few they can tell about it. Writing anonymously in a blog becomes a subversive, secretive act; a celebration of all one wants which is too far away.

xTx describes a 13 year old experience. Her clothing never fits. I had that living the ‘hand-me-down’ lifestyle. More people live this way than one could ever imagine. The sweet creepiness of Mister Dean is quite nice along with very slight pieces of foreshadowing. ‘Suzy Qs’ are the problem of a poor girl named Tinkerbell. Her mother doesn’t understand. No one understands Tinkerbell as she goes to the pond to search for remnants of things that disappeared long ago.

Lucy K Shaw fakes her death for insurance money. Just kidding, she’s a twenty-something, like most twenty-somethings, she is probably more in debt than a normal human being. The twenties is the overrated part of one’s life. Everything else seems about right. But the twenties, that’s a gruesome, grueling, never-ending saga of poverty and boredom. If one had the ability to go to one’s funeral it would sound like this. After reading this I realize I need to make a MIX CD for my death. I refuse to have sub-par music at my funeral. Play harsh abrasive music way too loudly at my funeral because to be alive is to suffer.

Timothy Willis Sanders travels around the Midwest. Destructive weather makes everyone calm. Rather than worry about the Tornadoes they make small talk. A sense of space comes up with Oklahoma. Everything is far away. Little details (such as the cats, random mentions of Israel, and a skunk mailbox) make it feel folksy. Wonder how folksy people act. Observing down to Earth people seems nice. Wish I could do it more often. Feel they would probably ‘feed me’.

Michael Inscoe knows love will exist at the end of the world. When the sky bleeds out into the ocean and the tumbleweeds have been eradicated, remember everybody you love. You’ll all be going through the same thing together. As long as the internet holds up it will create a giant Wi-Fi cloud that can suck up our souls and protect them forever. Heaven has the ultimate internet connection. With God the wireless signal is always strong.

Ben Brooks digs holes and fills them with soil. This is his goal in life: to dig holes and fill them with soil. It is a slow life. Somehow he slows down time. Nothing moves quickly. To slow things down even more he avoids any heavy thoughts. Most of the story is him alone. With distance people are easily to deal with but near people ‘Larissa’ he grows sad. Intimacy is scary.

Megan Boyle gets vulnerable with the reader. Childhood is dissected and shown to the reader. First she shows the class charms of faces and calls them ‘tiny people’ saying they are ‘special’. Show and tell is the product of a bourgeois society. People talk to her as a child asking why she wasn’t paying attention. I remember those many, many talks. Nicholas Cage is an attractive actor. Who isn’t a little attracted to Hollywood’s #1 Hulk? Acting is tough. Acting on the internet is easier though. No spinning is necessary on the internet, only in news articles.

Like this collection bunches. Think this is the definitive alt lit collection of 2012 probably. I’m excited to see Alt Lit Gossip getting into the literary magazine game.

The Best Alt Lit Stories of 2012 by Various Artists

2012-08-22T20:12:00.000-04:00

Alt Lit Gossip is more than another alt lit site it is a way of life. Compilations are hitting alt lit in a big way. Why not collect the ‘Best Of’ for 2012? This makes sense as alt lit is enormous. I believe alt lit is the largest, most extensive collection of internet writing. Every release, piece of poetry, short story helps alt lit include yet more and more people. Wish everyone and everything I like could be here. Honestly that may be far larger than anybody could ever collect. Maybe this site is the largest collection of alt lit one could find. ‘The Best Alt Lit Stories of 2012’ is a good beginning, a way to reflect on such a busy, productive year.

I introduce it! Go me! Happy I got to ‘expose my heart’ in PDF form. Usually my heart comes out in blog-post, tweet, or Facebook comment form. This is an unusual thing. Please check it out for it gives some insight into how I got interested in alt lit in the first place.

Noah Cicero’s story is about a fucked-up sleep-o-holic. When life sucks, sleep it off. Eventually you wake up and it gets a bit better. That doesn’t happen in this story. Anything the character does is to get ‘messed up’. Church shoves sausages and pancakes down her throat. Only nature gives her some kind of peace. Squirrels are the peacekeepers of the mind.

