American O.M.G.s

It occurred to me when I finished reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman that I had no idea how to frame writing about it. Though I enjoy reading and live in Minnesota, I've never read anything by Neil Gaiman until now. (I haven't even read Sandman.) And I certainly have no frame of reference for writing about fantasy, as this is the first time I've ever set out to do it.

Being a non-authority on both Gaiman and the fantasy genre, I began to panic that whatever I ended up saying about the book was going to be pure bullshittery. However, this worry led to divine consolation. As any nerd can tell you, the joy of books is that they (unlike crowds in high school) are not exclusive. There is nothing stopping any one of us from picking up a book of any sort and enjoying the hell out of it. Still, however, we insist on sticking to what we've always known.

The truth is, to talk about Gaiman's book in terms of genre is a total waste. It's a good book—a great book, in fact. As important to understanding America as it is to understanding the mechanics of good storytelling, American Gods didn't disappoint as a novel. Sure, I fell asleep a few times reading it, and as a friend of mine noted, "nothing really happens," but so what? It's not what it's about, but what it's about, you dig? It's worthwhile in the end and, unlike many books I've read, actually has something interesting to say. However, calling it fantasy would have taken it off my radar in any other situation, and that's pretty shameful. 

You probably want to know what it's about. I'll use up my word count if I try to explain it all here, so for the plot and some really great insights into the book, check out Laura Miller's piece about it on Salon.com. She's a little ambitious about how much a reader should know from the outset about mythology and therefore what should be gleaned from Gaiman's hints, but overall she has a great take on the book.

For the very, very lazy, here is a very, very brief synopsis of the book: all of the gods brought to America by travelers, settlers, the indentured, and the enslaved remain here, haunting the land and living in human form—some barely scraping by, others having met with more success—are brought together by Odin (calling himself Mr. Wednesday) with the help of an everyman named Shadow, to war against the new gods, representing the digital age, media, and economy. (One of the most moving ideas in the book is that America is a bad land for gods, which seems to have left a bad taste in the mouths of some since Gaiman isn't American, but I'd say to those people that perhaps they doth protest too much.)

So, what makes American Gods fantasy? 

• Parts of it take place in a world that is not our own.
• There are mythological characters.
• Some of the characters use magic.
• The world follows rules of its own making. 

It's about as fantasy as Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. I'd be more satisfied if it were advertised as "magical realism," but what do I know? It's been called a "fantasy demi-epic" and a "Wagnerian noir." How about we just agree that it falls under "speculative fiction" and call it a day?

Twitter Manual of Style

Twitter is hailed as a great exercise for writing and editing—you know that. There’s a social media platform for everyone, and Twitter is the home of the succinct. The character limit is what sets Twitter apart from Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, and whatever else, and it keeps individuals prone to overlong overshares away. Or it should.

But just because you have 140 characters—and fewer if you’re adding a link or a hashtag or trying, on top of that, to leave room for a manual retweet—doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice grammar. You’re a smart person. Unironic, unmeta txtspk is your enemy.

So before you consider breaking your one tweet into two, I know you’ve—

• delivered your shortest and strongest verbs,
• whittled your “university words” down to their most blunt synonyms,
• and deleted all thats, whichs, and personal pronouns.

When faced with the prospect of breaking grammar law, you must carefully choose what to sacrifice. Speaking to you as a zealous copy editor and daily Twitter user (if you talk to @PaperDarts, you’re usually talking to me), I want to help you tweet without looking like a twat. Grammar-wise, I mean.

I present to you my Twitter Manual of Style (Really Running Out of Options Edition).

1. Know your shortcuts

This isn’t actually breaking any rules, but it’s something a lot of people don’t think to do. Change that double dash (--) or triple dot (...) to its symbol and single character equivalent.

Em dash (—):

• Windows (with number pad): Alt + 0151
• Mac: Option + Shift + -
  

Ellipsis (…):

• Windows: Alt + 0133
• Mac: Option + :

I want to point out that it was Courtney venting about em dashes that prompted me to strategically revisit my youthful pastime of holding down alt/option and hitting other keys to see what happened. I don’t need Word or Adium to autocorrect my non-symbols anymore. It’s oddly empowering.

2. Ignorance is bliss 

Technical rules are only worth adhering to when space allows it. Spelling is one thing. Your versus you’re is critical. But how about these variations on a theme:

1:30 – 3:00 PM
1:30–3:00 p.m.
1:30–3 p.m.
1:30–3PM

I know which one is right (and this may be style guide subjective), but not everyone does. Cash in on that and get characters to spare. The same goes for setting off titles with quotation marks or adding a ™ symbol for any reason other than fun. No one’s gonna know, and if they do know, they’ll give you a free pass. If this copy editor can overlook it, others can too. And if you weren't already aware, adding two spaces after a sentence went out of style with the typewriter, so for the love of god, don't do that on Twitter. Or anywhere else.

