the blog you wrote is going to get you punched in the face

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waste

I just finished my final admissions essay for grad school. Well, I finished the last first draft. I will let them simmer for a week or so and then edit them.

I hate writing formal essays. They are incredibly annoying. I love writing informal essays. They are the easiest things to do ever.

I'm going to work on fiction in the meantime. It has been a while. I think I've only written one story this month. I have a couple of ideas for short pieces that I want to work on.

I really want a big project. I need a big project. But I'm on hiatus from a big project. I'm not sure if starting a new one is a good idea. I think that if I started a new one, and then switched back to the old one, it will be even harder to get the narrator's voice right.

Fuck it. Maybe I should do it. I'm feeling desperate and excessively lazy.

I think I want to write a novella about a shanty town, like the one in Desperate Living. I have no idea what the plot would be. I guess I will start brainstorming after I finish the two short pieces that I mentioned. Or during.

I have been sleeping too much lately on my nights off. I find this troubling. Maybe it is the change of temperature. Today, I set my alarm to wake me up. It was the first time in a while that I set my alarm to wake me up on my night off. I slept for about eight hours. I was still tired when I woke up. I stayed up for a little while, ate drank some tea with caffeine that doesn't do harsh things to my nervous system, and waited for the caffeine to kick in. It did not kick in. I went back to sleep. Napping is the new cup of coffee. At least for me. And it is not really that new since I haven't been able to drink coffee without painful consequences since last year.

I napped for three hours. I like sleeping, but napping for three hours is just a waste, especially after a decent night's sleep. I think I need to set my alarm before naps.

I also had a night off the night before last. I woke up with TMJ induced head pain, which was caused by stress. I napped for four hours. My one accomplishment that night was finding out that I liked the television show, Entourage.

The night after, I drove over what appeared to be an empty container of Ben and Jerry's ice cream on my way to work. Perhaps it would have appeared to be something else during the day.

When I got to work, TTB informed me that we were out of gas. I found this very funny. It has never happened before. TTB is probably to blame. I put up "Sorry, we are out of gas" signs on every pump because I did not want to bother to run outside every time a person tried to pump gas. Some people cannot read.

I think that I'm a slacker when it comes to jobs that make money and a workaholic when it comes to jobs that don't make money - like writing and editing.

I like working overnights at a gas station because of all the downtime. And because I get insomnia at night and sleep like a baby during the day. I wish I wasn't like that. I love the daylight. Plus trying to have a social life is annoying. Occasionally, I see my friends in the morning. I usually wake up right before work time. On my nights off, it takes me a few hours to get the urge to go out and do fun things. By that time, most fun things are near completion.

I have probably mentioned this before. I repeat myself a lot.

I miss college when I had a lot of nocturnal-ish friends. Nearly everybody I know is a nine to fiver. I feel isolated. Time is strange for me. The morning occurs on the same day as the previous evening for me. Sometimes I get mixed up when talking to people with normal schedules.

For a while, I was going to sleep soon after I got home from work. It was nice to be awake in the early evening, plus I needed to do it because that was usually the time when potential housemates were conducting interviews. Since moving, I reverted back to waking up right before work, which is also useful because I have been looking for a different job, although very passively, and job interviews usually occur in the morning.

I'm so lazy about finding a new job. I've only interviewed for one since I moved. I kept seeing signs on the road next to hotels. They were looking for someone to fill a third shift person. It turned out all the hotels were owned by the same company, so they were all advertising for the same position.

It doesn't look like I got the position because they never called me. I had two interviews. The first one was great. A conversation. No bullshit questions like "What is your greatest strength?", "What is your greatest weakness?", and "Tell me about your worst experience with a customer and what you did to solve the conflict."

The second interview was filled with bullshit questions. I did not expect them. I thought the job would be a sure thing. That no other person in my area with a college degree would have tons of experience staying up all night and actually want to do it.

The interview did not go badly, but it did not go well. Sometimes I have not gotten jobs when the interview went well. Sometimes I have gotten jobs when I thought the interview went badly. This did not happen.

It's always the same questions. I don't know why I never plan out my answers. I always tell myself that I should. I will from now on. Immediately following getting each interview appointment, I will plot out my responses corresponding to the specific job. It's not as if they need to be the truth. I'm just really bad at lying on the spot. I always tell the truth. If I had a lot of time to think about my answers to the questions, I probably wouldn't have to lie. I have probably experienced something in my "career" that would make a good response to each question. But I do not have the time to figure this out at the interview.

To the "What is your greatest weakness?" question.

I answered: "Most people probably say that they're a perfectionist. So I'm not going to."

The interview laughed.

There was a long pause while I thought of something to say.

I said, "I am incapable of working nine to five jobs because I am a night person and cannot drink caffeine because of medical reasons."

Bust question

The new issue of Bust Down the Door is ready for the printer. I just need a log-in for their site, unless I can remember the one that I used last time.

I'm thinking about releasing an e-book version of the issue. I'm not sure about the idea. I think I would like to charge one dollar for it. I would do this because I'm afraid that people will not buy the print issue if they can read it for free on the internet. But I'm afraid that a lot of people will buy the online issue and I will not be able to recoup the cost of the print issue.

What do you think? Will people still buy the print version?

I would like the issue to be read as much as possible, but I want to break even.

