Interview with TTB live and in person

TTB is mopping the floor. Mystically. TTB does not like people. TTB likes steel chairs. TTB likes smashing people over the head with steel chairs. TTB likes people's heads after he smashes them with steel chairs. I have a few questions for TTB.

Tell me what I should expect from those eight blowjobs that TTB promised me last week?

Ohhhhh yeaaahhh brother. When TTB called you on the mystic telephone the other day and told you about the blowjob TTB was using the image of a blowjob mystically. TTB was thinking that you-Bradley Sands-are just one man in the darkness. TTB wants to open your window and have the light of mother nature spring forward brother. Show you the way up the mountain. Not through it. TTB is talking the guiding light of blowjobs. TTB is talking a MYSTIC blowjob-one that comes from below the belt brother. It's like the first time you saw The Mighty Ducks. You just felt better. TTB promises everyone a mystic blowjob. If only they let the mystic light in through the city smog. When the doors are shut. The tv is off. Pull your pants down for mother nature brother.

I keep hearing "mystic this" and "mystic that." Can TTB get into more detail about your mysticism? Does TTB go to church every Sunday morning or something?

Bradley, brother dawg...brother. The type of mysticness the inhabits TTB's inner soul is not the type of mysticness that can be contained to the pews and bibles of a simple church. Brother! The mystic that is TTB ain't a mystic that can be contained anywhere. It's why I ride a cloud. I'm all around brother. I'm outside. I'm the tearful tycoon buying the nation with my mysticness. One mystic heart at a time. The next time you feel rain. It's TTB trying to wake you up.

How does TTB respond to the recent allegations that TTB is just a spammer? That TTB is just commenting on Tao Lin's blog because TTB heard Vince McMahon always reads all of Tao's comments? That TTB is trying to get people to send TTB money for cheap Mexican pharmaceuticals and penis enlargement creams?

First things first Bradley. Brother....brother. If Vince McMahon laid his eyes on Tao Lin, Vince would sign him up. Put him in a match with JBL and Hardcore Holly on national TV. Right before Vince will whisper into Hardcore's ear before the match, "you go out there and work him stiff Bob." And then Vince would job out Tao Lin right there in MSG. In front of all his friends. Tao Lin couldn't last a second in the ring. Not against Vince. Not against Hardcore. Not against TTB. Not against nobody.

Tao Lin sells his books all over the nation. People teach Tao Lin's book in college. Tao Lin let's us know about it. Tao Lin makes money off his book. Tao lin let's us know about it. Tao Lin reads Richard Yates and tells us about it. Little does he know in a short few months-Leonardo Dicaprio is going to do a much better job telling us about suburban life gone mysticless. Tao Lin gets mad hits. Tao Lin tells us about it. Tao Lin has a podium in which to speak. But Tao Lin lacks the charisma and marketing skills to become the Stone Cold Steve Austin of the literary world. TTB does not lack a thing. TTB wants to let all of Tao Lins fans and all of the people of America all across the world-TTB is better than a Britney Spears sticker-so TTB tells the people. TTB is out there to prove it to the people. TTB is the mystic man. TTB is the true American Idol.

Why does TTB hate everybody?

It's like this brother man. TTB sees every single person in America like a big, mystic, baby goose. America is one big flock of baby geese. And TTB is like the girl from the movie 'Fly Away Home.' TTB works really hard building a flying look alike goose contraption to lead all the people/geese in America to a better and warmer place. TTB loves those little geese. But TTB's efforts haven't turned out like the movies. Do you know how crushed that little girl would of been in the movie if those geese never flew at all? Like not even a little bit? She would of been crying the whole damn movie.

TTB cries all the time. TTB flies around all day and watches America sit around at its computer, not even trying to spread their wings. But our wings are there. The sky is clear. The clouds are mystic. There is a better place Bradley Sands: the future, but only if we go there. And we must fly.

But don't mystic people love everybody?

You obviously don't know very much about being mystic brother.

Tell me more about being mystic, brother.

Being mystic isn't a thing TTB can tell you about. Being mystic is a thing that you already know. Mystic is Free Willy jumping over the wall to freedom. Mystic is the tears we cry. Mystic is the feeling you get sometimes when you know you can try harder, and do better, and change things. Mystic is the reason to fight through the lonliness. Mystic is what connects us. It's not the internet. It's the need to get away from it all. We have all cried two tears brother. It's time we start a flood.

Who is Jereme Dean and why does he dislike TTB so much?

Jereme Dean is what TTB likes to call a nobody. Jereme Dean is a small dog barking up a very big tree. TTB is that tree-much like the tree Rafiki lives in, in "The Lion King." TTB is that damn mystic brother. Honestly, how is Jereme Dean going to fuck with that? TTB might just skip mystic gym class one day and get TTB's gym credit by laying a mystic smackdown on Jereme. OHHHhhh yeaaaahhhhh..truly today's best. TTB!