3. Abbreviations

This is where txtpsk comes into play. Vowels are for the weak anyway, amirite? Abbreviate commonly abbreviated words. I don’t mean changing National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to “NAACP”—I can only hope you’re already doing that. Swap out appointment with appt, weekend with wknd.

Two abbreviations or weird acronyms in one tweet are all right. Three is pushing it.

4. Numbers

You could argue this is more correct than abbreviations, but while 54 in place of fifty-four falls under the “ignorance is bliss” rule above, 3 for three looks sloppy to anyone who got a B in high school English.

You’re still not allowed to put 2 in place of to or too, but I’ll allow you 2 for two. 1 for won is verboten.

5. Symbols, Revisited

Apparently you’re writing some kind of twitnovel if my previous tips haven’t worked. Fine. Use + for plus, & for and, # for number, and @ for at. Know that the last two have their own functions in Twitter, so use them at your own peril.

Still not getting everything across?

No, TwitLonger is not an option.

Go back to Facebook, noob.

A List of Greatness to Stop Denying

In high school, I was really into the work of Langston Hughes. I still am. My favorite book by Hughes is The Ways of White Folks, and my favorite essay would have to be "Bop."

I have been thinking about "Bop" lately, as it is a simple yet poignant dialogue between Hughes and a bebop enthusiast named Simple. In the brief exchange Langston is reactionary, questioning the significance of bebop music, ignorantly dismissing it as a pointless offshoot of scat. In reality, bebop is cleverly political. The "bop" is onomatopoeia, imitating the sound made when the police 'bop' black people on the head.

There's a black tradition of converting plight and angst into music with strong political connotations. Derivative of the slave hymns, jazz, rhythm and blues, ragtime, swing, bebop, and hip-hop all translate the suffering, struggle, and subjugation of African Americans, and have influenced what we now know as popular music. Bebop is especially political in nature: "Every time a cop hits a Negro with billy club, that old club says 'BOP! BOP!…BE-BOP!…MOP! BOP!'," Simple explains to Hughes. The playful sound of bebop is, in actuality, anger. Bebop grew out of violence against black people. Langston Hughes' feelings toward bebop—before he knew its significance—parallel today's anti-hip-hop sentiments, and for this reason, that essay is equally relevant today as it was back then.

There's a tendency to deny and discredit black contribution to the arts. This tendency is the reason that, for better or worse, Black History Month and BET have to exist. It's the reason Chuck Berry was never crowned the King of Rock 'n' Roll or given a fraction of the radio time that Elvis was. It's the reason old farts like my dad, and his white best friend from college (who I love dearly, and refer to as my uncle per my dad's request) think rap music lacks artistic merit. It's the reason some of my peers ironically listen to rap music, referring to it as guilty pleasure music, or worse, tuning it out completely, indicating that it is somehow not worthy of earnest appreciation. It's reason the Twin Cities has only one legitimate (albeit poorly funded) hip-hop station—KMOJ. And it's also the reason that many black people didn't get shouts outs in many of the end of the year art/lit/culture lists.

With this in mind, I present to you some important black artists to know about:

8. Flying Lotus

Flying Lotus - Kill Your Co-Workers from Warp Records on Vimeo. 

7. Poly Styrene

Someone other than Christopher Hitchens died of cancer in 2011: punk icon Poly Styrene. Styrene was half Somali, the lead singer of the punk band X-ray Spex, and unlike Hitchens, good for women.

6. Issa Rae

A graduate of Standford University, Issa Rae is a producer/director/writer best known for her popular web series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. Diablo Cody and Donald Glover are just some the series' celebrity fans—Donald even made a cameo in season finale.

(15:42 for Donald Glover cameo.)

5. Dodai Stewart

Dodai is smart, snarky, and pretty much the best thing the Gawker media blog, Jezebel, has going for itself. 

4. Danielle Henderson

 She created the Feminist Ryan Gosling meme, which is going to be a book soon. As the close friend of a person who had the misfortune of making it into Look At This Fucking Hipster, I get it: most blog-to-book deals are evil, thoughtlessly self-generating, and simplistic. Feminist Ryan Gosling is derivative of the Hey Girl meme, but it did something that meme didn't do: it tapped into the feminist zeitgeist. Any feminist blogger will tell you that when Ryan Gosling spoke out against rape culture in the film industry, clits rejoiced, so a blog-to-book deal about equality, and Ryan Gosling, is a not just a book deal, but a big deal.