Plus I will need to put spaces between the paragraphs for easy web reading. That will be annoying. I wonder if there is a way to do it with a few button clicks. It would make a lot of sense. I hate formatting web submissions and vice versa when something was written for the web.

I was very tired this morning. I went to the library to return a couple of books. I accidentally put them in a mailbox that was next to the library instead of the book return container. My friend shouted at me, but I am not a good listener. Neither a librarian nor a postal clerk could help me out. I hope the mailman who opens the mailbox walks the five extra feet to return my books. If they are not returned, I hope I do not have to pay a king's ransom. They are old books, so that might be a good thing or a bad thing. Samuel Beckett's End Game and a poetry book by Richard Brautigan called June 30th, June 30th. The poetry book is out of print.

Once I left a book on the bus and it was returned. That was nice.

I really like the goodreads website. It's nice to be able to remember what books I read. I only list books that I have completed because I tend to give up on books prematurely and this embarrasses me. I do this less when I pay money for a book rather than take out from a library.

Micah Hacim is the co-creator of the zine, Chiaroscuro, and gets ready for work in the morning while listening to Oingo Boingo's Little Girls

I used to write in a livejournal. I didn't update it very often. Mostly about book releases and reviews and interviews and announcements for new stories. I might have written about my personal life two or three times a year. I didn't feel very comfortable doing it. Mostly because I've read a lot of people's livejournals and have been tremendously bored by accounts of their lives.

I didn't want to bore anybody with accounts of my life. So I didn't.

Soon after meeting Mike Young, I started my own blog. I noticed that many writers had blogs. I joined the herd. I thought it might help my book sales.

My book sales have gone down drastically since I started a blog.

The economy has gotten totally fucked since I started a blog.

My rule for my blog was I wasn't allowed to post stories and I wasn't allowed to make it an announcement-only blog like so many others.

I occasionally post story things, so I have disobeyed my rule. I guess it's pretty rare.

I have made some friends through my blog, which has been nice.

I have tried to entertain the readers of my blog, but I occasionally don't care and post about boring shit.

I often post about my life, which I think is pretty dull. But the dullness is occasionally broken up by little things of interest.

Like a couple coming into my work and asking if we had lube. The woman said, "It's for his ass." The man said, "No, it's for hers." I told them that we didn't have lube, even though we had vaseline. It did cross my mind that vaseline is lube. When I think of the word, "lube," I think of a tube of something that is bought in a sex shop. So they asked me if I knew where they could buy lube. I said, "Maybe Stop and Shop, but it closes in fifteen minutes." They rushed off to buy it. They came back a couple of nights later to tell me that they made it to Stop and Shop, but they didn't use the lube that night.

So things like that break up the tedium.

It feels like I'm burning up ideas that I could use for poetry by writing about them on my blog. But that is ok. I'm not a poet.

I also think it's more entertaining when a writer describes boring stuff in their life than a non-writer who is doing the same thing on livejournal.

Writer=someone who gets excited about language

I have included that definition to avoid a pretentious us vs. them mentality.

I like blogger.com a lot for some reason. I like the white on black look of my blog. I sometimes go to my blog and just stare at it. It is a precious thing to me.

Livejournal blogs are kind of diarrhea to the eye.

I don't care if it's a little more difficult for people to read if they're livejournal users. I think I like this for some reason. My blog seems like a separate entity rather than one of ten million blogs on livejournal.

I have a lot of fun writing on my blog. It is a different sort of writing. I don't obsess over every little thing. I just let the words pour out. It is relaxing. It is like a vacation from serious writing.

It took me a little while to be open about myself. I don't know what it is about writing in public that turns off my inner editor. It should really be the opposite. I think that I'm addicted to writing in public. It's like writing in a coffee shop while someone looks over my shoulder, but without the creepiness of a creepy person who is reading my computer screen without my permission. If someone did this in public, it would feel like an invasion of my privacy and make me feel uncomfortable. I'm still trying to determine why it has the opposite effect when I'm almost doing the same thing on the internet. It is like if Ms. Writing Alone in Your Room had a baby with Mr. Live Via Satellite.

This is a strange phenomena that should be studied by a scientist. The scientist should finance this with the government's money. It will be a waste of money, but less of a waste than most of the other stuff the government spends our money on.

Everything that I write here is a first draft, although I occasionally fix typos and add a few sentences here and there when I forgot things.

Blogging also satisfies me a little when I'm going through a fiction rut like I'm experiencing now. Without a blog, I would go insane.

I need a new project.

I need to stop thinking about needing a new project until after I'm finished with my grad school admissions stuff.

It is very likely that if I had a new project, my grad school admissions stuff would not get done. I turned a twenty two page grad school essay that I wrote on my blog into two pages. I even had a four page limit. I just kept cutting and cutting and cutting.I am hoping to get the other stuff finished lightning fast - maybe within the next couple of weeks.

It is a good thing that I have a blog.

TTB sells Oprah's bookclub selections in a yuppie mall

My right eye itches. Not long ago, it was itching so badly that I couldn't open it. I am thankful that I can now open it. I was hungry when I couldn't open it, so I walked to the kitchen. This was a little difficult to do without depth perception. I microwaved vegetarian corn dogs from Trader Joe's. I do this weird thing where I eat a lot of vegetarian food even though I'm no longer a vegetarian. I guess I got used to it from when I was a vegetarian. Plus I discovered recently that vegetarian food is pretty cheap at Trader Joe's. I used to not eat it so much because it's really expensive at most grocery stores.