Why is TTB just so goddamned mystic (TTB paid me two hundred dollars to feed him this question)?

(TTB stole that 200 dollars from Bradley Sands own wallet when TTB froze time) TTB is so god damn mystic because he is. TTB is mystic because TTB tried the Atkins diet but it didn't work. TTB is mystic because when TTB cries he does it better than you. TTB cries for America. TTB is so mystic he bleeds red, white and blue. TTB is so damn mystic he had his eyesight surgically altered so TTB only sees in red, white and blue. TTB is mystic because the torch of the future of American Literature is burning inside TTB. And not one of you have even tried to put it out.

TTB and the Golden Bear used to love each other. Why does TTB not love the Golden Bear anymore?

It's hard to love something when it no longer exists. Have you tried loving Pluto lately? It's hard. It turns more into longing than anything else. TTB longs for the Golden Bear. TTB wants his best friend back. The Golden Bear is the biggest loser. He shed so much of his former self that no one even recognizes him anymore. TTB thought he saw The Golden Bear on tv the other day but TTB was just watching MTVs 'The Hills.' The Golden Bear used to believe in something bigger than his smile. And trust me...that's pretty big. But like so many of us...The Golden Bear got distracted by the golden coated things. If The Golden Bear keeps chasing tail drinking hard and living in Hollywood, someday soon he is going to lose all of his shine and be nothing but silver.

Thank you, TTB, for the interview.

OHhh yeaaahh brother. It's mystic. It's damn mystic. Keep your eyes on the look out for the first ever episode of "The Mystic Moment: The Monument of Mysticness" with a review of Sam Pink, a look into the life of McJackson, and an in-studio interview with Bradley Sands himself. OHHHh yeah!! TTB ! ttb!!!!!

Josh Maday frightens the other passengers when he forces himself into the cockpit with a gun and screams his last name over the loudspeaker repeatedly

it has been a bad night.
it is not a good idea to swallow benadryl when you are working an overnight shift, but it is probably more of a good idea to swallow benadryl when you are working an overnight shift than when you are working a day shift.

i am all fucked up, but not as fucked up as after i swallowed it. at least my nose is not dripping on random objects anymore. benadryl is good if you want to feel like shit and don't want to feel like shit. the cops are pulling over every person with a car tonight. they are doing it twice. they are looking for people who are driving under the influence of benadryl. i just received an email. the notification soundtone is soothing. i hope it is something good.

just when I was on the cusp of doing a christian-themed issue instead of a crime-themed issue

Dear Mr. Sands:

I apologize for not writing sooner, but I want to comment on the sample copy I received of your publication, "Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens." Perhaps it is in the nature of small press publications to let some time elapse before writing. I was very appreciative of the nice production values and the vibrant creativity inside its pages, and especially enjoyed the story "Robo-Trippin'", about the boy who couldn't find a drug-free friend and Norton Semicolon, the android companion his father built for him.

However, I came across something in the Bizarro Books catalog in the back that shocked me and made me very sad--the description of a book--"Baby Jesus Butt-Plug", I believe it was called, dealing with a terrible sacrilege against the Baby Jesus. I had no idea that I would be assaulted by such a revolting (actually pornographic) idea/advertisement in what I was looking forward to as a journal of creativity, and along with the liberal use of f-words scattered throughout as well, I will not be reading or looking into submitting material to your publication. I regret to have to say this, as from the outside it looks like a zany and very attractive journal.

Please, please, even in the freedoms of expression that are the rights of man and of citizens of this country, please know that freedom is not a license to sacrilegiously insult the God who made us--or at the very least, to make light of sexual assault of babies.

I wish you the best of luck and God's blessings in your creative work.

Sincerely yours,

Acolyte in the Church of the Random Chance

---------

The Baby Jesus Butt Plug is a novella written by Carlton Mellick III. It is good. Here is the description in the catalog: "Using clones of the Baby Jesus for anal sex will be the hip sex fetish of the future."

Jess Gulbranson pulls things out of his anus to the delight of Los Lobos

I used to be really obsessed with language's inability to express emotion, particularly love. Most of the horrible stuff that I wrote while I was going to college had to do with this.

A lot of other writers seem to go through the same obsession. Like in Paul Auster's New York Trilogy or Grant Morrison's comic, The Invisibles or in most of Jack O'Connell's novels.

I posted these two paragraphs from O'Connell's Words Made Flesh on my livejournal on January 21, 2004:

"Brockden picked up his skiving knives and hacked his family into scrap because, in struggling to receive the divine alphabet, he came to understand the profound ineptitude of the system called language. He came to understand how this inherent, unchangeable deficiency defines each of use, traps us, imprisons us, finally reduces us to a state of absolute isolation. Keeps us forever, uniquely, agonizingly, alone. In Brockden's heart, the slaughter was likely an act of mercy.