3. Jayson Musson

Jayson Mussen is a genius and a legend. He has published funny things on Diplo's Mad Decent blog, he's one half of the rap group Little Plastic (which has collaborated with the likes of Amanda Blank and Spank Rock), he did the whole text-based art thing before Internet Poetry founder Steve Roggenbuck, he's the brilliant mind behind the popular vlog series Art Thoughtz, and best of all, he painted this:

2. Toyin Odutola 

Nigerian-born artist Toyin Odutola recently illustrated rapper K'naan's New York Times piece Returning to Somalia, but she was a big deal before that. Odutola has garnered thousands of fans on Tumblr, making her one of the microblogging platform's most popular artists. 

1. Roxane Gay

As an assistant professor of English, co-editor of Pank, and a regular contributor to HTMLGIANT and The Rumpus, Roxane Gay wins the Internet nearly every single day. Roxane Gay's first collection, Ayiti, published by Artistically Declined Press, was released in 2011. Ayiti, described as a "unique blend of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, all interwoven to represent the Haitian diaspora experience," has garnered rave reviews, further validating Roxane's brilliance.

Roxane inspired me to write this list after I read this.

PD vs. TT smackdown

This Thursday, January 19th from 7–10 p.m. at the Nomad World Pub on the West Bank, something big is happening. No, not the hotly anticipated fourth installment of Martin Lawrence's Big Momma's House, but something quite similar. Get ready for laffs, gaffs, and maybe a heartwarming lesson or two about the importance of appreciating one's large mother as Paper Darts and The Tangential go head-to-head in an official WWE (weakass writer's event) SMACKDOWN.

Five readers from (glorious) Paper Darts will duke it out with five readers from The (pithy) Tangential in a round by round duel to determine the ULTIMATE OVERLORD of the Twin Cities writing scene. The ever delightful and intrepid Mustache Rangers will serve as referees, and the audience (that means you) determines the winner.

If you've never been to a read-off, have no idea what a smackdown is, and aren't even sure why you just tried to Google "fat monkey yawning" and got brought to this page, fear not! All the answers you need are revealed below.

Without further ado and certainly without any hint of bias, here are my predictions for possible outcomes Thursday night.

1) John Jodzio, John Gordon, and Jay Gabler bond over having rare J-names, found monthly "J-Time Tea and Knitting Club" meetings.

2) Heidi Thomasoni and Dunstan McGill reveal their secret identities as Masked Hero 1 and Masker Hero 2, join reluctant Mustache Rangers in an unstoppable(ish) crime-fighting force.

3) This inspires Eric Vrooman to reveal his secret identity as Edward Norton, who then leaves all of us to go star in a classic buddy comedy with James Franco, titled "Frankie 'n' Me."

4) Following the bloodbath of Thursday night, Katie Sisneros and Becky Lang launch their WWE careers and dominate the Women's Cage Match division. Sarah Morean decides to capitalize on their story by creating a world-renowned comic book series of their escapades. She becomes a millionaire off the exploitation of their wounds, and buys a billion baby kitties to make up for it.

And if all of that doesn't sound exciting to you, well, I'm sure Martin Lawrence will shimmy into that fat suit again someday. Dare to dream....

For more info see our magical Facebook invite.

The Skyrim Defense

Follow along, please.

I can't stop playing Skyrim. (It was game of the year, you know.) I have so much stuff to do but I can't keep myself from turning on my Xbox and logging hours (never more than four but never less than one) in my quest to keep Skyrim and all its holds safe. While playing this game should lead in smoothly to reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman, my fantasy novel for January (and first book of my year of genre), it's really detracting from the time I set aside for reading. 

Because I feel at once a great amount of pride (in game) and shame (real world) for my actions surrounding Skyrim, I believe I must either come to terms with the fact that I am wasting a nauseating amount of time doing something that will eventually not mean anything, or epically rationalize/defend my actions in terms of books right here, right now. 

Opening the copy of Novelist's Boot Camp that my father gave me for Christmas 2007 (he even left a sweet inscription saying that some advice in the book—mainly regarding the destructive properties of a negative attitude—doesn't only deal with writing) the third page depicts a treasure-map illustration of the novelist's journey. Start Here it says in stern millitary font, then a sqiggly dotted line ambles around the spread and ends with an equally stony Finished Novel. Along the way, there are developments and objectives. It kind of looks a lot like my Skyrim storyline if it were given the same chart treatment. I have a goal—to save Skyrim, and along the way I have objectives—sidequests, and developments—holy shit I just chose to become a werewolf and now cannot gain rested bonuses by sleeping.

