Incendiary Lit

Of course there’s a story behind this amazing piece of fictive nonfiction, a video essay if you will, and when bored it’s tough not to click on something titled “Absurd Reactions to Star Wars Episode One” even if just to laugh at crazy fanboys nerd-raging. This review had to have taken weeks to put together, is hilarious, and draws (through tiny fragments) a careful picture of such a likable serial murderer. He’s definitely more curmudgeon than Dexter Morgan, but it’s highly entertaining, and it is a close look at things like character development, story, and behind the scenes footage presumably form a special feature version of the movie. There is a lot of swearing so be forewarned.

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Oh no my geek is showing!

I can’t help it. I like Michael Cera. His innate awkwardness and comic timing is segueing nicely into a slightly smoother, awkwardness. But in a good way. Come on, he’s George Michael! Anyway, there’s a new movie coming out called Paper Hearts. It’s Michael Cera and his real life girlfriend Charlyne Yi in a romantic comedy. Though, from the trailer it seems to shy away from Get Over It territory and more into a bit of EdTV/tinged with Eternal Sunshine vibe. But, I could be reading way too much into the trailer.

Regardless of the movie entirely, there is a free contest. Details here. At Rotten Tomatoes. Wheeeeeeeee! Its to write a 140 character love poem (tweetable- and indeed submitted via twitter) and to follow the directions at Rotten Tomatoes. Michael and Charlyne will be picking their favorite, and a number of other winners. The grand prize is a trip to the Paper Hearts premiere. Woot. Free vacation! Here’s a trailer for the movie. Have fun.

Geocaching slightly confused me when I saw an ad on Seattle’s craig’s list for writers wanted. Geo= Earth. Caching= hiding stashes of something? Well, it turns out that that is exactly what it is. Kind of like a mix between Where’s George and a modern treasure hunt for anyone with access to a GPS device. People hide ‘geocaches’ whereever they feel like, and record the GPS coordinates on websites like Geocaching.com for others to find it. Why? Well, why not? Why do anything that doesn’t feel, clothe or shelter yourself? For fun. Geocaches usually contain a log for those who find it to log their discvery, and mini treasures, which are for the taking (with a deposit of similar value for the next hunter.) Some people include special prizes for FTF (first to find) and others include items like Travel Bugs, with additional instructions for those willing to take the bug to specified global locations.

Companies get into it too. Jeep conducted a geocaching event awhile back, which is what this travel bug is from.

I checked Geocaching to see if there were any caches near, I gave a 20 mile radius, because I figured if they were farther, I’d be much too lazy to go seek them out. Luckily, there were hundreds. One within 500 feet of my address. So if you’re ever bored, grab a gps ready device (many phones now have navigator type functions) and go find (or bury) some treasure.

Here is the link to Esquire’s Summer Fiction Contest.

The titles are:

1. “Twenty-Ten”

2. “An Insurrection”

3. “Never, Ever Bring This Up Again”

SO WRITE!!!

It’s simple enough for anyone who’s familiar with the Firestarter Exercises. Titles is a good exercise because of its ambiguity. A while ago NPR issued a challenge to fiction writers to write a story that included the image of a wedding cake in the middle of the road. Richard Bausch’s Tandolfo the Great introduced me to the collection NPR put together. It’s a fun assignment to try to work to your own whims.

HOORAY!!!

The program sounds really nice, its an Income Based Repayment (hence IBR) for student loans, which also forgives loans after 25 years, so you won’t be paying for your college textbooks with your social security (if that’s still around). So yeah, very exciting news for so many people, that their income calculator was overwhelmed and crashed temporarily. But it will be back soon.

That pretty much sums it up. It’s a stereotype, of course, but a funny one. Here’s the link to the article on College Humor and here is the first picture… can you tell? Science Fiction Writer or Crazy Person?

Read it here.

Although from the review’s tagline “a remembrance of how movies used to suck” tips the hat of the tone of his review, nothing sums up what he thinks of the movie better than an early simile “[Year One]’s like walking in the rain under an umbrella made of dog shit.” He does not like what he perceives as movie cliches, and isn’t shy about expressing that feeling of disgust. Check out his site, lots of hilarious and terribly honest reviews of movies fro the last decade(ish).

Did that title make sense? If not, let me break it down. Prepare your Amazon cart to spend $25, which means you could add the following to your order of

Reviewers have said it’s a “masterpiece” with touches deeper than a typical genre novel and “explores characters in a way that is true, whole, and touches deep down into the reality of a person.”

What’s it about?