"Brockden carved his wife and children into nothingness because he could no longer speak to them. And because he came to know, with instantaneous certainty, that this kind of silence, when descends and becomes a shroud, a cocoon that smothers every sense, is an entombment from which no one will ever awake and arise."

I know there are a lot of other writers with this obsession. I can't remember them though.

I did an interview with kek. Thanks, kek!

I like to put things like this on the bottom of my posts because I don't want to turn into one of those writers with a blog who only posts links to reviews of their work, new online stories, interviews, and announcements of new books, stories in print, and live appearances. Those blogs are dull.

Jason Jordan worships Satan and burns down marshmallow churches

Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate. Not Ray Mabus. Crisis averted. Now 2012 will herald a massive change in human consciousness rather than the end of the world. Thanks, Obama. Well, unless you're the anti-christ.

I finally found a place to stay next month. I will be living with a four hundred pound poet who once had James Tate in his cab. He seems awesome.

September is the worst time to look for a place to live around here, unless you are a student (preferably a grad student), a female, or gay. It is probably very very easy to find a room if you are all three. There are a lot of rooms available in September because I live in an area with lots of colleges and that's when most leases end and the semester begins, but most places are looking for those three things that I mentioned and a zillion people are looking for places to stay.

I wanted to move to Northampton, but that is the home of Smith College, an all-female school. Most women who put up ads on Craig's List don't want to live with males. There is a large gay/lesbian population around here. No ads ever specify "homosexuals only," but many of them say, "Must be queer-friendly." And although I am queer-friendly, they are always going to choose a gay person over me.

My house is a little far away. I need to buy a car.

There's a new guy at work. I found out he was the one responsible for allegedly dropping his cell phone into a toilet, giving me the peace of mind of thinking that I had a place to live. This lasted for about two hours until the guy who owned the house called to tell me about the toilet incident. But the toilet incident didn't happen. He dropped his cell phone when he was riding his motorcycle.

I'm not sure if the last paragraph that I wrote will make any sense to people who did not read a certain blog entry from a while ago or don't have decent memories.

The new guy at work went to high school with the owner of the house. He says the owner of the house is kind of schizophrenic. He says he knew what he was getting himself into, but the other tenants have a harder time dealing with the owner of the house.

I'm glad he's living there and not me.

Coincidences abound.

My second big disappointment with my room search was when I went to check out an apartment and really hit it off with the young couple that lived there. We liked some of the same obscure authors. It felt like we were hanging out. I had a good time. They were fun. I felt like I had made two friends really quickly. They said they would make there decision in a few days. I thought, "I will be surprised if they don't choose me." They surprised me. I called back and the guy said, "We gave the room to someone else."

I thought maybe they gave it to a friend who was unsure about whether or not he was going to move in, but they did not say this. That seems like the only rational explanation to me. But maybe they get along really well with everybody rather than just me.

More on coincidences:

Mike Young and I are co-editing an e-anthology called Dragons with Cancer. I googled "dragons with cancer" today. I came across a bad myspace poem called Dragons with Cancer. It was posted the exact same day that I first mentioned the title on my blog (and I sent Mike the name in the email a couple of weeks before that).

I think it's a zeitgeist thing because I doubt the author of that poem reads my blog. But maybe he does. Once someone on myspace stole a Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens cover for the background of his myspace page. He used the file directly from my website. If I had wanted to, I could have turned his background into bestiality porn or something. He seemed like a really stupid teen. I was intrigued. I sent a message saying, "Nice background picture." He did not respond. I think he might have changed the background picture after that.

During my writing program this summer, I spent a lot of time hanging out with a college undergrad student. He was in my workshop. We had an assignment to write either a six word story or a story that was one sentence long. I tried to write about a ghost parade (I think I am obsessed with ghost parades). I failed. I told him so. He said something like, "The name of James Tate's new book is The Ghost Soldiers." I don't know why he said that. I'm not sure if he knows either. When I read the title story in the book later, I found out it was actually about a ghost parade.

I'll quote part of his response since I like it and it seemed like he put effort into writing it and it seems harmless to quote it without his permission:

"Amherst seemed to be ridden with a disproportionate amount of coincidences when I was there--recurring themes that stand out in my mind were tomatoes and grasshoppers. My roommates and I noticed it, but our recognition of the situation didn't seem to stop it. Coincidences were a daily occurrence. Then I had the same birthday as you. Clearly, it was not simply a result of like-minded people in the same place being more likely to produce similar situations and ideas, because you are still experiencing the phenomenon. Therefore, I must conclude that the Amherst area is in a time-space sinkhole, matrix glitch, or whatever you want to call it, but I'd get the hell out of Dodge if I were you to avoid being irretrievably stuck in some kind of repetitious loop, with a finite number of experiences permanently fixed for you to experience over and over. On the other hand, that could also be a kind of twisted immortality, so sticking around to find out might not necessarily result in your premature death."