Frank Hinton goes through a childhood and adulthood. The in-between years hurt the most. We realize the corruption of our childhood by forces we thought were benign. Video game players are messed up. Pet rocks thrown into the river. Sea smells the best after a nice rain. Clarity is the air at sea once it has rained.

Sam Pink works every time of job. Wonder how long his resume must be. He lives a random life. The children grow on him. Hardy expands his joke range, to include things other than ‘wieners’. Most of the time he makes up stuff for the six year olds because it entertains him to spread ignorance among America’s youth. If they are going to be stupid anyway why not have some fun with it? Juliana understands the pointless of life. Dolls in her world defecate and eat their own defecation. Since Juliana was a child nihilist she’d make the dolls jump off the roof and kill themselves. Kids naturally know life is pointless and stupid. Why do we lose this knowledge as we grow older?

Guillaume Morissette expands his empty horizons. Look up at the sky. Everything around is unfulfilled. This is life. We fill it ourselves with people, things, food, and Facebook events. Anika is Guillaume’s friend to a degree. Stealing tea from work is easy. What is hard is making hundreds of chapbooks at work without anyone realizing it. Do that and you win! The description of PBR is perhaps the best description ever of it. At least PBR has an identity. National Bohemian is the beer of Baltimore. It barely exists outside of the area. I fail to understand how it can call itself ‘National’ when it is obviously a regional substitute for other weak beers.

Justin Carter documents a mild crazy life. Living is tough to do while on drugs. Be a swordfish and stab others. Cook boring casseroles for people disinterested in what they eat. Everything is sad. That happens. It hurts when the world enters shades of grey. We need color to give us hope. She takes Justin’s money, which probably isn’t much because he’s a poet. Poets are not known as vast reservoirs of wealth.

Lily Dawn suffers through rehab. This is moving. Rehab apparently sucks. What is weird is the small things make it unbearable. Bad movies of people destroyed through accidents. Various other fellow rehab residents getting through the situation make it more difficult. A vacuum exists in rehab. Little comes in or out. Cell phones are confiscated. TV is terrible. It is a purgatory for the addicted.

Frances Dinger gives away her sister. Being an animal is far easier than being a person. People have tough lives. Animals have it easy. No one expects an animal to get into courtship. Sure there can be mating ceremonies but those are considerably less elaborated.

Prepare for part II of this lovely collection. No one blog post can contain it all (literally I’m unable to tag everything I want to tag).

Black Sky Chants - I'll Sleep Untill I See The Moon 8.1

2012-08-21T23:19:00.000-04:00

The tragic is culled from the chaos. Black Sky Chants knows how to take clusters of sound and transform them into moving pieces of work. What goes on here surprises, disorients, and confuses. Should this be drone music? It has elements of drone, elements of noise, along with found samples. Most though it is has a particularly strong strung-out rock feel to it. At times it recalls the feelings of taking ‘the brown acid’ for these are extraordinarily weird trips into an aural void.

’67 km of capricorn’ is about as strange as it sounds. Guitars start up hovering more than offering any particular melody. As Black Sky Chants increase the volume and distortion they include a near-classical approach. The sound sweeps through as it is layered on top of itself. ‘z-boys’ begins with a spoken word piece reminiscent of the early 90s. Why it has this feeling is unclear. Maybe it is because the 90s had earnestness to it, a true honesty before irony. Even as the samples are manipulated it has a lonely sense of self. Guitars are not layered heavily on this piece giving it warmth. ‘Phoenix Blast’ takes a much, much louder approach though possesses that same sweetness, underneath many layers of noise. Finally it ends with the mellow ‘strobe glide’.

‘I’llSleep Untill I See The Moon’ is a comforting album. Find the heart of it. Give it many listens. Eventually it begins to make sense. Upon enough listens the emotional logic of the album shines through.

Whatever shit is raw by Ana Carrete

2012-08-21T22:14:00.000-04:00

Ana Carrete is lucky to have a grandmother at age 92. 92 year olds have a hard time keeping up an online presence. Every Facebook comment an elderly person writes tends to be eight paragraphs, indented, double-spaced, and spell-checked. Facebook is no country for the old. Leave it to the world’s youth. The world’s youth has nothing anyway. Give it the absolute bare minimum, something to retreat in to escape a world made for old people. Old people vote for themselves. Wish young people did that. Young people are too busy on the internet to care about unimportant important things.