Okay, okay, so in Todd A. Stone's world where I (the novelist) am getting my ass kicked by militiristic tips, tricks, and techniques for the next generation of writers, I'm being active in a way that Skyrim does not allow. However, learning the black and white properties of good storytelling is only one half of the treatment. Reading good stories is the other half. And while I am not reading the Skyrim story (though I do keep the captions on...) the writing is really, really amazing, with so many characters, story arcs that sometimes intersect but don't always, and possibilities. Pretty much every novelist I've ever read could learn a thing or two from the team that wrote Skyrim.

Think, too, of the Choose Your Own Adventure books that have, for some reason, fallen to the wayside of children's literature. Though the reader was not actively involved in the storytelling, nor completely engrossed in a standard linear story, the game of choosing was encouraged by adults. But what, now that I'm an adult with all sorts of real choices to make, I don't need a little practice now and then?

Winning at a losing game

Courtney’s recent blog about New Years resolutions got me thinking about a similar resolution that an old friend of mine once took on—to read one book each week for an entire year, fifty-two books in all. 

That might sound excessive, but consider how much time it takes to read one book. Let’s say the average book is 300 pages long, and that it takes on average two minutes to read a page.[1] That is, on average, 600 minutes, or ten hours, to read one (average) book. So when all is said and done, you could read fifty-two books in a year by only reading for a couple of hours a day. That’s not so hard. I’m sure those of you in humanities graduate programs right now are like, “Pshh, that’s just how much reading I get done while I’m sleeping, you lazy intern.”

But sometimes it feels like even two free hours a day is hard to come by. Or maybe not that I don’t have those two free hours, but it’s hard to constantly motivate myself to dedicate that free time to reading. So what am I doing with that time? Well, I’m most likely spending it reading—technically. Sometimes just staring. Probably while simultaneously listening to music, momentarily pausing it when an important cat video comes up, “keeping up” with people I haven’t seen in years, always ready to move on to something else if I get remotely bored. That’s right, I’m on the internet.

The internet is the middle ground between reading and TV. You can carefully choose your content if you put the effort into it. But more and more as media conglomerates realize that you’re out there waiting with your mouth open, you can just passively consume what’s being fed to you. I do it all the time. Check the RSS feed, favorite blogs, major news outlets, scan a few articles, quit reading if I lose interest without feeling any guilt, rarely reading any particular piece longer than 1000 words. And I do this for hours, idly making someone a few bucks from Google ads, all while lamenting that I don’t have enough time to read all these books that I know I’d love.

But honsetly, and be honest with yourself, how much time do you waste? How much time do you blow every day? - LCD Soundsystem 

There are gobs of great books out there that I want to read, and I know that no matter how much I try, I’ll never be able to read more than a minute fraction of them in my lifetime. It’s a losing game from the start. Even reading fifty-two books in a year barely makes a dent. And yet, for most of my life, I’ve not even read that much. Instead I’ve given more of my time to the immediate satisfaction of hot, buttery internet.

And it’s totally okay not read every great book. If you did, you’d probably be really boring and not know how to talk to people. And don’t get me wrong, I think the internet is a wonderful thing, full of brief, up-to-date content, bite-sized pieces of beautiful art, and unprecedented communication potential. But books, novels particularly, are still incredibly important because they talk to us from a single voice. We spend a good chunk of time with one other person, get to intimately know their perspective and ideas in a way that is quite simply impossible to do in 1000 words or less. It’s like a lifelong friendship versus speed dating.

Maybe I won’t get around to all fifty-two books this year. But my resolution is to spend at least as much time reading a single, time-consuming narrative, whether it’s bound in paper or on a screen, as I do ogling the internet. I have a number of books on my list, but there’s plenty of room for more, so let me know what I might be missing out on.

[1]That is, unless you're reading a book by David Foster Wallace, and he’s putting footnotes in his footnotes, and you’re getting distracted because all you can think about is Xzibit saying "Yo, dawg, I heard you like footnotes, et al."

Best of the Best: Book Cover Lists

Just as you become  ill at the thought of reading another one, I present to you... a list of lists! But wait! This one highlights the best of the best. After scouring through a few of the best lists of book cover accolades for 2011, here are the hits and misses of each posting.

1. The Flavorwire List

Left: The 1Q84 cover made it on to most of the best book cover lists. Really? I just don't get it. Chip Kidd, I love you man, but let's get over the idea that the guy is the Midas of book covers. Right: The designer for Jamrach's Managerie, John Gray, has my vote for Book Cover King.

 

 2. The Kirkus Review List

Left: The American Masculine book cover is shameless in its attempt to be... very masculine. That could have been so much fun! How amazing would this cover have been if the layout stayed the same, but the design was executed by someone like Graham Erwin? Right: Maps are so extremely beautiful, so maybe the Map Head cover has an unfair advantage, but what I love most about this cover is the clever placement of the subtitle in the map's Key.