His name is George Fitting. He told me that when I get older I can tell my grandchildren that I was in a writing program with the famous author, George Fitting (at least something like that). It seemed like he was only half joking.

And yes, we had the same birthday. Except I think I'm eight or nine years older than him.

He sent me a first edition of Steve Erickson's Days Between Stations.

Noy Holland was our professor. She keeps appearing in my dreams.

J.A. Tyler seems like a very serious guy

I cut my finger on a piece of paper yesterday. It did not bleed.

My finger just bled a little on my scroll pad-thing. I'm now wearing an annoying butterfly band aid or whatever it's called because it was the only band-aid that I could find. It's really annoying to write with it.

I just took it off. I'm a hunter and pecker. Maybe I will bleed on the keyboard.

I bunch of people from L.A. were finding my site by typing "lawn gnomes from space" into google. I wondered if someone was going to make a movie.

They are going to make a movie. It was mentioned on a site. Someone will be paid one hundred dollars to play a character named Death who is a goth band girl. They will also feed her. I'm glad this is a low-budget movie, or else I would be annoyed.

I wonder if they swiped the title from the title of my blog. Maybe it's just a zeitgeist thing? Although "in space" is infinitely cooler than "from space." I want to see lawn gnomes in space. I do not want to see lawn gnomes from space. There is not a very large difference between a lawn gnome from Earth and a lawn gnome from space. There is a large difference between a lawn gnome on Earth and a lawn gnome in space. A movie with lawn gnomes in space would belong to the fish out of water genre. The fish out of water genre is the greatest genre that has ever excited, especially when it is about a fish having a seizure on dry land.

I want to see a lawn gnomes floating around in space. This would please me. The producers of this movie should raise more money to rent a blue screen and make my wish come true.

This movie will be about a goth band who drives around the suburbs in a Toyota. They will machine gun every lawn gnome they come across. They will be very cruel because the lawn gnomes will be frozen in place. The lawn gnomes will not be sentient. The goth band will have an unfair advantage.

The lawn gnomes will not be from space. But the goth band will think they are from space. The goth band will think the lawn gnomes from space are trying to invade the Earth. But the lawn gnomes are not trying to invade the Earth. The lawn gnomes are trying to make the lawns of old people look a little more interesting. Old people need their lawns to look a little more interesting. They will be dead soon. Having interesting looking lawns pleases them. They deserve to be pleased before their deaths.

The goth band will be called The Lusty Putrescents.

My source for this information is my brain and Harry Knowles from Ain't It Cool News.

Harry Knowles is a pirate.

I originally thought I would write a novel called Lawn Gnomes in Space. But I did not want to write a novel with lawn gnomes and space. I do not feel comfortable describing movement in space. This is my reason.

So I thought it would make a good name for a blog. Maybe it would have been a good name for a short story collection too.

I wonder if I should keep my titles a closely guarded from the low-budget film industry until the my books are released.

Hey, low-budget film industry people. I will write this movie for $200 and meals. Let's make it happen.

Gina Ranalli is probably not as easily confused as I am

I was reading the paper last night and realized that Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrell are totally different people. I thought they were the same person. When I saw one of their last names, I forgot all about the other person's last name. I have thought they were the same person for many years. The body of work for each of these actors have been scrunched into one in my mind.

Am I totally delusional for not realizing this until now?

They do have a lot of similarities. Similar appearance. Both were on the Daily Show. Almost the same first names. Same initials/first letter of their last names. I think their humor may be similar. Is their humor similar? I can't remember.

Stephen Colbert seems to be the more political of the two. He's not a big movie guy. He rarely appears on a television show that isn't on Comedy Central. He co-created, wrote, and acted in Strangers with Candy, which is probably my favorite TV show. I think I like Stephen Colbert better than Steve Carrell, but I'm not really sure because I haven't really been able to separate them yet in my mind.

Today is blogging about bloggers day or something. Mike Bushnell came into my gas station a couple of nights ago and told me about it. He said he was going to forward me an email about it. He never forwarded me the email. I was going to blog about him out of revenge for not forwarding me the email, but Blake Butler already blogged about him. I guess I'll do it anyway.

The first time I contacted Mike Bushnell was when I made a comment about his blog to ask him a question about professional wrestling.

Mike Bushnell talks on his cell phone a lot. He lives near me. I don't know him well, but he seems very nice.

The first time he was less than 100 feet away from me was on the fourth of july. I don't think I met him that night, but I might have. The person responsible for the TTB persona (who I work with) came into the store. He told me that he and Mike had just went to a (maybe midnight?) viewing of the movie, Independence Day. I think I asked him why he went to see it because I do not understand someone wanting to see that movie more than once. I told the person behind the TTB persona that I wanted to meet Mike. The person responsible for the TTB persona told me that he was talking on his cell phone in his car. I don't think I met him that night, although I might have. I have a bad memory. I'm pretty sure I saw him in the driver seat in his car.