I am not interested in politics. I used to be interested in politics, until Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and still won the election. After that, I thought, Why should I care? I felt like what the people thought didn't matter. And then the 2004 election came around and the republicans seemed to have stolen the election with dirty tricks.

What's the point of voting? My vote doesn't count. I'm not going to vote in the next election. Maybe I would if I didn't live in a state where the majority always votes for the democratic candidate. I also wouldn't vote if I lived in a state where the majority always votes republican. Although I did when I lived in Utah.

Plus I'm not sure if I'm registered to vote. If I register, I'm afraid that I will be called for jury duty.

I have never served jury duty, although I have gotten a bunch of notices for it. I always received one a few days before I was supposed to move to another state, so I always ignored it.

I looked up the difference between a democracy and a republic this morning. I was interested because I thought they were the same thing, which is strange since the two parties are totally different. I found out that the government of a democracy rules according to their whims and the government of a republic seem to rule according to laws. I think the two parties are confused. They seemed to have mixed this up.

I watched a show called the UFO files on the History channel a few days ago. It was about our presidents' knowledge of UFOs. According to the program, some presidents are less knowledgeable than other presidents. Republicans seems to be "in the know" about UFOs, while Democrats are not told about these things. Ronald Reagan may be the one exception.

I am going to rewrite an application essay for grad school tonight. I will probably have to do a different version of it for each school. I am going to start on that now.

Sam Pink is a scourge to our way of life and must be destroyed

This post is not about Sam Pink. It is about Tao Lin.

Hello, Tao Lin.

This post is the long-awaited (by me) Tao Lin post.

A long time ago, I would sometimes read Tao Lin's blog. I was amused by his antics, but I thought his writing style was annoying.

A while later, Mike Young contacted me over Myspace. We ended up hanging out. He talked about how he liked Tao Lin's writing.

A couple of weeks later, I went into a bookstore and saw Eeeee Eee Eeee on the shelf. I picked it up, read a few pages, liked it a lot. I bought it, took it home, read it.

At the time (and maybe still), it ended up being one of my two favorite novels this year. This happened during a phase when I was having trouble finding fiction that I enjoyed.

Soon after, I noticed that I was writing fiction that was similar to Tao Lin's. This was unintentional. It was very fun to write this way. It was easy. I was usually relatively happy with the end product.

Eeeee Eee Eeee's style is deadpan, which I've always done to a certain degree because I love the work of Raymond Chandler. Except Raymond Chandler uses a lot of crazy-awesome similes, which Tao Lin doesn't use. Eeeee Eee Eeee uses short, clipped sentences, which I had never used before. I don't think Tao Lin uses contractions very often, which used to read awkwardly to me, but now I do the same thing without thinking about it.

Eeeee Eee Eeee does not contain a plot arc. The book would have been unreadable if a less talented writer had written it. But playfulness of Tao Lin's writing makes it work.

The writing in Eeeee Eee Eeee is similar to Anne Beattie's Chilly Scenes of Winter (which I also liked), but Eeeee Eee Eeee is funnier and more fun to read.

I think there might be a lot of repetition in Eeeee Eee Eeee.

The cult pop musician, Momus, recently wrote a blog entry about Tao Lin. He said that reading Tao Lin makes you want to write like him (and he was glad that he didn't discover Tao Lin until after he finished writing his novel). I never thought of it that way. Reading Tao Lin didn't make me want to write like him. I did this unintentionally.

I believe Tao Lin's writing is infectious. Tao Lin is a virus.

I was not the only writer who had caught the bug. There is Tao Lin-esque fiction appearing in journals all over the internet. Some of it is good, more of it is bad. No one writes like Tao Lin better than Tao Lin himself. The stories by the other authors are not usually focused on plot. I feel I would have enjoy them more if they were.

I am in the middle of writing a novella (or maybe a short novel). I haven't worked on it in a long time. I am on a hiatus.

I was afraid the writing in the novella was too much like Tao Lin's. I thought it worked well though because there was a plot arc.

Mike Young doesn't think the novella reads like Tao Lin. This makes me happy. He says the writing in my blog reads a little like Tao Lin's. I'm ok with that. Blogging isn't as important to me. It's mostly about having a good time.

Mike also said that he had to make an effort not to write like Tao Lin after reading him.

Tao Lin is a liberator.

Before I read Tao Lin, it would sometimes take me an hour to write a sentence. Writing was rarely fun. It felt like work. Sometimes it felt like torture. I liked the end product more than my recent stuff, but I like the writing process a lot more now. I think that's more important. It makes me happy to write. It is now fun to write. This is the way it should be.

I do miss my old writing style though. I read a little bit of my older work tonight. I liked it a lot. It made me sad that I don't write this way anymore.

I used to write in a way that was similar to authors like Mark Leyner and Steve Aylett. These authors are trying to keep their readers in a state of perpetual delight. They strive for a joke in every sentence. Hundreds of ideas on every page. They don't want to waste the reader's time. A lot of the writing in their books is irrelevant to their plots (which Leyner has very little of). But still, the writing does not seem like filler because it always amuses.

I loved these books. They were perfect books. I was trying to write for a similar audience. To write this way, you have to strive for perfection.