People laugh at the old. That’s okay. Old people still living did something right with their life. Now they reap the rewards of a life well-lived by being absolutely boring and undeletable. Everything in an old person’s mind stays there until the end of their lives. We live through the internet. Why remember anything if there is an entire global system established to remember for you? Wikipedia, Google, they exist as a collective memory, a form of rote memorization.

Grocery shopping is part of life. In ‘La Femme Nikita’ she knew how to do everything but grocery shop. Death is different from grocery shopping but not dramatically different. We use household products to convince ourselves ‘Cool, we still have food’ and ‘we’re so relevant we eat yogurt from a tube’. When in reality when we consume this tube-based food we are preparing for a future without teeth. The future is toothless against us.

Our genetics dictate who we will be. Genetics are not responsible for personality. Personalities are environmental. That’s the nature response. As we see our parents act a certain way, and our grandparents act a certain way, we may not be able to function knowing we will be like that. Life offers so many wonderful experiences. Wonder if when we are old and alone if we dream anymore. Or does memory become a dream. We vicariously live through our inner child, remembering when we ran around until it no longer meant anything.

Sadness affects everyone. No one is immune. Ana is okay with her student federal loans. Under $14,000 in loans sounds reasonable. Over $50,000 is unreasonable. Over $100,000 is very unreasonable. Drinking is a way of coping with an economy that relies on debt as a form of control. Everyone is in debt in some way. Wish debt could be abolished. So far the only example of a debtless society is North Korea and their ‘Juche’ thing doesn’t appear to be working out so hot.

This is the sadness of youth looking at the sadness of the old. It is a painful realization of how age defines us.

THOSE WHOM THE GODS LOVE by Olivia Lilley

2012-08-21T21:03:00.000-04:00

The Gods love everyone. You could be anywhere and BAM! – Gods love. Here the Gods appear to be nothing more than fate drawing all these different people together in Malibu, California. Olivia Lilley appears to have sympathy for these poor in spirit characters. Each one has their own particular issue or problem in dealing with society at large. Microcosms form around the three main characters. Through these smaller circles and outlooks they are find comfort. Why bother engaging with the outside world when they have dating profiles, celebrities, and literature to consume?

Darren is the most insecure out of the three. Most of his life revolves around hiding behind pretty words while living in pretty places. As a Smashing Pumpkins fan in 2009 he refuses to live in the present. The use of his musical tastes expresses how out of touch he is with everything. Plus it shows his desire to live in a past where he understood everything. For Darren money helps him achieve his aims. Pillows reflect one of the few things Darren possesses any control over. Dating sites offer him an escape from his otherwise tiny, immaculate life of leisure in Malibu, California. His online name ‘BigDawg33’ presents his more immature side. Despite his possession of money and a glamorous apartment, he remains the emptiest character in every way.

Lulu reflects a potential future for Sonia. Unlike Sonia, she possesses an expression of a specific form of culture. Celebrities are the most important thing for Lulu. Since she cannot be a celebrity herself she lives life through others. Her proximity to others gives her a sense of power. Glimpses of a deeper understanding of life prevent her from completely falling down the rabbit hole of extreme selfishness. As the idea of celebrity sucks her in she has developed an intricate system for dealing with a world she observes from the outskirts.

Unlike the previous two, Sonia is the present. She is innocent. ‘Kittykat101’, her name on ‘OK Cupid’ demonstrates her naïveté. The present offers Sonia nothing. Intelligence has gotten her nowhere. A mother bothers her. Much of her upbringing appears to have been rather strict. However after she meets Lulu she becomes aware of her options in life. Life opens up for her. Slowly what appear to be surface elements (Darren’s charm, Lulu’s obsession with star-dom) are replaced by a deeper understanding of what makes them tick.