Probably the first time I met Mike Bushnell was when he came into the gas station to pick the person responsible the TTB persona up after I showed up to do the next shift. He handed me Andrew Boye's chapbook (which I had pre-traded for an issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens) and a copy of Joe Lindsay's chapbook (which he gave to me for free because the cover had been put on upside down). Mike Bushnell seemed a little nervous, but that might have been my imagination.

Later, I read those two chapbooks. Much later, I read Sam Pink's chapbook. The chapbooks that Mike Bushnell publishes are really great reads.

Probably the second time I met Mike Bushnell was a couple of nights ago when he told my about the blogging about bloggers day. He came in and was talking to somebody on his cell phone. I interrupted him to ask, "Are you Mike?" because I have a really bad visual memory. He said, "Yes," then he went back to his call. He talked for a while. Then he stopped talking on the phone and started talking to me for a little while. I liked how he didn't just buy something while he was on his cell phone and leave like most people do. I mentioned that I was looking for a place to live for next month. He mentioned how he was moving to Easthampton and there might be an extra room in his house and he would let me know.

I think it would be nice to live with Mike Bushnell. I don't like living with random people I meet on Craig's List and Mike Bushnell seems very nice.

After talking to me for a little while, someone else called him. He talked with them for a while. I think he realized that it was going to be a while longer, so he said goodbye to me and left.

I think Mike Bushnell might be a very popular person. Either that or he is a phone sex operator.

Gena Mohwish says, "Come armageddon. Come armageddon. Come."

I am reading Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey. It is fantastic, and I don't mean that it belongs to the fantasy genre like the editor as Weird Tales used to wonder whenever I wrote "Fantastic!" on a slush pile story.

Here is the first paragraph:

"I wore white gloves. I lived with my mother and father. I was not a child. I was thirty-seven years old. My bottom lip was swollen. I wore white gloves though I was not a servant. I did not play in a brass band. I was not a waiter. I was not a magician. I was the attendant of a museum. A museum of significant objects. I wore white gloves so I would not damage any of the nine hundred and eighty-six objects in the museum. I wore white gloves so that I would not have to touch anything with my bare hands. I wore white gloves so that I would not have to look at my own hands."

I found out about this book from a packet that Leni Zumas made for her craft session on rhythm in prose. I took this craft session during my summer writing program. The same paragraph that I transcribed appeared in the packet.

A few days ago, I noticed that the name Obama is pretty similar to Osama and someone might use this against him in the election. Then I noticed that the name Obama is pretty similar to Nostradamus's Mabus when you rearrange the letters. According to the people who interpret Nostradamus's writing, Mabus is either the antichrist or the man whose death will herald the end times.

A few years ago, I noticed how Osama's name is also pretty similar to Mabus when you rearrange the letters. But it is missing the all-important "B," and it is a first name rather than a last name. There is more power in a last name.

I think I would vote for the antichrist over a republican. So if Obama is the antichrist, it is ok with me.

A few days ago, I googled the words "obama" and "mabus" and "nostradamus."

I looked at the results. Many of them mentioned Ray Mabus.

Ray Mabus is the 60th governor of Mississippi. Ray Mabus has been described by paranoid people as "Obama's right-hand man." Ray Mabus is Obama's adviser on Middle East issues. Ray Obama's picture on wikipedia reminds me of the evil guy who was running for president in David Cronenberg's adaptation of The Dead Zone (although I cannot remember what the character looked like).

It is atypical for Nostradamus to get a name so right on. Like "hisler." Or however he screwed up with Napoleon, which I cannot be bothered to look up.

I'm leaning towards the side that thinks Nostradamus's prophecies are a crock of shit. I think that they are very vague and people latch onto something whenever a passage fits certain events. Many years have passed since Nostradamus wrote down his prophecies. There have been a lot of opportunities throughout history to connect passages to events.

Like this:

Earth shaking fires from the worlds center
Around New City is the earth a quiver
Two Nobles long shall wage a fruitless war
The nymph of spring pour forth a new red river

Does this predict the collapse of the World Trade Center?

Yes, but I'm sure that it can also be used as a prediction for about a hundred or so other things.

I once took a class in college called Games Thinkers Play. This blog entry reminds me of it. We had weekly assignments to write two page papers on essays. We had to either prove or disprove what was being said in the essays. Everybody always chose to disprove the essays, because proving them was way to difficult. I remember one of the essays was about how someone else wrote the work of Shakespeare and how his plays contained codes that proved this. All the essays were like that.

I read that a bunch of grave diggers digged up Nostradamus many years after his death because they thought he was buried with prophecies. They did not find any prophecies, but he was wearing a necklace that was inscribed with the year that they dug him up. I am skeptical about this.

