Authenticity Is No Longer an Option

Main Street

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:50:52 -0400

I have a new website. Well, semi-new. I coded it by hand. Probably I will keep fiddling with it in the future. It is about as simple as a website can be. But mostly, I like it: http://authenticityisnolongeranoption.com/
Artifice Magazine is currently open for submissions, here. We’ve been getting some really good work this time around, too. One piece involves Eliza, that AI program from like the nineties that was supposed to simulate talking to a therapist. I remember a friend of mine had that on his computer when I was in middle school, and we spent a lot of time typing in dirty things to the program, to see how Eliza would respond. A lot of time she would respond something like, “Why do you want to talk about Hey do you want to fuck?” or “What does Penis Dick Cock Cunt Pussy mean to you?”
I am branching out my internet activities into reddit. I have never used reddit before, but my friend Adam suggested it. He said that it was a good way of introducing small press literature to audiences that aren’t part of the small press “scene.” Adam is often worried about this, about introducing small press stuff to people outside of the “scene.” I think he’s basically right about this. So I signed up for a reddit account, so that I could post stories and poems that I like to reddit.

So far, reddit is maybe the most frustrating website I have ever used.

After you post something to reddit, you have to wait before you can post something else. This kind of makes sense. They want thoughtful posts. They don’t want some nobody creating a reddit account and spamming up the place. I get it. But they don’t tell you how long you have to wait between posts. Sometimes it’s like eight minutes. Sometimes it’s over a day. And there’s nothing to indicate when you are and aren’t allowed to post. You just have to try, and sometimes reddit rejects you, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Possibly reddit is trying to teach us something, something about life and patience and desire. But reddit can go fuck itself. I didn’t sign up to reddit to learn about life and patience and desire.

Ozzie Guillen be mine

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:39:00 -0400

I got a three-pack from Tiny Hardcore Press. They just arrived at my door. I am excited:

Please Don’t Be Upset by Brandi Wells, which includes that one story that got published in PANK, plus the line “My obligation holds out a pickle.”

The Fullness of Everything, a collection of chapbooks by Christopher Newgent, Brian Oliu, and Tyler Gobble. It has a really incredible cover. I was reading it last night at Letizia’s, a bakery in Ukrainian Village, and got really excited about the first paragraph in Newgent’s story “The Last Time”:

I came home drunk and we lit ourselves on fire. We were such flammable creatures then.

Also another collection of chapbooks, Shut Up / Look Pretty, featuring Lauren Becker, Erin Fitzgerald, Kirsty Logan, Michelle Reale, and Amber Sparks. I don’t know Michelle Reale’s work, but I like all of the rest of these writers.

This morning I finished reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré. Then this afternoon I finally finished an interview that I’d been meaning to finish for weeks, for the Collagist. I am steadily returning to being able to do things. For a while there, I was not able to do anything.

The next thing I knew I was here

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 01:36:00 -0500

I am working on a new website. Turns out that tumblr makes a pretty decent HTML editor, if you don’t want to hand-code a bunch of links.

Otherwise I am pretty much hand-coding everything.

History / sacred <I Keep Finding Things / PANK online>

History / sacred / history of the prophets <Elena / The Reprint>

History / civil <I Discuss Iranian Homosexuality over Lunch / ACM 50.1>

History / civil / memoir <Four Disconnected Truths / Smokelong>

The Judgment, Home Intruders / The Literary Review Winter 2010

Fit / Bull

Previously Unknown Forms of Fathers / Bateau Vol 3 Iss 1

Barrelhouse Short-Shorts

Everything Is Becoming Empty / Keyhole Digest

ACM stories

Eurydice in Indianapolis, Hall of Classified, Artificial Mountain / n+1

New Territories / MonkeyBike

Divination / Mid-American

Forgotten Picture / Requited

The Gift Shop / > k a

Two Years after the Accident / Six Sentences

The Original Child, Geese / Knee-Jerk Magazine

The Bed Frame / Triquarterly

The Off Season / Triquarterly

The Weight of the Internet / Triquarterly

A Dial Tone / Triquarterly

Philosophy / science of man / logic / art of thinking / apprehension <Leonards / Ghost Ocean>

History / natural / uniformity of nature / history of animals <Mice / RHINO>

I am always being slightly disinginuous but I promise only slightly

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:39:04 -0500

A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks. Thus formless is not only an adjective having a given meaning, but a term that serves to bring things down in the world, generally requiring that each thing have its form. What it designates has no rights in any sense and gets itself squashed everywhere, like a spider or an earthworm. In fact, for academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.

New post on the Artifice blog, here.

New work forthcoming in the February issue of The Collagist.

From my office I can see the Sears Tower through a tiny, slit-like window between two masses of concrete.

Our twin language consisted of all English words, each of which had a meaning in our language completely different from its English meaning

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:25:59 -0500

My first book of fiction, The Map of the System of Human Knowledge, is now up for pre-order, here.