Obviously the Gods resides in Malibu, California hence the title. Pink condos by the beach are exactly their thing. Lulu and Darren both are Sonia’s Gods, trying to bring her into each of their worlds. Each vies for Sonia. Only one can have the present however, the other must dwell in a past that already happened or a future that may happen. Sonia is the stability to unfilled lives on the beach.

See this live in sunny California!

thank u for touching me by marie calloway

2012-08-21T20:11:00.000-04:00

Marie Calloway: some have called her the ‘Bjork of Alt Lit’. Everywhere is Marie’s home. America welcomes her Icelandic spirit. This story is written in an entirely different way versus her previous works. I like the excitement behind it. Here Marie is the center, the star attraction. She surrounds herself with Englishmen. I know Iceland and the UK have an ongoing tiff regarding fishing rights and various pension problems. Glad Kip, Christopher and Marie rise above these petty problems in their encounter. New York City is a true melting pot.

Kip lives through his friend who emails Jon Gnarr. Mr. Gnarr believes that Iceland could become an anarcho-socialist society. I agree. Any place with so many indie bands is a prime target for anarcho-socialists. The geothermal energy only adds to the appeal. An added appeal is nobody has particularly strong feelings about Iceland. Quite possibly Iceland may be the most neutral country on the planet. Nothing it does angers anyone, except for the UK, and they are more annoyed than anything.

Christopher sends long messages about the avant-garde. He’s a good guy. The avant-garde needs energy. Great avant-garde projects have come from the UK, AMM for one, beautiful in its sheer unpredictability. Experimental literature exists online. Wonder if Christopher has ever heard of alt lit? Many aspects of it are quite experimental, other parts no so much. Figure writing his dissertation would be really easy with alt lit.

Threesomes remind me of the Smurfs. No matter what anyone can do to try and change my mind that’s what it is. As I tried reading this story I attempted to focus on Marie’s feelings, on the feelings of the other participants. What did she get out of this I tried to ask? Do people act differently than normal in this situation? Yet each time the Smurfs came up, those obnoxious blue creatures. For Marie is the only woman mentioned in the entire story. Like the Smurfs Kip and Christopher are blue. They are male. She appears to be ‘in the zone’ judging from her perceptions of how everyone around her acts. She has sympathy for Christopher, ‘the sensitive one’. Kip, the self-proclaimed ‘cunt’ fascinates her with his sheer enthusiasm for, uh, life.

Kip is the leader. Christopher follows. Marie wonders if Christopher acts differently due to Kip’s imposing sense of self. Eventually she thinks of a story she wrote about a sexualized murder. Glad Marie made it out alive. How it ends is a weird in-between place where everyone is silent in a cab. Those can be great cab rides. Affection from Kip bothers her. After all they’ve been through his emotions bother her whether real or fake.

I like the lack of resolution. This is probably one of my favorite Marie Calloway pieces I’ve read. Reading it I feel vaguely happy. Guess this is the largest group of people Marie has included in a piece. I enjoy how they retreat away from the rest of the world to focus on themselves. This is the embodiment of ‘sex as art’ or ‘art as sex’.

Papercutz – The Blur Between Us 7.8

2012-08-21T00:06:00.001-04:00

Papercutz have been practicing their craft for quite some time on other people’s music. Remixes and such showed only a little of their flair for production. On ‘The Blur Between Us’ they show their creative spirit. These tracks are grand in scope. They are trying for this style right as much of techno music appears to be moving away from it, moving towards a more minimal way of doing things, a colder way. Papercutz embrace the warmth. Listening to this brings back memories of unabashedly emotional electronic music. This feels like early 90s techno back when it had bands like ‘Future Sound of London’ though Papercutz do take a different approach, incorporating even more natural instruments. The fidelity is incredibly high. Everything is so clear.

Right from the beginning Melissa Vera’s voice welcomes. From the beginning it feels extraordinarily natural. Perhaps their background with remixes made them familiar with what they wanted to pursue in their own productions. This is a large sound. Some of these songs incorporate their fondness for brooding textures quite well. On ‘Silent Passenger’ they give glimpses of what they have come from, from a heavily dance-based background. ‘Between’ has a similar style, with an infectious bouncing beat. For the opposite side of the spectrum the ‘Reprise’ has more in common with ‘Illinois’ than anything remotely electronic. Indeed much of this skirt the edges of electronic and straight-up pop without comfortably settling in either.