I am a skeptical person, but I still believe that anything is possible.

I will be a little freaked out if Obama chooses Ray Mabus to be his running mate.

Captain Gold Medallion

Mike Barrett told me to write a story about a gold medallion that is a pirate captain and hangs around the neck of a human being because the pirate ship's captives will not shudder in fear while they're in the presence of a gold medallion, but they might shudder in fear while in the presence of a human who lost an eye to a defective kitchen utensil and lost a leg to a malfunctioning escalator. Even the handicapped are more fearsome than a gold medallion. The gold medallion knows this. It is very neurotic about this, but I cannot go into further detail about its neurosis because Mike Barrett was not very specific about it. The story that I will write for Mike Barrett about a gold medallion will being with a drinking game (swill a jug of every time you feel an urge to be sea sick) and end with the gold medallion defeating the kraken in a chili cookoff.

The Ghost Parade

The ghost parade felt angry because Jason Jordan was supposed to write a story about it. The ghost parade marched through Jason Jordan's bedroom. Jason Jordan woke up. He was very afraid. A ghost parade was marching through his bedroom. He called the ghost parade busters, but the ghost parade busters did not answer the phone. Jason Jordan was existing in the wrong movie. Jason Jordan told the ghost parade to march out of his bedroom. But the ghost parade did not listen to Jason Jordan. The ghost parade continued to march in his bedroom. Jason Jordan called out for his cat. Jason Jordan's cat trotted through the door. Jason Jordan told his cat about his predicament. The cat invented a machine that was supposed to scare away ghost parades. The cat turned the machine on. The machine shot screaming infant projectiles at the ghost parade. The ghost parade was really scared. The ghost parade marched out of Jason Jordan's bedroom and into his bathroom. Jason Jordan was glad that he didn't have to urinate. Jason Jordan went back to sleep. His cat filled out a patent for the machine that was supposed to scare away ghost parades. The cat became a multimillionaire. He wanted to share his wealth with Jason Jordan, but Jason Jordan was asleep. Now Jason Jordan and his cat are in different economic classes. They are ok with this.

Paradoxes

I created a time machine. I allowed the time machine to digest me.

I am going to create a time machine.

I am preventing the assassination of Tiny Tim.

I tried to assassinate Tiny Tim.

I will watch the world disappear.

I had a blind date with a tyrannosaurus rex.

don't like it. I write a micro fiction story and

Brandi Wells has negative feelings about fitness clubs

I am in my brother's kitchen. He lives in Cambridge, near Harvard maybe. He is either sleeping or watching TV or sleeping while watching TV. Yes, he might be one of those people who does that. I did not know this.

My sleep schedule is inconvenient. I am a little drunk, which makes me a little bored since I am by myself. I drank two beers at his apartment, then I bought a beer at a bar.

I don't drink very much, so it does not take much for me to get drunk. It is nice. I don't have very much money. Bar beer is expensive and liquor store beer is cheap.

The bar had a $5 cover charge because some loud, mediocre band was playing. I think they probably sounded like the hundred other bands that are playing in Boston tonight.

We were hesitant about paying the cover charge, so the door guy said that we only had to pay one cover charge for the two of us. I still owe my brother $2. We left after finishing our beers. I don't think I like Cambridge. It is filled with crowded bars that are filled with people who I don't want to be in the same room with. Maybe I would like it during the day. I think I have liked it in the past.

I might have found a place to stay for next month. It is on a bus line that comes very infrequently and a little far from the "real" bus stop, so I am considering buying a car or bicycle. I do not think the bicycle would work very well in the snow. I went to check out the place. I liked my potential roommates a lot. It felt like we hung out. I've never clicked with potential roommates so well during an apartment interview. I would be surprised if I didn't get the room. They are supposed to make their decision by Monday.

I had a place to stay last week, but the sense of calmness that finding that out only lasted for a couple of hours. Because the guy called back two hours after telling me that I could have the room with a "sorry."

It was very close to my work. It was pretty cheap. The guy turned me down the first time because he decided to give it to a friend from high school instead. Then the beginning of the month comes around and he cannot get in contact with his high school friend. He calls me. He tells me this. He asks me if I still want the room. I say, sure. He tells me he will call the next day to confirm. He calls me the next day to confirm. My stress melts away. He calls me back two hours later. My stress comes back seven-fold. He tells me that his friend from high school dropped his cell phone in a toilet. That he could not get in touch with him. That he had already moved all of his stuff and had nowhere else to go. He said, Sorry.

But this other place seems to be a much better living situation, except for being far away from work.

I've been listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain a lot lately. I like them a lot. I was listening to their album, Honey's Dead, at work the other night. The first song is good. It is amusing and has naughty vocals: "I wanna die like JFK. I wanna die on a sunny day. I wanna die like Jesus Chris."

The last song is a reprise of the first song. A different version.