I tried to get Steve Aylett to write a blurb for my novel. He refused, but he was nice about refusing. He said something like how it reminded him too much of his own work. That he was feeling depressed lately. That other people would like the book.

The thought that I was writing in a style that was similar to Steve Aylett's never bothered me because it's such hard goddam work.

The thought of writing in a style that is similar to Tao Lin's bothers me because it's just so easy to do. When I was eating breakfast with Mike Young and we were talking about this, he said this while I was thinking it.

Sometimes I think I have some sort of weird psychic connection with Mike Young because he knows exactly what I'm talking about whenever I say something really non-specific like, "I'm thinking about going to that place" or "What about doing that thing?" I say things like this a lot. I don't mean to. It makes me sound like a mobster.

Anyway, Tao Lin. After finishing Eeeee Eee Eeee, I read all of his other stuff.

I wasn't crazy about his story collection, Bed. It was ok. The stories read like better versions of the usual dull stuff that I see in academic-y lit journals.

I loved his poetry collection, you are a little happier than i am.

I started writing poetry after that even though I've never had much of an interest in doing that.

Damn you, Tao Lin.

My poetry phase didn't last long. It was around the time I started this blog.

I thought Tao Lin's next poetry collection was ok. It had its moments.

And I loved his story collection on Bear Parade: Today The Sky is Blue and White with Bright Blue Spots and a Small Pale Moon and I Will Destroy Our Relationship Today.

I also read his blog. I can never think of anything to comment about on it.

Tao Lin: I would like you to describe the series of facial expressions that you experienced while reading this blog entry.

Shit, statcounter tells me that he probably already found this entry via google before I updated it with this question. Now I will never know. Probably.

Ryan Manning is a killer robot who will rock and sock humanity into extinction

My gas station has surveillance cameras that overlook the pumps. For the last week or so, a spider has made one camera one its home.

There is a large black spider-y shadow. It looks scary. It looks tarantula-y. It looks gigantic.

It's really fun to watch the camera when someone is getting gas and pretend it's a B-movie and pretend the spider is about to leap onto the customer and suck all of his blood out until there is only a skeleton left.

Then I pretend I will fight the giant spider off with a stapler and steal the dead customer's wallet and run off into the moonlight seeking a better life.

Ryan Call hides behind books to avoid capture from the police

Bradley Sands Brad is a 26year old, well tanned, white Bahamian with a Masters degree in oceanography. He works in his field at The Dolphin Experience caring for and studying dolphins, both in captivity and in the wild. He’s tall and weighing 185, is solidly built and fit.

The day before DWF died, I wrote a story that ended with the protagonist hanging himself. The protagonist was a writer. He is referred to as "the writer." The story is called "The Writer." I forgot how the story ended and I just reread it. After finishing, I said, "Jesus fucking Christ" out loud. I guess I won't be submitting that story anytime soon.

I keep trying to get into Donald Barthelme. I keep failing. Although there are a few stories here and there that I love.

I don't think I like "experimental writing." I don't like experiments in "form." I like fiction that does unique things with content, plot, characters, motion.

Steve Erickson novels are a good example. The writing is straightforward. The plot is constantly mutating through time and space.

I like stories that are simple and easy to follow. I like fiction that is difficult to follow, but only when hilarity makes the effort worthwhile, like Steve Aylett's Accomplice series.

I think I feel more comfortable reading a book or story that is written in first person. I definitely feel more comfortable reading a poem that is written in first person.

But I do not like it when an author writes many books and stories in first person and all the protagonists sound the same. I think an author who writes many things in first person needs to be an actor of sorts.

I just saw a movie called Neighbors. It was completely insane. It is an example of too many rewrites and edits making a movie incomprehensible and giving it surreal sort of logic. The movie is based on a novel written by Thomas Berger. I REALLY want to read the novel.

I spend way too much time on the internet. I wanted to go a week without it. I failed during the first day. I read a book about the life of Richard Brautigan. I kept coming across interesting things and looking it up on the Internet. It might be impossible for me to not use the Internet when it's so easily accessible to me.

I think I might read mostly non-fiction for a while. I think I'm entering into one of those phases.

DFW

I read Infinite Jest one summer. I think it took me the entire three months. It has never taken me that long to read a book. Three weeks is a rarity.

It was my last summer up at college. Nearly all the other seniors had graduated. I had to stick around to take classes because I was missing a few credits that I needed to graduate. I was living with some frat boy-types. One time, I gave one of them a ride to pick up a girl who he was going to have sex with. He bribed me with a bunch of money so I wouldn't tell our other housemates how fat and ugly she was. He was really worried about that. He was a classy guy.

I didn't really do anything that summer besides go to class and read Infinite Jest.

I loved that book, but it wrecked me. It was mentally exerting and physically exerting (it is very heavy). After finishing, I never wanted to read David Foster Wallace again.

After finishing, I considered it one of my favorite books.

It is very odd to have a favorite book whose author you never want to read again.

And I haven't really, except an essay about Survival Research Labs in a cyberpunk anthology.

I'm not sure if I'd still consider it one of my favorite books. As the years progress, former favorite books are replaced by new favorite books. Sometimes I reread favorite books and I don't really like them anymore. I grow out of them.

Infinite Jest is the one (possibly former) favorite book of mine that I'm afraid of reading.

Part of that is because my taste in fiction has become less and less challenging since college.