3. The Publisher's Weekly List

Left: The Typist cover is so predictable (I prefer the similar Lolita cover from a few years ago). A pretty woman, cropped, void of any charachteristics that give her life. I appreciate the matching of the lettering to her lips, but while that concept is nice, the cover plays it way too safe. Right: The Uncoupling cover made it on to most of the book cover lists. I agree with them all! This cover is perfect: fresh, crisp, and abstract enough to make you engage with the designer's choices. The cover makes you want to pick up the darn book. This concept of using photographs of minatures has been used many times before, (see this other 2011 beauty of a cover). But the composite feel of the colors, type, and image make this book cover the most successful.

 4. The Book Page List

Left: Three trends that have dominated the design world in the last three years: the color yellow, birds, and human-animal hybrids. The problem with the Sara Gran cover is that it competes with all the other bird themed band posters and cover art. The use of a different illustrator (Sandra Diekmann anyone?) and a slightly tweaked color pallete would have made this cover fly high above the competition. Right: The Helen Oyeyemi cover takes a tired image and finds something interesting in the mashup.

5. The You The Designer List

Left: I can't read the title. Right: I hate baseball, but I want to read the book because the title looks so damn FINE. 

6. The Huff Post Books List*

Title: Coolest Book Covers 2011, The Year's Best So Far (from June, 2011)

Left: I get it. The Cut cover is supposed to be minimalistic, it matches the very short and snappy name, right? But doesn't the Lit cover from last year cut to the point with little bit more creativity? Right: As far as the Periodic Tales cover goes, I imagine the designer pouring over possible images and then finding... this one. The most perfect one. An old, gorgeously rendered, vintage image that can be perfectly repurposed. I bet the designer of Swamplandia felt a similar jolt of cosmic luck.

7. The Hensher Creative List
Water illustrated left. Water illustrated right. I love both of these covers (The Hensher Creative list wins at picking the best covers for the year). The cover on the right wins because it is simply one of my absolute favorites of 2011. End of story.

8. The Readings ListLeft: Boring font. Boring image. This cover could front about 100 books successfully. It sets a certain mood, but does not pull in the potential reader. Right: Boring font made to look fantastic when flipped. Amazing illustration. See where a little imagination can get you? The cover for August is by Guy Shield. I love him. If there was an award for best young book cover artist, he would get it. Read this interview with him on designing the August cover here.

Take Away Reading: The Guardian looks at how book design gained momentum in 2011.

Winning Resolution

In truth it's been a long time since I made a New Year's resolution. While the tradition is intended to be empowering and bring with it the joy of a fresh start full of promise and an opportunity to exhibit one's capacity for ultimate goodness, I've found that the act of making frivolous pledges to onesself generally just ends up being a way to brutally tear apart the once well-meaning self come June, or at the first sense of a misstep. 

The tradition, as I understand it, is based on Janus, a mythological king of Rome, for who the month of January is named. King Janus had one face that looked forward and one that looked backward. The New Year marks the apex of the calendar, where one is able to look to the future and also reflect on the past. Making a resolution is super, but a year of heavy expectations is tough, especially because of the whole human thing...something that Janus obviously wouldn't understand.  

Still, as guilty as I've felt for breaking past promises to myself about not smoking or trying to eat more vegetables, I also feel a modicum of shame for not even trying, and letting a couple years slip by without even the acknowledgement that yes, I too, could possibly, potentially, perhaps be a better person. 

A compromise: a fun resolution. 

Thinking hard about the things that I want to do, but just can never find the time for, I came to the conclusion that the thing I want most, but pretend like I just "can't fit in to my schedule" is to become acqainted with genre fiction. How can I ever understand books if I don't try to get to know all types of them?

Thus, I proclaim 2012 the YEAR OF GENRE FICTION.

I've selected 12 genres and 12 books. Ideally, I'd like to read two books from each genre per month, but I don't want to plan out all 24 books, in case something comes up. 

Maybe you'd like to get in on this too, huh? We can be book buds! (We'll all get matching bookmarks and bracelets and have squeeling Skype chats when we get to the Erotica month. OMG!)

Below are the genres and books I've selected. Seriously dudes, this is going to be AWESOME.

January: Fantasy, American Gods by Neil Gaiman

February: Romance, The Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

March: Sci Fi, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

April: Hood Books, True to the Game: A Terri Woods Fable

May: Western, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

June: Erotica, The Story of O by Pauline Reage

July: LGBT, A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

August: Chick Lit, The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

September: Historical Fiction, The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

October: Horror, Windeye by Brian Evenson

November: Sports Fiction, The Professional: A Novel by W.C. Heinz

December: Mystery, The Alienist by Caleb Carr

2012 is going to rule.