The other night, I noticed it suddenly turns into the song, Roadrunner, by the Modern Lovers. I thought I was hallucinating because I have been playing Roadrunner obsessively lately. And I have heard the Jesus and Mary Chain song a few times since hearing Roadrunner and never noticed it.

But I've played the Jesus and Mary Chain song a few times since and I was not hallucinating: "I wanna die like JFK...with the radio on."

Blake Butler does not like novels that are named after U.S. states

I've been working on either prose poetry or micro fiction or both lately. I've posted two of them. I've been writing one or two of those things a day. I like doing them. It's tough. I don't think I'm very good at it. I think it will get better over time. It's a challenge to use so few words to tell a story, to come up with a good idea for a complete story. It feels like I'm burning through many great ideas. Ideas that I could otherwise get a lot of words out of rather than a few.

I am doing this while I wait to here back from my mentor regarding my novella. He is MIA. I can't really start working on it again until I receive his email. Maybe he has already sent it and I never received it. A couple of people have told me that they've sent me an email recently and I have not received these emails. This sort of thing usually happens while I am waiting for an email from my mentor. I guess I will wait until next week before I try contacting him again.

I think I'll name all my blog posts after people who read my blog for a while. I will go down the list. It will make them feel special and appreciated.

My keyboard wrote this in protest of me dropping it: l;+/

A lone parked motorcycle is very inviting. I wonder if it's as easy to push over as it is in the movies. If it is, then I think most bikers are very nice people. They are nice because they do not want people to push over their motorcycles when they leave them alone. My roommate used to have a motorcycle. He's pretty nice, but I think he used to be nicer when he owned a motorcycle. Or maybe bikers are only nice in the movies. Or maybe bikers are often mean in the movies because they are controlled by a script and the script is forcing them to not concern themselves with the possibility that someone might push over their bike out of revenge for having their feelings hurt.

Link Swap

It feels nice whenever I find out that someone has linked to my blog.

I usually don't link to people unless they link to me first. The idea of doing that feels weird.

Let me know if you read my blog and have a blog of your own and would like me to link to it.

everything's fucked

Bad Film

I used to love to watch bad movies. I don't anymore. I have a limited attention span. It used to be less limited. I used to be ok with sitting through the boring parts of a bad movie to get to the awesome parts. There are a lot of boring parts. I used to love the awesome parts. I think the awesome parts are considerably less awesome without having to sit through the boring parts to get to them. I think my favorite awesome part is a scene in Avenging Disco Godfather where the avenging disco godfather gets attacked while his back is turned. He reacts to the attack about ten seconds before it happens. He gives the camera a look of extreme faux-pain about ten seconds before it happens. Rudy Ray Moore is pretty awesome at being a bad actor.

When I was in high school and with driver's license, I would drive all over Long Island to visit video stores to rent bad movies on video. If the video store was really far away, I would make the clerk an offer for a used tape. I paid $30 for Caligula. I paid considerably less for a messload of Herschell Gordon Lewis movies. My friend used to shoplift Russ Meyer movies for me from Tower Records because they sold them for $80 each and he was a kleptomaniac. I'm not really sure if I'd call Russ Meyer movies bad though.

I find most bad Hollywood movies completely unwatchable. The bad movies that I used to enjoy were low budget. I have two friends who love bad Hollywood movies. But one of them joined the Peace Corp and moved to Romania, they would go to the movies a lot and pay good money to see bad Hollywood movies. I used to say something like, "Why are you supporting bad movies? These movies don't deserve your money. And if they keep making money, Hollywood will continue to crank out shit."

I think they said something like, "But we want them to keep making movies like this."

Their favorite director is Uwe Boll.

There is no director more boring than Uwe Boll. There are no awesome parts in Uwe Boll movies.

There is a comic book that's been coming out for a while that I like due to its extreme badness. It is called All Star Batman and Robin. It is written by Frank Miller, who used to be a good writer.


Batman is horribly insane.

I haven't read it for a while, but Frank Miller ruined everything in the last issue that I read. Batman revealed that he was feigning horrible insanity. I forget why. I think it had something to do with Robin becoming a better crime fighter if his mentor was horribly insane. This ruined it for me. I thought Batman was an extension of Frank Miller. I thought Frank Miller was horribly insane. He still might be, but not enough to fill my life with happiness via entertainment.

I like this article about the comic: www.i-mockery.com/comics/longbox7/default.php

Reading All Star Batman and Robin is better than watching the new Batman movie. Batman does not have a stupid voice. He sounds like your imagination.