I'm not sure why I still classify certain books as my favorites. It seems sort of juvenile.

I still cannot get David Foster Wallace's name right. I always call him David Wallace Foster. It sounds like it should go in that order for some reason.

He was a literary giant like Ernest Hemingway and Richard Brautigan. But those two authors took their lives year and years and years before I had ever heard of them.

David Foster Wallace feels like the lit community's Kurt Cobain to me.

This is huge.

This is fucked.

His suicide hits closer to home than any other suicide in existence besides the few people who I have known personally who did themselves in. I feel like he was one of us.

I guess I'll read some of his essays now. I think I'm too much of a pussy to handle his fiction at the moment.

I wish we could take away feelings of depression from people like David Foster Wallace and give them to people who are a waste of space.

But maybe then these wastes of space would morph into writers and stand-up comedians.

Ofelia Hunt should add pornographic drawings to her novel

I cannot breathe through my nose. I feel like I'm underwater. I have absolutely nothing worthwhile to do besides sending people funny messages via google search and and stats counter or whatever they use. The only time I can breathe is in the shower. I should take one soon and stop sending people funny messages via google search and stats counter or whatever. The humidifier in my room is useless. I think I will need to sleep in the shower today.

Story Rejected from the Bradley Sands is a Dick Anthology (Raw and Unedited!)

This is a story called "Bradley Sands is a Dick!" It was written by Micah Hacim. Micah Hacim is a professional writter. I think this was rejected because the editor, Andersen Prunty, couldn't spare the nine hundred consecutive hours it would have taken him to edit the story. I still like this story though. It made me laugh.

Enjoy.

******

Everybody knows that when Mary Jane wants something she better get it or that spoiled bitch will make everybody's life miserable.

"I want some ice cream", said Mary Jane Parker.

"There is ice cream in the freezer."

It was Neopolitain ice cream, Peter Parker's favorite. He had first been introduced to it on Battleworld during the Secret Wars and quickly bonded with the satisfiying combination of chocolate, Vanilla, and strawberry.

"I don't like your ice cream. I want real ice cream", whined MJ as she stepped out of a hot shower. Peter looked at her naked body, but steam somehow covered her private areas. After three years of marriage Peter had never really gotten a good look at her tits or ass.

Peter Parker put on the spiderman costume and went out for ice cream. He had brought along his camera too. Hopeing to take some pictures he could sell down at the Daily Bugle.

As Spiderman walked the four blocks to Ben & Jerrys he checked the fluid level in his web shooters. They were about half full.

All of the sudden Spidey's senses started to tickle. Acting on instinct, he did a backflip and jumped up on some boxes just seconds before a bomb exploded where he previously walked.

Spiderman looked in the direction of a high pitched giggle and saw standing there Bradley Sands.

Brad was wearing black pants and a black t-shirt that said Tocus; it was what passed for his costume, or at least what he had been wearing for the last three days.

"Bradley Sands?! I thought you died when that crate of Totino's Pizza Bites fell on you in our fight against the Moatmonster!", said Spiderman. Memories of their friendship flooded his mind like liquor in a Hobo's stomach.

"Not quite, but I lost everything that day and I blame you for the accident. Now it's your turn to have an accident, Spiderman", said Brad as he vigorously shook a bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red and chucked it at the webcrawler. It exploded when it hit the boxes and sprayed sticky red syrup all over Spidey's costume.

Spiderman shot webs at Brads feet, sticking him in place, then jumped over and punched him through a brick wall. Brad was pretty badly hurt by the attack.

"This isn't over!", yelled Brad as he scurried away.

"Don't go away mad.. just go away!" Brad was too far gone to hear the zinger, but at least a few of the gawking pedestrians had chuckled. Peter thought to himself, "I still got it!"

Spiderman retrieved the camera from where he had stuck it to the wall to get pictures of the fight so he could sell them to the Daily Bugle. Peter looked through the shots the camera had snapped. They were all pretty blurry, and it looked like the camera had been pointing at the umbrella of a pretzel cart the entire time.

Spiderman continued down to the Ben & Jerrys to get Mary Jane's ice cream. When he got there the store was closed because the Juggarnaugt had ran straight through the building sometime last week (see Uncanny X-Men #12 - editor).

Knowing better than to come home without the ice cream, Spidey set about finding a grocery store that sold pints of Ben & Jerry's Organic Strawberry Ice Cream, or Strawberry Vice cream as MJ so often called it. It made Peter cringe every time she said vice cream.

Meanwhile, back in his parents basement... Brad Sands licked his wounds and had his mom sew up a mock spiderman costume. When it was finally ready, Brad took the bus from Long Island to Peter Parker's NY apartment. When he got there the door was locked. So Brad rattled his keys in the lock until Mary Jane opened the door.

"Locked out, Tiger?" asked MJ as she stood in the doorframe wearing a négligée.

After closing the door Brad Sands began to fondle Peters wife right there in the guys own home. It wasn't long before forplay turned into intercorse, and six minutes later Mary Jane remembered about the ice cream.

"Where is it?" she wanted to know.

"Where's what?" Brad, still in disguise, was helping himself to Peter Parker's fridge.

"My Ice Cream!"

Brad opened the freezer and noticed the box of Neapolitan. He put a spoon down his spandex underwear until the concave cupped one of his balls. Then he scooped out a bowl from the vanilla portion of the neapolitan ice cream and brought it to Mary Jane.