THANK YOU LARGE HEARTED BOY

John Jozio was featured today at Largehearted Boy with a mad awesome playlist for his "bawdy and well-written" book of short stories, Get In If You Want To Live.

Read the playlist that includes Deerhunter and Chubby Checker>>

Review: Eyeballs growing all over me...again

If you're a fan of flash fiction, sci-fi, surrealism in measured doses, mild gross-out humor, and children's media, then Eyeballs Growing All Over Me...Again is sure to be your cup of tea (with an eyeball in lieu of a sugar cube).

Abrupt and nothing short of pure juvenility Tony Rauch's Eyeballs Growing All Over Me...Again is a 140-page collection of short stories filled with jarringly imaginative, weirdo prose. The book is broken into three parts, and within those three parts are twenty-three uniquely interesting shorts.

Writing from a perspective informed by speculative fiction and the inherent simplicity of YA, Rauch is a regular genre-crosser, and Eyeballs, premature but promising, is a pubescent wet dream.

Far from mundane, you'll find your interest piqued by the appeal of the strange characters. Unsettled by the imagery of eyeballs growing all over a guy's body, inanimate objects becoming animate, or a girl with a goat head, you won't even mind the fact that the character and plot development is spare—it works within the context of the shorts. The inconsistency in subject matter is an asset to the book, as every tale functions as a window into the contradictory, bizarre, and arbitrary land known as the imagination.

Tony Rauch's imagination is steeped in the ethos of science-fiction-fueled wanderlust and a longing for a boyhood comprised of whimsy. In every story, there's a thread of playful aestheticism, a quality that is no doubt Rauch's signature. When reading Eyeballs, it's important to keep an open mind. Even so, one can't help but think that some of the stories would be better suited to illustrated children's books.

Insofar as it will force you to look beyond the limited scope of your own pretenses, Eyeballs Growing All Over Me...Again is the literary equivalent of eyeballs growing all over you. There's a distinct hallucinatory influence at work in Eyeballs, so depending on your tastes, each story could very well be a good trip—or a bad trip. Either way, you'll be tripping Eyeballs.

Eyeballs Growing All Over Me...Again is available on Amazon.com, and locally at Magers and Quinn, Comic Book College, and Hot Comics.

Holiday prescription: subscription

I was just sitting here thinking to myself, "Oh shit, it's almost Christmas and I haven't gotten every person on my list something totally awesome," and I figure there's a strong possibility that you might be, too. It's a terrible feeling, huh? Knowing that you've put something off, or at least accidentally placed it outside your mind, and now some of the only decent people in your world aren't going to get the gifts they deserve... 

But you know what? No sweat, holmes. Don't be so dramatic. There's plenty of super shiz out there to let your loves know you heart them, or think about them, or stalk them, or want to do any of those things some time in the future. 

Nah, I can't really help you out with a whole list of gifts, but I thought I'd at least let you in on the best gift I got this year (it was for my birthday), because it's a super gift and a snappy purchase in a jam.

Last August my dad and my aunt Michelle signed me up for McSweeney's Book Release Club.

It's $100 (eightOne of the fine books included in my package new books), which is a lot of coin in this economy, so don't feel pressure to sign your strange neighbor up for this, but if you have any bookish siblings, or a bookworm bestie, then this is going to be their jam. (Though I haven't had time to read all the books that have arrived so far, they sure do make my heart burst open just to look at, imaginging all of the treasures and whatevers contained therein.)

The best best best part about the club? Getting mail. 

Seeng a package with your name on it waiting for you when you get home is fucking delightful, and when it's full of books with amazing covers and beautiful words, then that's just super duper fucking delightful.

But you know what? Maybe you're not into McSweeney's.  (It happens Dave, get over it.) 

That's cool, there are tons of publishing houses, small presses, and organizations that offer subscription services, many at a lower price than McSweeney's. (Get to Googlin'!)

In case you're looking for a gift for me....

A subscription to American Short Fiction is VERY reasonable.

The Rumpus has a book club. It's kind of expensive (it's monthly), but you the books haven't been published yet, and you get to discuss that shit with the actual author. 

I love to read, but sometimes I'm damned if I can find the time, so a subscription to One Story would really make my busiest days slow down for at least a few pages. 

If all else fails. (I mean like ever, for anything, in your life, mine, or anyone else's.) 

Smartest Website by MSP Mag

Thanks to Mpls.St.Paul Magazine for naming paperdarts.org the "Smartest Website" in their most recent Best of the Twin Cities issue. 