Living Banana Wage

Your advertising mauled my wife, says the man. Wife-corpses litter the sidewalks. Your gorilla advertisers have mauled a lot of husband's wives. You hired them to tromp around the city with miniature billboards advertising hygienic products stapled to their chests. You have made a grave error. You had intended to hire monkeys. Monkeys are cute and cuddly and seductive. Husband's wives cannot resist monkey pheromones. Monkey pheromones will cause husband's wives to lie to their husbands and sneak out of the house in the middle of the night to buy hygienic products. Monkeys do not maul the target market. You're not supposed to work on the mauling account until next week. You have made a grave error.

extra credit assignments

The following people should write 500 word book reports on the following books:

Blake Butler - Any Thomas Ligotti book except the book of comic adaptations, I guess. Try to find a book of his at the library. The comic book is the only one that is currently in print, although another collection is supposed to come out next month. Most of his out of print books are pretty pricey. They are too malignant to stay in print or something.

Brandi Wells - Read Steve Aylett's Only an Alligator

Gena Mohwish - Read James Tate's Return to the City of White Donkeys

Gina Ranalli - Read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (ha-ha)

Jason Jordan - Read Steve Erickson's Rubicon Beach

Jess Gulbranson - Read Anne Beattie's Chilly Scenes of Winter

Josh Maday - Read Carlton Mellick III's Cybernetrix

Keith Montesano - Read Grant Morrison's The Invisibles Vol. 1: Say You Want a Revolution

kek-w - Read Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners

Micah Hacim - Read Tao Lin's Eeeee Eee Eeee

Mike Young - Read Chris Genoa's Foop! (you can borrow my copy)

Ryan Call - Read D. Harlan Wilson's Stranger on the Loose

made with organic stone ground corn

I like this whole lit scene that has developed around blogs. It is good. It makes me happy and inspired. I feel like I'm on the outskirts of it. I am ok with this.

I like that fifty percent of the people who are involved seem to have online lit journals. Lit journals are good, although I would be happier if there were more print journals.

I'm not sure if I want to submit to these online journals though. I feel like I'm anal retentive. I don't think I would be this way if I didn't edit my own lit journal.

I think that most of these online lit journals have layouts that lack consistency. Like there might be one story that uses indents before the paragraphs and another story that uses line breaks before new paragraphs, and another story that mixes indents and line spaces for no rhyme or reason. And stories with different indents of various sizes.

This looks sloppy to me. It makes me hesitant about submitting my work. Because I am anal retentive.

It makes me think that the journal's editors is are an editor. The journal's editors are compilers. They select the stories that they like and don't go beyond that. They just cut-and-paste the story as it appears into their html editing program or whatever.

I think this sort of looks like shit.

Plus stories online are easier to read when there are line spaces between paragraphs rather than indents. The spaces give the eyes an opportunity to relax.

I think the layout of the stories should match up unless the layout of each story is different intentionally for the purpose of aesthetics. Bear Parade is good at doing this, except when I sometimes find their e-books hard on the eyes. Those e-books may be difficult to read, but at least they don't look like shit. They look good.

I don't know if I should care if the layout of an online journal looks like shit of they are publishing quality, readable stories. I don't think I want to care, but I can't stop myself from caring. I guess I can submit with trepidation. I will feel like I'm making a compromise. Maybe this is ok.

I talked to Mike Young about this yesterday. He thinks the inconsistent layouts are intentional. He said something like the literary journals doing this to intentionally be anti-literary journals. He said something like that at least. I don't really remember.

I'm not sure if I agree with him. I don't think editors are going out of their way to make their layouts inconsistent (and maybe neither does Mike). But maybe the editors are leaving the stories as they received them because of their desire to be anti-literary journal.

I don't think any of the people who I link to on this blog are the kinds of editors that I'm talking about in this post.

my sister dog thrusts penis knot

The next issue of Bust is finally filled. Hurray. Although I am still waiting for material from a few different people. Whether or not this happens will determine whether the next issue is long or short.

The following issue may have a hardboiled crime theme. I have not decided yet. I need to contact someone to ask if he'd be interested in helping us edit it. He seems to know lots of people in the crime genre. Without his assistance, I'm afraid that it might never get filled. That we might have to compromise by accepting mediocre stuff to accomplish this. I think the theme may be too specific. I think the crime fiction community would need to hear about the submissions call for it to happen. I would really like to make this happen.

I like hardboiled stuff a lot, but don't read very much of it. Raymond Chandler is one of my favorite writers. I like his books for the writing, not the plot. The plot is confusing. The writing is wonderful.

Reading Jordan Krall's novella collection, Squid Pulp Blues, inspired me to go with this theme. All of Jordan's novellas would be a perfect fit for this issue. They are absurd and surreal crime stories written in a hardboiled style. I loved this book. I don't think it's out yet. I got it at the World Horror Convention, where they were selling advanced copies. One of the novellas in this collection appears in The Bizarro Starter Kit (Blue), along with my novella, Cheesequake Smash-up. I hope that this crime-themed issue features a story by Jordan.

Jack O'Connell is another awesome writer of weird crime fiction. Read him. Maybe start with his novel, Box Nine?