Cy Preclops

—I haven’t had a drink since Saturday.
—It’s Wednesday.
—I know
—You sound like an alcoholic.
—I know. It still feels good not to drink. I’m going to keep going with it.
—Good! That’s good.
—Every time I make a proclamation like this I immediately undermine myself, but I sort of want to become totally straight-edge: no booze, no drugs, no [...]

personal pan pizza

—Quit drinking coffee, day 4, still feel a little moony, a little spacey, but pretty much out of the woods
—Blog, internet, writing, friends, harmful, peaceful occlusions. Dog just realized “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ is a brilliant name for a (brilliant) TV show. Couldn’t get enough of the photographs accompanying this NYT article about The Onion, [...]

Violent and original dreams

Will Self on JG Ballard in Granta 107:
Ballard, the most outlandish of fictional imaginers, had always dug out his wellspring by the hearth, and remained the perfect exemplar of Magritte’s dictum: a bourgeois in his life, a revolutionary in his dreams.
Another maxim, expressing a similar sentiment, is attributed to Flaubert. From his entry on [...]

Eyeball Soup

There is a bowl of chili here.
Steam rises from its beans and meatflecks. It billows politely around a dollop of cold sour cream.
As you gaze into the stew, my face—the face of a young, obese Steven Spielberg, “replete” with undirty baseball cap and full Jewish hair fanning out from beneath the cap’s circumference—appears to you [...]

Where Is War-Weena?

—Internet’s quiet tonight
—Yep
—You said yer sleepy. Sure you wanna be bloggin?
—Don’t see why not. Got some language in my pan, might as well fry it up
—That don’t mean you necessarily have anything to say [easing off the fake southern accent outta self-consciousness]
—always got something to say. even when I don’t. I dig the “tale told [...]

“gravity’s pinned minions / ain’t that sweet”

Four new poems by Richard Parks in Snow Monkey. Love em. “Hey: what’s the Spanish for ‘ass curtain’?”
I really picked the wrong night last night to drink four beers smoke 40 fags and eat a suiza, man, sheesh! Why? Well, today I have to be in 1980s businesswoman drag all day, for work—shoulder-pads, heels, thigh-cut [...]

Amber Tamblyn

a preponderance of shit to do has thrown me into a “fake” existential crisis where I am looking at Amber Tamblyn’s Wikipedia page instead doing the things I gotta do. Via Ed, holy crap, how did I not know about Amber Tamblyn?? She’s blogging at the Poetry Foundation:
You’re the Beyonce of Susan B. Anthonys.  None [...]

“An Education” advance screening in San Francisco, 10/7, feat. Nick Hornby IN PERSON!

LI’L TIFFANY: Thirty dollars? Fuck that.
PROVOST GARY: Li’l Tiffany, you spend that much on Vitamin Water and Zen Party Mix every week. And it’s a fundraiser for the Believer magazine, which you’re always reading at Patronio’s house. But you never buy it! And you love Nick Hornby’s “sensibility.” And look at this effing still from [...]

Thorne Hall

GARY: Instead of working, I’m going to go home, caramelize the crisper’s two floppy carrots in some hot marijuana oil with onions, and take it from there.
BEA: Don’t. You’ll hate yourself on Monday. To say nothing of Sunday. You have a profound amount of work to do.
GARY: I know that, Bea. But but but but [...]

Full-Scale Erotica

—Intelligence has nothing to do with it.
—Then what’s it about?
—Whether or not you’re right.
—How’s that determined?
—History? I don’t know. Sex?
—Sex tells you whether or not you’re right?
—If you’re having good sex, nice sex, successful sex with someone, then you’re right.
—”Well, you’re doing something right.”
—Exactly.
—You were also saying something about sex addicts.
—The [scholarly name for the [...]