Symphonic techno never sounded so good. Papercutz effortlessly blends the organic and electronic.

Illuminati Power Day

2012-08-20T23:09:00.000-04:00

Yes the ‘Illuminati Power Hour’ is outdone by a whole 24 hour period. This is the ‘Bebe Zeva Facebook thread’ of Spreecast. No one has ever done this before. Will anyone ever try to beat this record? According to Spreecast a continuous broadcast this long has never happened. Interest wasn’t there. In alt lit, there is a lot of interest. Look at major media outlets. Tao Lin shows up many times in the Wall Street Journal. Steve Roggenbuck will be in the New York Times Style section. Even I am going to be featured in the Economist at some point in the near future.

I wanted to review every hour of this Spreecast broadcast. Content consumption of this level is impossible. For I want to focus on everyone doing everything. Also I sleep a lot. Sleep is really important for me. At the beginning of the broadcast Steve looked all ‘jacked up’ thanks to the Mountain Dew life. Mountain Dew is a perfect substitute for actual sleep. Only up to a certain point, as shown later on in the chat as the chat remains excited while Steve says ‘Oh man, I have no idea what’s going on’. A few times Steve says ‘Woot’ weakly in an attempt to keep himself up.

The questions from the chat were absolutely awe-inspiring. With a whole day watching Steve’s face people were extremely excited. One person stayed with him the entire time, feeling exhausted with him. When you pull an all-nighter, generally it is for a fairly selfish reason. Steve Roggenbuck pulls all-nighters for alt lit. Yes he loves alt lit. Does alt lit realize the importance of this single 24 hour event? I certainly do.

Over the course of the day I noticed a few things. First I could enter and leave the Spreecast whenever I felt like it, no questions asked. That’s an obvious one. What is more subtle is the amount of people who added me on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is a constant stream of friend requests and I love that. Lately I have been working on my ‘Twitter Game’ so it is doubly encouraging to have people follow me. I try to follow back. Ratios are unimportant to me. Friendships are. Twitter is about building community. Right now I’m happy I have a group of followers who seem relatively engaged. Buying twitter followers has never been a strategy for me.

I got to see the diverse group of people who are inspired by Steve each and every day. With each different sign-in I saw many groups from all over the country and indeed the world. Perhaps 24 hours is a long time, too long for me to properly do it justice. Maybe you are tempted to watch this Power Day, a Day that single-handedly outnumbers all other Power Hours combined. Happy Steve did this on the laziest of days, Sunday. Sunday is the resting day. Rest and relax to the sounds and sights of Steve Roggenbuck ‘on deck’.

Have You Seen My Whale Issue # 3

2012-08-20T22:24:00.000-04:00

Welcome to part II. This is how the Whale search goes. Everything takes time. Finding a whale is harder than you’d ever think. Prepare yourself for the internet search of the giant whale.

Moon Tzu takes over the side of a house. Here the sun becomes the leading actor in the movie called ‘The Day’. Macedonia sells bottles of water on every day except Sundays. Sundays are for rest. Sundays are for truck drivers.

Cayla Lockwood wants to be a bean plant. When it is too hot they turn their leaves to protect themselves. Guess beans are the most sensitive plants around. Here I thought it was the sunflower following the sun. Hiding behind your leaves is much more emotional.

Benjamin Marx avoids phones. I do the same thing. Phones are scary. Voices do not need to carry. I prefer editing my thoughts rather than saying them out loud. We corrupt the minds of good, clean-living aliens.

Jason LeGlue is a machine. If the human body is a machine then he is a machine. Notice the Tumblr notes come together to create a full though. Few Tumblrs do this as Tumblr suffers from ADD.

@lazzyandoh does not have time for 100 pages. This is a problem. 100 pages is a lot to read in one sitting. Still we must persevere. Reading is important. Before you can read on the internet you have to be literate IRL.