Rad dudes, ser rad.

Pretty games for pretty people

Okay, the bit about pretty people isn't a requirement (but you're all pretty pretty, and we all know that). If you want a dose of interactive media that's easy on the eyes, here are a few 100% free indie games worth drooling over.

Every Day the Same Dream 

Developer Molleindustria describes Every Day the Same Dream as “a slightly existential riff on the theme of alienation and refusal of labor.” If that doesn’t have you interested, allow me to chip away at your indifference. It’s free to play, and you’d best play it.

In Every Day the Same Dream, the player character is a white-collar worker indistinguishable from every other cubicled, suit-wearing man in the game. Following the fairly obvious linear path, you dress the faceless man, guide him to his car, drive him to work, and sit him down at his cubicle. Your goal is to break that cycle and become a new person (by interacting differently with your surroundings). Walk the other direction in the parking garage; leave your clothes at home.

Every Day the Same Dream looks like an exercise in minimalism, almost devoid of small details and using color sparingly. The faceless people and the undifferentiated cars and cubicles lend themselves to the theme of heartless office labor—I don’t think a carefully rendered realistic environment would be quite as effective. Lastly, the music by Jesse Stiles is phenomenal. You may not want to play it, but at least give it a listen.

Play Every Day the Same Dream here.

Appy 1000 mg 

Before you hear about Appy, you should know about Ludum Dare.

Ludum Dare is an accelerated game development event. The community suggests a theme, and the participants develop a game from scratch over the course of a weekend. Appy 1000 mg was the overall winner of Ludum Dare 20 this spring. The theme? “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this!”

Appy 1000 mg is a short platforming game by Sebastien Benard that is a shining example of how much can be conveyed visually with very few pixels. The game kicks off as an exploration of a bright, breezy wonderland with fireflies, cotton candy pink willow trees, and plentiful bloobies (we like bloobies).

It’s not long after you score a jetpack (and understandably conclude that you would like to find a way to transport yourself into this perfect universe) that you find out that the sunshine, the flowers, the bloobies are all a product of that little sprite’s antidepressant medication. Without his 1000 mg’s of ‘appy, the world is a very dark one indeed.

Don’t worry—there’s no social commentary on prescription meds here. Just a horrible nightmare land replete with corpses of balding businessmen (is that what you see too?).

Play Appy 1000 mg to marvel at what can come from a single weekend and a single prompt. Play Appy 1000 mg if you enjoy or long for days of purposeful pixilation. And play Appy 1000 mg if you for occasionally enjoy feeling a tad un’appy.

Play Appy 1000 mg here.

Nevermore 3

Adam Westerman is responsible for the Nevermore series, a peaceful trio of platforming games that make up for their lack of plot with heaps and heaps of charm. 

You travel through Nevermore 3 as Olek, a little boymonster seeking treasure for his downtrodden town. Discovering Lapidarian Heights, a village inhabited solely by talking anteaters, is far more calming than taxing. Moving from one frame to the next and from one landscape to the next is always a treat—each new setting and color palette is lovelier than the last. And falling down bottomless pits isn’t punished with virtual death—instead, you find yourself in a new environment, sometimes with a fancy new hat (the best longstanding trend in indie platforming games).

The game forces you to think of the 2D graphics as a 3D environment—backtracking to see if you can jump on top of the rock that, moments before, you walked straight through. Still, the puzzles aren’t difficult to solve, and the timing is not impossible to pull off. Nevermore 3 is more of a calming Sunday morning experience than a Dew-fueled midnight carpal tunnel inducer. Or, as Westerman puts it on his portfolio site, “alpha males don’t like Nevermore, but that's okay, I didn't make it for them.”

Play Nevermore 3 here.

PROCLAMATION!

21 children's book artists and writers have made a PROCLAMATION.

They believe that a picture book should be "fresh, honest, piquant, and beautiful." They also believe "good design fosters good reading." They condemn "glossy paper as default." We agree. Though the Proclamation was launched on October 21, 2011, we haven't been able to forget it. It makes us love the list of seriously talented artists all the more. We certainly believe in them.

One of the reasons we were eager to take on the idea of a Press was because we at Paper Darts believe that illustration is a dearly missed component in the world of adult literature. Four of the artists from this list have made a memorable mark on the adult world of illustration. Sophie Blackall, Carson Ellis, Jon Klassen, and Christian Robinson are doing remarkable things, and we want to make sure you know about it.