When she saw the ice cream the jig was up. MJ screamed, "I should have known by your circumcised penis!"

This seemed like a good time for Brad to put his tights back on and make a getaway. On his way out, Brad grabbed a handful of change from Spiderman's nightstand.

Later, from his parents basement, Brad Sands dials the hobgoblin's phone number.

"Hello!", answers Roderick Kingsley.

Brad yells into the phone, "Hey faggot, suck my spider dick."

After more taunting, the Hobgoblin threatens to kill brad believing him to be Spiderman. Brad gives him Peter Parkers home address and hangs up.

Peter Parker finally comes home to a crying Mary Jane and notices that someone has raped his spare change bowl. He was very angry because now he could not get money at the Coinstar machine to buy more film and web fluid. Then he looked in the freezer, someone had eaten all the vanilla out of his Neapolitan ice cream!!!

His spider sense tingled as an angry knock came from the door.

The end

Mike Young sometimes feels sexually inadequate while reading chapbooks

This is the first time that I am going to mention the subject of the blog title in my post. It is a little coincidental that I went out to breakfast with him this morning since I'm writing the blog titles in alphabetical order by first name.

But first something very important.

I am currently sitting in my new bean bag chair. I have wanted one for a long time but have never been able to find a store that sells them...

until now.

I like how I started a new paragraph to be ridiculously dramatic.

I just took off my hoodie and accidentally punched my LCD monitor.

I did not apologize to it like I have apologized to inanimate objects in the past. I apologized to them by mistake. I have been conditioned to apologize.

I like my new bean bag chair, although I wish it was larger so my legs were not resting on my mattress.

The store where I bought the bean bag chair had it in a kind of prison. It was like one of this big things where toy stores keep balls. It was difficult to get the bean bag chair out of the big thing. I had to sort of throw it over the big thing. I helped it escape. It headed into the direction of an old man. I felt a little worried. The old man caught it. The old man gave it to me.

One day I'll actually get this blog post started, but first:

Is there anything awesomer than taking a piss while a cat is sitting on the lid of the toilet tank?

I've gained like fifteen pounds since I started working at my gas station. I need a new job where I'm not surrounded by junk food.

I have decided against the idea of having a crime/noir theme for the next issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens.

Some guy says there is a one in five million chance that the world will end tomorrow.

Tonight, I will start a new story.

Fuck it. I am going to let this post die before it was born. Sorry, Mike Young.

But first:

Mike Bushnell belongs to the secret society of lit bloggers who work at gas stations

Noo Journal sucks.

Noo Journal does not actually suck.

Someone found my blog by googling "Noo Journal sucks." I told this to Mike Young, who edits Noo Journal, in a gmail chat. He told me that he was the googler. He wanted to see if anyone had ever written "Noo Journal sucks" on the internet.

I told him that I would write Noo Journal sucks on the internet and when he googles "No Journal sucks" again in a year or so, he would come across a link to this blog and feel sad for the second that it took him to determine that it was me.

I like my new car a lot. It is a normal sized car. My last car was an SUV. It was too big. I hated it. It was given to me. It guzzled gas. It had some problem with the fuel system that made it guzzle even more gas than a typical SUV. My new car is very gas efficient. This is very boring. It would be almost impossible to live in my present location without a car. It is too far away from everything. It's also nice not to have to nag people to get rides so I can do errands.

Sometimes when I look at the video surveillance screen in the back of the store, someone is just standing their. Then I run to the front and don't find anybody there. And then I think the place is haunted. And then I go in the back again to look at the video surveillance screen and see the same image. And then I realize that the person on the screen is frozen in time.

I'm going to a bizarro fiction convention in Portland in November. We are all staying in a house that is supposed to be haunted. There is one room where the ghost of a little girl is known to pull on the feet of people while they sleep. That may be my biggest fear. I requested that I didn't sleep in that room. I felt silly doing so. I also said I might be ok with it if I share the room with someone else. I am more afraid of getting insomnia through worrying about my feet getting pulled than the act itself. I like sleep. I need sleep.

I am going to write a post about Tao Lin soon. I like Tao Lin's writing a lot. I've always been a little afraid of writing a post about Tao Lin. I feel like the best way to get Tao Lin to read an entry in your blog is to write "Tao Lin" in your blog entry. If you write "Tao Lin" in every blog entry, it's almost like he's added you to his google reader subscriptions.

I'm being silly. I google my own name too.

I read his blog, but I don't want to link to him on my "writers with blogs" thing because everybody links to him. I don't want to be like everybody else.

Teenage rebellion...or late twenties rebellion.

Plus he probably wouldn't ever link me back.

I added a bunch of links to writers a couple of weeks ago. People I read. People who are in the next issue of Bust. People who are not Tao Lin.

Interview with Ryan Manning

This is an interview with Ryan Manning of Ryan Manning fame.

Ryan Manning, what is your favorite Super Nintendo game and why?

i don't play video games anymore but i think my favorite super nintendo game was nba jam because i enjoyed it.

I just discovered that jam means "to slam dunk." I'm doing research for this interview.

Here is my next question: Who is Ryan Manning?

research is good.

the asian samuel beckett.