“It has been my aim to express myself clumsily”

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:00:45 -0500

I am in a department store in London, my aunt and uncle and grandmother are around me, I am on my back and screaming, I scream three times

before this, in the dream, I witnessed my friend Carlos get into a fight, someone approached him in the street while we were talking and began threatening him, Carlos in self-defense or out of fear stabbed the man in the neck, blood suddenly everywhere, on my clothes even though I wasn’t directly involved in the fight

the police arrive, but I don’t remember what happened then.

I have work forthcoming in Redivider and > kill author. I also have a short, journalistic-style essay in the most recent issue of American Book Review.

In the coffeeshop I am in right now there are pictures signed “Thomas Kinkade” but I do not think that they are by Thomas Kinkade.

The world is all that which is the case

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:21:54 -0500

At dinner Robert and Viola’s uncle discuss the secret law. “I’m in favor of it,” Viola’s uncle says. “These are drastic times.”

“Is it about to come back up for a vote?” Robert asks.

“It’s unclear whether the secret law requires a vote or not, constitutionally. At least that’s what they’ve been saying. Though I figured you’d know more about that than me…”

“I don’t work in the secret law,” Robert says. “I do corporate litigation. Regular kind.”

“We bought all these baby toys,” Viola’s uncle tells Robert, later on that night. “We were pretty sure this time, you know? Like we had this feeling. She seemed to be doing so well. And then when we heard from Vivi that this one wasn’t going to make it either, we had to take all those toys and things back. They have this one toy you can get now—” Viola’s uncle gestures, trying to explain the toy. “I would’ve killed for something like that, when I was a kid,” he says.

Here is a list of people who have drowned in the river

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:27:50 -0500

“This arbitrary compilation asks questions regarding the wet space around—and taken up by—a line between two points of being.”

I am working on a “Best of Everything” year end list for my friend Keith at Frontier Psychiatrist. Current contenders: Lentil soup, blue lights, a variety of books that were not published in 2011 but that I am just getting around to reading now (Journey to the End of the Night, JR, Mason & Dixon), the dying FYE store downtown that only weird old men seem to go to, ginger.

I have just received my copy of Mid-American Review in the mail. I’m excited to be in an issue with Brandi Wells and Lindsey Drager, both of whose work I really like.

The title of this post is a line stolen from one of the essays from Brian Oliu’s book So You Know It’s Me.

An airplane is a box like other boxes

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:14:07 -0500

The Si Fan, or Murder Group, has been described by some social theorists as a program to teach sociopathy. Its methods are based originally on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (the effectiveness of which is itself quite controversial), though much of the modern terminology of the Si Fan seems to have been influenced by “business speak”: “compliance tests,” “influence paradigm,” “alpha/beta responses.” “Detoxing” is a recognized and common (some say necessary) phenomenon among them, particularly among the newer members. Human beings, at least those outside the so-called sociopathy continuum, can only look at other human beings as meat for so long before it affects them. Typical responses for members circa three to four months include paranoia, trouble sleeping, racing thoughts, difficulty breathing, a feeling that one might faint or “snap.” An unbearable tension. Tolerance for the Murder-Group worldview increases in time, the new member is able to go longer and longer periods without the need to “detox.”

What is the world to our hearts without love

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:20:07 -0500

you girls have been there: you finish a nice first date with a hot dude, you want to keep hanging with him but don’t want to go to another bar. you don’t want to go back to your place, because you aren’t sure whether or not this motherfucker is CRAY and can be trusted with your address. he offers drinks at his place, and since you have your taser you give it some thought.

<3 irby + ian

2 videos

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:34:00 -0500

Recently, 2 of my stories have been adapted into short videos.

This one, by Garett Holden, from a story that’s coming out in Curbside Splendor #2

And this one, by Meghan Lamb at Red Lightbulbs

One of these videos inspired the following YouTube comment:

what in actual fuck is this shit???????? can this even be on youtube??

Guess which one.

Metarejection

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:38:27 -0400

Talk:Secret Journal Magazine

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Not a confession but an alibi

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:55:43 -0400

Robert and Viola visit the new grocery store that has just opened. It is a wonderful grocery store. There is an entire aisle devoted to different varieties of kale. “It’s a little far to come regularly,” Robert says. There are beers in the cold beer aisle that Robert has read about on blogs about craft brewing: ninety-minute IPAs, one-hundred-and-twenty-minute IPAs. Next to the refrigeration unit is a table set up for a beer tasting. A tall black man with a long face hands Robert a small plastic cup of beer. “It’s infused with basil. I think it actually tastes quite remarkable.”

Viola and Robert sit on well-designed bar stools at the wine and coffee bar at the front of the store, drinking coffee and flipping through the free weekly. There’s a small arts festival at Eagle Creek Park. “Those are always horrible,” Viola says. “I mean, they’re really kitschy. Like a live band with a name like ‘The Governor’s Men’ playing covers of Steppenwolf songs and a bunch of booths selling paintings of trees,” she says. “I don’t mean it wouldn’t be fun,” she says. “It might be fun. We can go, if you want.”