(from publisher) Awake in the darkness, long after midnight, Long Beach Homicide Detective Danny Beckett is trying to keep his past at bay. Haunted by all the things he’s lost–his wife, his family, his hope–he begins to investigate the brutal murder of Elizabeth Williams, a popular High School English teacher. Soon Danny begins to understand that apprehending the murderer is not just a case to solved, but an act of personal redemption.

 What’s the Buying Event?

It is a effort to spike Amazon numbers with purchases so that it manages to match “you might like” or “other popular purchases” type lists that are programmed into Amazon to help suggestively sell more books.So, if you like detective or mystery novels, or just like reading period, on July 1st go buy Tyler Dilts’ A King of Infinite Space. Word.

La Mesa, California, in Grossmont Center’s Barnes and Noble at 7:30 for the “Third Wednesdays” poetry reading on 6/17/09 featuring Steve Kowit (Author of the wonderful writing ‘textbook’ “In the Palm of Your Hand” as well as great books of poetry and prose) and Terry Hertzler (publisher of Caernarvon Press and a great poet, and though I haven’t read any of his prose yet I’m sure its also very good). They’re both really great poets, and there’s an open mic afterward too for more local flavor. I just may have to clear my throat a few times and try reading again. Anyway, go to this reading if you’re anywhere in the area at all. If you’re in a poetry reading or writing class you can probably even talk your teacher into giving you some extra credit for going and writing a little essay about it.

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I have an EnV2. The secret is out. And, oh noes! Anyway, a lot of phones these days include a full keyboard for easier texting, which also means easier note-taking or brainstorming when on-the-go. Whether this means you woke up late for class, or you’re waiting for the East County Youth Symphony (they’re amazing, and the program– including weekly lessons– is completely free for the kids.) to begin, you again have the capability to write.

Maybe this is a problem that has only plagued me. I am constantly trying to write. First drafts of poems have occurred on TV Dinner boxes, but most often, on receipts. Or at least receipt paper. But now you don’t have to master the art of miniscule-printing, you have essentially a novelty, or micro-machines version of an old school Brother word processor, the evolutionary interstep between typewriters and computers for most consumers at the time. But I’m a hopeless narrative addict.

Enough dilly-dallying. On the EnV2 there’re easy shortcuts to get you directly to the Notepad function. (I love that Wordpress gave e a red underline for “there’re” but not dillydallying, even when I had it as one word. DON’T RELY on SPELLCHECK. It’s already bitten me in the ass more than once on this thing.) Menu (OK)-9-2-8. [If you’re curious, that’s for (9) Settings and Tools (2) Tools (8) Wordpad.] Four keytouches and you’re ready to either work from a saved file or start a new file.The keys are very small and I kind of feel like Will Ferrell in that Jeffrey’s skit where Jimmy Fallon kept laughing, using a thin stick to punch the keys, but I manage well enough, and will soon be testing the Wordpad function’s memory capabilities, because I have a feeling I’ll be using it a lot during downtime to work on projects.

Original Link : SNL Jeffreys Skit w/ Sean Hayes Uploaded by: bryantchoung

Even though it has little to do with his fondness for poetry, (Robbie Burns isn’t a favorite AND I’m majoring in poetry) Craig Ferguson has long been my favorite late night talk show host, and yes that’s including Conan. Don’t get me wrong, I love Conan, but the format of Craig’s show just gets e a bit more these days. I’m sorry. I am glad to be shed of Leno (though until Jimmy Fallon gets his stride, its a step back. But Leno’s a leap back from Carson, and he’s still occasionally hilarious, so let it be). These asides are confusing even me. So let’s get to it. A little while back Jessica and I were with some friends and convinced them to change the channel after a number of consecutive Fallon awkward moments to Ferguson, whom they’d never seen (aside from the Drew Carrey Show, which I still feel is kind of like Carrottop. Easy to make fun of and laugh at secretly. Come on, they’re puns, and we, as word nerds, should love them). And randomly he not only spent the entire monolog talking about poetry (and making fun of poetry as a subject of higher education– and rightly so, I guess. But one comment that really helped set me in my ways was from a History professor, who interrupted tangents about the history of beer and of flipping the bird (of which he was writing a book about), to share a short anecdote about a good friend of his, with a PhD in history who happily manages a Pizza Hut. The anecdote was lost on me, but the concept was not. And I hated the idea, but still couldn’t shake my want to learn more about writing. So I gave in. What is this? This is an introduction to two Craig Ferguson Monologues about poetry. Kind of. Why Two? Because when I searched for Craig Ferguson poetry Burns, I get a link from 2009 and I almost posted it unwatched. It was from the very beginning of the year, a separate monologue, which focused highly on poetry. So I have to post them both. They make me laugh a lot.