John Z. Komurki cares about nothing. This is what he does every day. We have a view from where we live. Every time you look outside that piece is yours though you do not officially own it. Applecore is an important musical genre for children. Applecore is ‘Kidz Bop’ but for budding hipster children.

Michael Andrew O’Brien gets a mouth attack. Cannibals are important. They’ve been in the new recently. Hope we can defeat the people-eaters in our midst. I thought that having all these vegans would reduce person-on-person eating attacks.

Clarissa Ames makes fun art. Art is fun. Make it every day. Freeze people alive. You get re-animated as a person later on, many years later. When will this start to happen to people? Science needs to work on this backlog of frozen people.

Jmar Atienza knows spring in New York requires instagram. Kissing on instagram makes the present nostalgic. I am nostalgic for a present that I’m not experiencing.

@lizzieohlou lists things to live for, including oddly Weezer. Someday Weezer may be good. I wish I knew what day that will be, or year, or decade. I worry about my twitter account when I am dead too. Can anybody write tweets the way you do? Do you have your Twitter listed on your will? She needs to adopt a panda. Pandas need love, in a literal way.

Cole Eldridge shows off his cat car. America builds the biggest and best cat cars. Note most American car manufacturers required billions of dollars’ worth of cash in order to remain economically viable. Bears love golf.

Luke Petach explains the pain of whales. Whales are so big and they eat such small creatures. Do whales suffer from depression knowing they are too big for anything else? Hope whales are over that whole ‘Ahab’ phase.

Brady Glasser wants to hold your hand. Let him. He’s a cool dude. Paris is important for lovers. Baltimore is for other sorts of lovers. Wonder if there are any lovers in Baltimore?

Robert Walton must high-five his way into the future. I love getting high fives. Few do this for me. My high-five life has only begun. Someday I hope the high-five can bring me into a beautiful past.

Michael Sajdak wonders in the area. Geography does this to us. We associate people with places. There are places I can no longer go because I remember who I hung out with there. For me this isn’t just romantic but emotional. I used to be a different person. Reminders of that can be intense.

Adam Dickinson remembers his first taste of the internet. Mine was looking at Pizza Hut’s original website. Back in the 90s we had Netscape. Geocities was another great site. Those Geocities sites are beautiful testaments to the birth pains of the internet. Neopets are beautiful. I have a Neopet account. My name is ‘Beach_Slorg’. Add me. Girls met me on Myspace. The date went poorly. I was a loser back then. Poor Adam gave his heart on the internet. That is rarely reciprocated. Finally he discovers old pictures of himself from years ago. That’s how it works.

Frank Jackson states he is not a father’s son. The plane moves slowly. In a plane time doesn’t even exist. It simply happens. Nothing happens on a plane. Anything interesting is vacuum sealed up as people watch boring ‘airplane quality’ movies. Ants attack our bodies. Enjoy the beauty of tiny creatures crawling all over.

It ends. This is a beautiful ending. Love how strong this collection is. I can’t wait until the next search for the whale begins. Will they ever find what they are looking for? Here’s hoping they find their whale.

Have You Seen My Whale Issue # 3

2012-08-20T21:06:00.000-04:00

A man looks over his shoulder. Behind him is a whale in a suit. The whale is standing there. Is this foreshadowing? Has this person just seen their whale? I wonder. Each magazine gets closer and closer to the truth of the whale’s whereabouts. Look at that sign. It further suggests that he may know where the whale is or could be. Above his head is a question mark. Will the next issue finally answer the whereabouts of the whale?

Maria Lavender shows two naked laughing men. Bathrooms are the gardens of Eden via nudity. We can be ourselves in our bathrooms. Dreams are the window to our inner most hopes and worries. I want Maria to have better dreams. This takes time. Usually when one has bad dreams it is due to an unreasonable amount of stress. Relax because it gets better.

Josh Spilker understands Cooper. Cooper lives a highly specific life. He cleans. I got to do that at some point. Cleanliness relaxes me. Everything he does is just to kill time. None of it changes anything. These are small changes in life. Sometimes that’s all we can handle.

Amy Saul-Zerby feels the pain of famous people. No one knows them yet knows everything about them. They get no sympathy. People scorn the well-known. I worry about pop culture. The culture I follow appears to be closer than pop culture. My opinion is if I’m closer to these creators than I have greater care for it.