Also this

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 19:12:52 -0400

My darling, my thistle, my poppet, my own

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:22:22 -0400

Actual text-message conversation I had earlier today:

d: what is p-fanatics?

me: it’s a reading series. this sunday, at coles bar. generally pretty fun. you should come.

d: why does it stand for piss fanatic?

me: because mason johnson likes making people feel weird.

d: cool. I thought you were reading for piss fetishists

Anyway, I’m reading this Sunday. You should come.

Then suddenly it was everyone's birthday

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 20:52:00 -0400

Then suddenly it was everyone’s birthday.

“How do you even know this many people?” Viola asked. Robert gave out birthday presents wrapped in tissue paper, usually gift certificates to restaurants downtown. He smiled at everyone at the party.

Viola realized that all of Robert’s friends were Leos. She looked up facts about Leos on the internet while her Introduction to Information Science students worked on group work. Leos are born leaders, blessed with many talents. They are optimistic, charming, and generous, though they occasionally get upset by change. Many Leos are Republicans. They are compatible with Aquarius, Sagittarius, and Aries. “Ms. Wilder?” “Yes?” “I have to take a phone call.” “Are you Marianne or Kaitlin?” “Marianne.” Viola checked her list of students. “Okay then.”

“Did you know that all of your friends are Leos?” Viola asked Robert, at the next birthday party.

“Tomás is more of an acquaintance,” Robert said.

Titles of Articles That Are Currently on My Computer Screen

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:53:39 -0400

Gene Ray, “Reading the Lisbon Earthquake: Adorno, Lyotard, and the Contemporary Sublime”

Judy Lochhead, “The Sublime, the Ineffable, and Other Dangerous Aesthetics”

James Robert Currie, “Postmodern Beauty and the Sublime Neighbor: A Response to Judy Lochhead’s ‘The Sublime, the Ineffable, and Other Dangerous Aesthetics’”

Rainer Stollmann, “Fascist Politics as a Total Work of Art: Tendencies of the Aesthetization of Political Life in National Socialism”

These + the fourteen or so books I have piled on my bed right now are going to become an article about the ethical/political possibilities of the sublime, I hope.

The only place to get coffee near the library is a brunch place called Demitasse. I got a latte to-go from a cute girl with a pronounced lisp. She was wearing bunny ears.

“Do you support the hunting of tigers?” she said.

“No,” I said. “This is just a band t-shirt.”

What should I eat

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 19:27:33 -0400

this is an actual question

Longinus may refer to

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 18:41:08 -0400

Gaius Cassius Longinus (died 42 BC), usually known as Cassius, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar

Saint Longinus, name ascribed to the Roman soldier who pierced the side of Jesus Christ on the cross

Longinus (literature), a Greek literary critic who may have lived in the 1st century, author of On the Sublime

Cassius Longinus (suffect consul) (fl. 30–41), a Roman jurist and nephew of Gaius Cassius Longinus

Cnaeus Pompeius Longinus, a Roman general

Longinus (Roman governor) (fl. 158–161), a possible Roman governor of Britain

Cassius Longinus (philosopher) (ca. 213–273), a Greek rhetorician, critic and chief counselor to Zenobia of Palmyra

Saint Longinus (died c. 290) a companion of St. Victor of Marseilles

Longinus (consul 486) (fl. 486), brother of Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno

Longinus of Cardala (died 497), Isaurian leader during the Isaurian War

Longinus of Selinus (died 498), Isaurian leader during the Isaurian War

Longinus (prefect), the Roman Pretorian prefect of Italy from 569 to 574

Bishop Longinus (fl. 6th century), a Christian missionary working in Alodia during Emperor Justinian I’s reign

Johannes Longinus (1415–1480), Latin name of Jan Długosz, a medieval Polish historian

Waiting for the barrel to explode

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 17:29:25 -0400

Even though they’re pretty silly, I’ve been kind of obsessed with QR codes recently. I wanted to put the entire unformatted text of Artifice 4 into a QR code, but it turns out that they can’t hold that many letters.

Then for a while I was thinking about having stickers made of pieces from Artifice 4 in QR code, but it seemed like they were really trendy, in an already-jumped-the-shark way, I guess? Also, most of the QR codes I see now are ads for really douchey things, like colognes and men’s hair product.

Anyway, I went ahead and made QR codes for a couple of pieces from Artifice 4. Here they are.

Dan Brady, “from Sonnets to E—”

Marc McKee, “& What Shoulder, & What Art”

Joslyn Persh, “ships are not the only things in the sea”

I’m still kind of thinking about starting a side project journal that would be an entire journal on a QR code. QR codes can hold around 4000 characters, which works out to maybe 400 words? So very short pieces, max 40 words each.

I have another side project journal already started, which you can find out about here.