via videosift.com

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The show we’d seen originally.
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Many props to the guys who put someone charismatic behind a vocoder, instead of the standard brood of Fox, Pain, West and Abdul… First up we have Winston Churchill: “Great Declaration” remix

and then we have Martin Luther King Jr. “Let Freedom Ring” remix

So you can again get your fix of a year’s worth of poetry/prose exercises whenever you need to. Right here at the Firestarter Exercise page. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Firestarters are writing exercises to get the literary fires lit beneath your computer chair. Today’s is to write a short poem. Check it out and enjoy.

Yes, the TV channel JWTNY is to blame for this bit of entertaining eye candy while Billy Collins reads his poems slightly drone-like.

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Wait for it… wait for it… think about it being a kid’s show and the likelihood that they’ll get that four word retort. WOW. Thank you yet again Stephen Spielberg, for great entertainment.

Not sure why, but the media player finally decided to take to the new playlist I’d uploaded. If you haven’t checked it out, the first song is rap, I’m sorry, but “Yesterday” off Atmosphere’s new CD When Life Gives You Lemons You Paint That Shit Gold is I think one of the better examples of competent hip hop. But maybe I’m biased cuz I can remember riding the city bus home from Cheapo blasting my new copy of Overcast so loud on my off-brand discman that the driver could hear it from the back. Or because my dad recently passed, and once again Sean Daley touches on a nerve with his lyrics (also see Body Pillow, swingin’ back an forth…) But for the most part it’s a mellow mix of acoustic and instrumentals that will either aid in your reading of the site with their soothing melodies, or intrigue the poetic side of your brain with their interesting narrative. Both lyric and musical. Another thing I should point out is a line from Ben Folds’ “Fred Jones Part 2″: “There’s an awkward young shadow that waits in the hall” which is the perfect description. You can totally see the young employee in charge of leading the old one off the premises. That’s a really, really sad song right there. Then “Bright Eyes I always associate with the Black Rabbit and Richard Adams. I can attribute his fatalistic rabbits in Watership Down for my entry into the world of poetry, so it’s a soft spot for me. And damn. I’m for some reason, at this moment, also hooked on asian pianists. Joe Hisaishi and Nobuo Uematsu especially, though Joe didn’t made it in just yet. Also, poor poor Buzz. I hope you enjoy the songs, and would love to hear feedback of what you’d like to hear in the future.

I, for some reason, thought that the “Page” function of wordpress was a magical place where posts could extend as long as they wanted and didn’t auto-delete the end of the post as you added more. Thus I’ve misplaced over a year’s worth of daily writing exercises on the world-wide-web of yesterday. I know there’re things like webarchive’s “way back machine” (which only applies to sites pre-2006) but have as of yet not been able to figure out how to retrieve those long-deleted exercises. Ho-hum. Add another tally to the “I’m retarded” list.

Bright news, however, is that I’m working on a book of Firestarters. I can’t say anything like “Its being published by ____” because at the moment, the publisher is likely to be Incendiary Lit Press with its first perfect bound book. That doesn’t mean that once it’s together I won’t spend $100 in postage and paper sending out queries, but it’s in the works, and if it’s not done yet, anyone who emails me (in order to avoid too much more spam, it’s simply the site name at gmail.com) in May will get a free ILP version of the Firestarter Book when its finally finished. I’m really hopeful though. Making good progress.

That’s right. Real life is all about work and bills and lame and aching muscles. It’s about wishing you were appreciated for not actually performing manual labor, but for describing that manual labor you no longer wish you had to do. If that happened, I would be so excited. But for now I just have to revel in internet sites like Duotrope, New Pages, South Park Studios, Surf the Channel, Imeem, Muxtape etc. You know, free.

ESPECIALLY WWW.SOUTHPARKSTUDIOS.COM

Any Episode you want to watch, whenever you want to watch it, with minimal commercials (one, I think). For someone with the full South Park library and a narrative addiction, this site is a godsend. While work is done, familiar and hilarious narrative can ensue. MY GOD. Is there a decent audio-book of Catch-22? I’ll look into this and let you all know. If not, why? If so, damn. I’m really slow on the awesome bus.

This is your last day at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs‘ 2009 conference, and I am still bitter. I’ve carried hot plates of food to (some) ungrateful people all weekend, and you got to talk writing and reading and teaching and… ARGH. I’m going next year. Somehow.