Did you know that Samuel Beckett used to drive Andre the Giant to school before Andre was a giant? That's not the next question. It's a fake question. Writing "Samuel Beckett used to drive Andre the Giant to school before Andre was a giant" seems weird.

I think you probably drove some famous seven foot tall sumo wrestler named Suzuki the giraffe to school before he was a giraffe.

I bought a Samuel Beckett book a few weeks ago. It is a very handsome book and contains his first three novels. I bought it because of the first sentence: "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

That's a very good first sentence.

I can't get into the book though. I can't get into Samuel Beckett, except for Waiting for Godot.

You commented on my blog for the first time on July 16 of this year. It made me feel like I was part of the lit blog community. I responded by typing, "Finally a comment from you! I have been waiting. I have "made" it." I like your comments. I also like it when you break character and write a typical response besides "the asian whatever" or "the next night we ate whale" or "serious literature."

I used to write a comic strip. The creator of the comic strip was a fictional character. I would pretend to be him and promote the strip by going on random people's journals and telling them that their posts are very erotic. I sometimes think about this character when I see your comments.

Here is a hard-hitting question: Why do you write these comments, Ryan Manning?

i have not read any samuel beckett.

i will probably steal your idea about posts being erotic. thank you for sharing.

the comments are a way of promoting tao lin, which is something i do because i enjoy it.

That's what I thought, but how does it promote Tao Lin? It would make sense to me if you were using an account that led back to a blog that had only one entry. And that entry was about Tao Lin. How do people find out about Tao Lin through your comments?

I guess I'm as confused about this as I am about how Tao Lin's Britney Spears stickers are supposed to promote him. Maybe his name was linked to them through media coverage or something.

Two part question: Do you comment on people's blogs who don't already know about Tao Lin? I see your comments a lot on people's blogs who already like his writing.

I know you post on my friend's blog and I don't think he knows who Tao Lin is. Do you comment on a lot of blogs like his?

You should comment on Momus's blog: http://imomus.livejournal.com/398191.html

You should steal the erotic comment thing.

thanks for the link. i made a comment.

i usually comment on whichever blog i happen to be looking at.

Ok, I will give up on penetrating the mystery of your comments.

What would you do if the state where you live rose up out of the Earth to attacked all the nations of the Earth like Godzilla.

i would probably have sex with someone because that is my solution to everything.

Ryan Manning, the people of Earth owe you their gratitude. Thank you for soothing the savage whatever state you live in my having sex with it. I think I know the culprit because I have a statscounter thing and am sneaky. I think it starts with a "v" and ends with "gina," but only if you misspell it in a funny way.

Do you know how to get thirty lives in Contra? I'm trying to remember. I need to remember. I'm not very good at Contra (yes I am, with thirty lives).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code

Thank you, Ryan Manning. You have once again saved the world. You have saved the world from the Red Falcon alien menace.

If there was a Ryan Manning wikipedia entry, what would it say? Cite all your references or risk deletion.

ryan manning is a proper noun.

Here is the new Ryan Manning wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Manning. I don't think it will last long. It may be deleted before you get a chance to read it. It looks like there was already a Ryan Manning entry a while ago, but it got deleted by some asshole named ToddST1 on account of vandalism.

If the Ryan Manning entry doesn't get deleted, you should add to it.

I like your poetry. You're probably my favorite poet who I have only read on the Internet. What do you sit on when your writing your poetry? Do you drink any beverages while doing it? Do you write it in a specific room? Do you make sure to comb your hair before writing poetry? Do you have an outfit that you wear for poetry writing?

thank you for publishing my wikipedia entry. it was deleted, but maybe someone will eventually write a proper wikipedia entry for me.

i think it would say 'ryan manning is an american poet', but i don't know what else it would say. i have not accomplished anything yet.

thank you for saying that. when i write i usually sit on a dining chair at a desktop computer, in a home office. and i drink bottled water.

Thank you for participating in the Ryan Manning interview, Ryan Manning. Do you have any final words? Perhaps a comment about your sexual prowess?

i need to get laid yesterday.

Matthew Simmons is not to be trusted because he claims that he cannot blog while there is much evidence to the contrary

Ambulances keep speeding past my gas station with their lights flashing. Over and over again throughout the night. It has been like this since the college students came back. It has never been like this before. I didn't start working there before the college students came back last year. A parade of ambulances must be an annual event to celebrate the freshman's first couple of weeks away from home. Maybe the university's health center is not equipped to deal with alcohol poisoning and drunk people falling through university's greenhouse's ceiling (which happened while I was going to school there). My gas station is on the way to the nearest hospital.

A few nights ago, there was a little metal antique car toy-thing on top of one of the gas pumps. I picked it up. There were cobwebs underneath it. I left it behind in case my manager put it there. Later that night, the system showed that someone swiped their card at one of the pumps and that the card was unable to be read. I checked to see which pump it was. It was the same pump as the little metal antique car-thing. The little metal antique car-thing was obviously haunted. The following night, the little metal antique car-thing vanished into the netherworld.

I need to check out my new town's library. It's supposed to be haunted.

I blog a lot less when I'm suffering from allergies. I do everything a lot less.

I am waging was with the evil cat that I live with. It is unfortunate that he is evil because I like cats. He is not really evil. Just going stir crazy from being stuck inside and he doesn't get very much attention from people. I wish his owner would let him outside. His owner is my second roommate who I have said very little to besides "Hi." I've hung out with my other roommate who I like a lot.