Tony Arnold loves the bathroom life. Read the writing on the wall. Bathroom stall writing can be considered the beginning of alt lit. It is unpublished, underappreciated and an honest portrayal of one’s feelings. When I read it I notice people just want the reader to ‘have a good time’ followed by a random phone number. Glad strangers in a public restroom want me to enjoy my life.

Diana Marie loves on a Sunday. Everyone should rest on a Sunday. Those are good days for doing nothing. Beaches are another part of any balanced Sunday. Getting dressed is required by our society. I wonder why. You’re just going to go back to sleep in a few hours anyway. Walk around in pajamas during the day and pretend you are living in a dream.

Lauren Snowden is romantic. Cell phones are for lovers. It is the only way you can keep in touch when distance separates. Salt of my Earth is a sweet expression. Beaches are perfect places to experience life. I recommend everybody live on one.

Lauren Snowden returns with Rachel Hyman. I got my wisdom teeth removed long ago. Back then I watched a lot of TV. Ice cream became my closest friend. Rachel takes it further back to teething. Teething is a tough time. Babies have it pretty bad.

Walter Mackey presents pieces from his award-winning chapbook. Feel bad about those animals. They are the exception and not the rule. Seaweed coverings are fine. I think they give skin a beautiful Canadian shine.

Otis Rachtman tells us of a chauffeur. I like the idea of someone remaining reserved for an entire movie. Calm is hard to do when there’s so many exciting things happening around. Los Angeles is a complete mystery to me. Someday I’ll try to understand it, perhaps even go there.

Daniel Alexander advises us to have moments of silence. So many things are destroyed and consumed every day. Acknowledge the trees that gave their lives to be pieces of paper. Make the words count. Every word you print must be worth it. Be aware of your body. You have one. While you may be an online entity for now you exist in real life and it is a wonderful thing.

I’m here. This poem is about you. Everything in it is about you. Personally I’m really proud of this poem. Please read it.

Dianna Dragonetti writes about the passage from life into death. As Dianna holds her grandmother’s hands she sees the life slowly wither away. Our hands give us life. We can see an entire lifetime of work and toil in our hands. Rivers of life pass through them and seeing that fade away is rather scary.

Paige Gresty gives a tribute to that underappreciated hallmark of middle class life: Cracker Barrel. Wish I could afford that stuff. When I’m in a store I look at everything and wonder who buys this, who buys that. London is a weird city. That’s what happens in any large city, it is amazing how these many tiny cultures evolve yet refuse to interact. Mantras explain the lack of social graces. At some point we disappoint and become bad friends. This is part of life but we can improve ourselves.

Prepare yourself for part II. ‘Have You Seen My Whale’ is always a multi-part process for it is too beautiful for a single post.

Giant Claw - Mutant Glamour 8.4

2012-08-19T23:36:00.000-04:00

Giant Claw turns the tempo up all the way. If hyperactivity could possibly be transformed into music it might sound like ‘Mutant Glamour’. Everything is so compressed. The level of intricate detail shoved into such small spaces is incredible. As an added bonus the songs possess an over-the-top faux-dramatic flavor to them. Self-awareness like this makes it even more enjoyable. Add this onto an already well-developed sense of pacing and timing and you have a fantastically fun album.

Right from the beginning of ‘Brain on Cream’ this could be an entire EP for an average band if they reduced the speed just a little bit. So many melodies are thrown around like an absolute madman. ‘Empire of Summer’ has rather intelligent, smart progressions which are nearly lost in the shuffle. There is a saxophone solo for absolutely no reason. ‘LA Christ’ is one of the most grandiose pieces on the whole album. Multiple movements keep it interesting along with some moments of pure abandon. The tempo here is slowed down in comparison to the rest of the album yet it continues to drive forward on some unknown reservoir of energy. What makes it the best piece on the album is how expansive it is in terms of scope: it explores every possible outcome of the groove, right down to the ending which feels like a triumphant march of sorts. ‘Trapped in the Mirror’ ends it with the longest piece which most directly refers progressive rock’s capacity for heaviness. Indeed halfway through the piece it settles into a nice stomp of a rhythm complete with utterly ridiculous melodic flourishes.