We live near a major-ish road. Maybe the cat's owner does not want him to get run over. I say "ish" because we live in a country-ish location.

The cat's name is Zordon.

I am kind of allergic to cats, although I believe I am allergic to many cats rather than just one because I have lived with single cats before without a problem.

Although I am suffering from allergies right now, they began in my last apartment a couple of weeks ago, which was cat-free.

My new room is isolated from the rest of the apartment. It is separated by an empty, long-ish hallway. I walk through a door at the end of the hallway to gain access to the television room and bathroom and kitchen. Usually when I open the door, Zordon runs through it and tries to get into my room. I do not want Zordon in my room. I am allergic to Zordon. Zordon tears up the house. I do not want Zordon to tear up my room.

The door to my room does not close securely. It closes to people, but not to Zordon. It is annoying to have to carry a cat out of the hallway or my room every time I open the hallway door.

The hallway door also doesn't close securely unless I slam it. Sometimes I forgot to slam it. This morning, I went inside my house to discover the hallway door and my door wide open.

Zordon has struck again.

There was also the time Zordon got into my room while I was sleeping and woke me up.

He follows me into the bathroom to. It is great to have to carry a cat out of a bathroom when I really have to take a shit.

He also does cool things like climb up curtains, kitchen counters, and chase moths around the room to eat them. He often runs beneath my feet while I'm walking around the apartment, as if he's either trying to trip me or he wants me to accidentally kick him.

My roommate says he thinks Zordon has kittie down syndrome.

I liked the last cat that I lived with a lot. His name was Garfield. Because he looked like Garfield. He didn't really live there. He would just hang out for days at a time. He was either homeless (and preferred my house to being homeless) or lived across the street (and preferred my house because we fed him). Everybody on my street probably called him a different name. He must have been very confused. I liked hanging out with him. He was very nice. He was fat. He was probably fat because he was so nice and people like to feed nice cats. I rarely had to pick him up when I wanted him to be somewhere else besides my room or whatever. He knew. I would open the door and he would leave. I met him the day I moved into that house. I was reading on the front stoop and he came up to me. That house is now on the market. It was a shithole.

I bought the new issue of The Believer because I needed something to read when I went downtown to do laundry. The Believer is expensive (especially since this issue came apart in my hands). i find it very hit and miss. Some of the articles are wonderful. I haven't read very much of the issue, but I'm really enjoying this article: www.believermag.com/issues/200809/?read=article_collins

I won't say what it's about. You will have to read it.

I also liked Sam Pink's advice column in Dogplotz: www.dogzplotfiction.blogspot.com/2008/08/sam-pink.html

Sam is the one writer whose prose I read regularly on the Internet. I just don't have the attention span to read most internet fiction. I have no idea why. I need print. This is unfortunate because most print journals are boring. Online lit is where it's at. I could save a lot of trouble if I liked reading online. But I don't, so Bust remains a print journal.

kek-w is Tharg the Mighty's writer-bot of destruction

I live in a different town now. It is a compound word. "Town" is the second stem or whatever it's called. My room is pretty nice. I live with a cat. He is annoying and totally insane.

We have premium cable. Like ten different versions of HBO and Showtime and Cinemax. And we have On Demand for these channels. I can see myself wasting a lot of time watching movies. Hopefully this doesn't happen. So far, I have watched four movies. Two of them were written by John Hughes. I believe that he created the eighties. He is like the autistic child in the last episode of St. Elsewhere.

It has been a rough week. Moving+terrible terrible allergies+buying a car because my house is in the middle of nowhere+working too much=being on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

August was a waste. July probably also. I haven't really written anything substantial since June. I need to get back into it.

But I am high on allergy medication all the time, so that might not happen for a while. Maybe I will write allergy medication-induced poetry in the meantime.

The layout for the next Bust is finished. All I need to do now is send the back cover text and the page count to the cover artist/designer and get in touch with my printer who did not respond to the email that I sent a couple of weeks ago. Might have to find someone else, but I'll try their phone number next.

I've been slacking with the issue because of all the being on the verge of a nervous breakdown stuff.

Here's the issue's description:

Issue #8 of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens demonstrates why this journal has been hailed as the figurehead publication for absurd and surreal literature. Throughout these pages readers will find a man with an endless supply of money in his pockets, a nun who finds teeth in her ice cream cone, and a giant mechanized Michael Ironside stalking the streets of Galveston, Texas. Readers will also find the apocalypse as experienced by the cast of Friends and a race of chickens that enslaves a man and forces him to eat the last egg ever to be eaten. No one theme or tone dominates this issue. Some stories feature mindless violence or irreal nonsense. Others display sharp cultural satire or brain-tingling wordplay. At a time when most fiction serves up the standard fare of realism and common sense, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens issue #8 offers a zany feast for the ravenous imagination.

Listening to The Killer's first album. Really like it. Tried their second album. Boooring.

Decided on the colleges that I'm applying to. Three low residency programs: Naropa, Bennington, Goddard. And UMASS-Amherst just for the fuck of it. I think Naropa is my first choice, but I'm probably going to stay in Massachusetts, so the Vermont schools are within driving distance.

What else? I don't know. I'm interviewing Ryan Manning.

Keith Montesano currently teaches English at Virginia Commonwealth University

Cookie Monster sounds like the singer from Laibach.