This is progressive rock as played by computers.

Ilk Journal Issue 5

2012-08-19T22:32:00.001-04:00

Ilk Journal is my kind of literary journal. Weird, to the point, beautiful poems with fresh faces. I adore what they do. These are the things I look for it a literary journal. Seeing new writers and works is what I want. With Issue 5, I expand my literary universe a little bit.

Sarah Bartlett lives in the wild. Cougars need to teach their cubs how to be afraid. Or perhaps we should let nature be nature away from us. I love nature. I want to leave nature alone though. I’m certain it will do just fine without me. Nature should not be defined by the people who visit but by the animals who live there. Respect nature from afar. That’s what nature wants.

Laura Carter knows about devious flowers. They steal. How do they do it? Flowers are stationary except for the sunflower. The sunflower follows the sun for it loves warm sunshine love. We are made of tissue, bones, muscles, it is all tissue. Our insides need them since they weep for us.

Cassandra De Alba eats pomegranate seeds on a dirty floor watching E! Yes that is the life. Skip school and hang out on floors. It works for her. Maybe it can work for you. For me my favorite moments of the day are spent doing nothing, the few pieces of free time I have I cherish.

Kat Dixon stops stealing. The moon guides her through this difficult time. At night nobody cares what you do. Why else would there be so many insomniacs? They have to live sometime. Stay at home afterhours. No one will ever tell you to leave.

Lily Duffy advices Lillian to obey no matter what. Teleprompters have a way of controlling us. Refinance that ass. You only have one. Rates are never going to be lower. Expand that ass. Add an additional bedroom to that ass. Smelling salts aren’t free so sign the guest book. Know you belonged somewhere.

Rebecca Farivar loves the freaks. When freaks become normal is the game. Strange people rarely let their strange down. Those isolated incidents make it so much more enjoyable. Drowning is a terrible way to go. I prefer piano drops. Castles are built in the sand every day. I live in one.

J. Fossenbell lives in the mountains. He becomes a tree. Trees have it easy. I breathe easier knowing trees are around. Carbon dioxide and trees love each other. Wonder how a tree enjoys staring at the same thing every day, full of life and completely still.

Courtney Hitson is unknowable. I had problems loading the page.

Laura Kochman understands the cheerleader life. Cheerleaders want to be bloodless. They desire clean living. Various candles make her life light up as they burn away into nothing. Poor cheerleader wants to peel away the soft surfaces of her skin.

Alexis Orgera dislikes jealousy. Do different things. Be different. Think different. Get away from the rest of the crowd. If you do something completely different you’ll never be in competition with anyone. Windowless rooms crush souls. I work in a windowless space that is beyond space or time. I get sucked into daily routines to maintain my patience.

Emmalea Russo plants in a garden. Gardening calms. Imagine if those plants could talk. They’d say nothing most likely. Once you process too much information it becomes difficult to speak.

Sandra Simmonds sees lines in the back of a Chicago police car. These are the lines of the weak, those without a police force of their own, you know, the people. People look at cops. Why did history end up this way? It can be better than this I believe. Go beyond the surface, dig deeper. Poems are in other dimensions in dedication to poems in our dimension, an inter-dimensional support system.

Eszter Takacs conjures the spirit of Carrie Bradshaw. Her mother is with her in every incarnation. Our parents are always with us in our genes and personality.

Emily Toder watches the sea. I love water. Wherever I go I’m surrounded by it. Praying is part of life for some people. I understand why. Here we are on some stupid rock near a bunch of unpopulated pieces of rock and wonder ‘Why?’ Saying ‘we are lucky’ just isn’t enough. Chance and probability are hard things to understand when they happen to you.

Lesley Wheeler predicts the future of archaeology. Online archaeology is fascinating. See how one’s online presence grows. Wonder why they did this or that. Our lives online are better organized than anything offline. Artifacts of right now will project themselves into a bored future.

I like this issue. It longs for a past or future. The present is now though. We will look back on a boring present with sad eyes. That’s the way nostalgia works.