1. Sophie Blackall

(Remember her? She was our featured artist for October)

Blackall has illustrated over 20 books for children, and recently published her first book for adults, Missed Connections: Love Lost & Found. Blackall's editorial illustrations have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Town & Country, the Washington Post, and many others. Once inside her world of Missed Connections you'll realize exactly how much imagination and possibility the adult world of illustration and literature is missing.

More Sophie: Don't miss this INKSIE interview with Blackall on her process.

2. Carson Ellis

Not only has Carson Ellis provided artwork for bestselling children's books, she is also the illustrator-in-residence for the band The Decemberists. Every band should have an illustrator-in-residence, but few illustrators could match the wonderful work of Carson Ellis.

Source: carsonellis.com via cathy on Pinterest

Source: designsponge.com via Madi on Pinterest

More Carson: Read this 2009 interview at Paste Magazine where Carson Ellis discusses what it is like to work with The Decemberists.

3. John Klassen

John Klassen (Burst of Beaden) is a master of color and line, but it is his impeccable attention to detail that has defined his career as an animator and illustrator. As the concept illustrator for the film Coraline, Klassen was integral in giving the setting its beautiful and haunting soul. 

 

Source: google.com via Meghan on Pinterest

More Jon Klassen: Read this lovely interview at IllustrationMundo to see where he finds inspiration

4. Christian Robinson

On his blog profile, Christian Robinson states, "I love making things. Simplicity is my friend. Love & Happiness are my goals." His cheerful and sparse illustrations are perfectly summarized by this statement. Beyond his fabulous work as an illustrator of children's books, Robinson has regularly worked with McSweeney's (no surprise there). His blog is delightful — do not miss it!

Here are a few posters he made for the movie Precious:

More Christian: See this beautiful book he illustrated, Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide
for Teens

Get In: a behind the scenes look at the making of a book promo

Do you ever feel shitty? Not like, "Cough, cough, sneeze, sneeze, oh I feel like I'm riding a toboggan of razors straight into hell," but rather like you're having a crummy day? 

Yeah, me too, and the same probably goes for a lot of other people, too, so don't worry, we're all sometimes weeping in the face of existence. 

You know what helps when you feel that way? Being surrounded by a group of people who are really awesome and talented. 

Illustration by and left hand of Anne UlkuWhen you feel like a lame-o, just squeeze yourself in between the likes of Maggie Ryan Sandford and John Munson, and everything'll be A-OK. 

What if you aren't in a position to hang out all afternoon with Eric Vrooman and Steve Marsh? Oh, well then just watch the Get In If You Want To Live book promo video, which features 17 of Minneapolis' most awesome people each reading one line of John Jodzio's hilarious story "Hookers in My Neighborhood Really Love My Chili."

To be honest, the making of the Get In If You Want To Live promo video was rather uneventful and pretty easy, save for a long wait due to some technical difficulties, and the fact that the day was incredibly hot for early October. Finding people to be in the video wasn't even troublesome, because Minneapolis is super down to party like that. Everyone just hung out, had a couple beers, some snacks, and enjoyed a nice plastic cup of champagne when the whole thing was done. The project, which turned into a local star studded event, was a great way to spend the afternoon. The video, filmed at Hotbed Studios (home of Freeky Deeky) and assembled by Ben Thompson at Rapid Water Media, turned out to be totally amazing in all it's highly defined glory. What great way to spend 1:58 seconds...or 3:58 seconds if you watch it twice in a row (which I recommend).

The Hookers In My Neighborhood Really Love My Chili from Paper Darts Press on Vimeo.

Creativity naps, bro.

Have you ever found yourself on the brink of sleep, your mind running and jumping wildly like Mario trapped in an infinite plane of free-association? Like, maybe you’re thinking about apples before you drift off to sleep, and suddenly, you have this idea about how perception is just like cutting an apple in half - slice it vertically, and it yields a radically different pattern of visible seeds than a horizontal cut. It seems perfectly sensible in your estranged state. Maybe you even write it down before you’re fully awake. And then you get up, drink your morning coffee, pick up your notebook and read “Apples are sliced perception,” and you think, “What kind of bullshit is this?”

Most people don’t think twice about the strange places their thoughts go in the haze of sleep. Everyone has crazy dreams. Surely they don’t mean anything. But a few famous thinkers believed that the sleeping mind was the ultimate gateway to creativity, and the best waking minds were those well acquainted with their sleeping counterparts.

Thomas Edison used to take one second naps, what he called “twilight dreaming,” in order to open his mind and come up with solutions to his daily quandaries. In order to limit his sleeping time to one second, he would grab a hand full of ball bearings and sit back in a comfortable chair, resting his arm so that his hand was extended over the hard floor beneath him. Then, as soon as he drifted off, his hand would relax and the clattering ball bearings would wake him up. In the brief moment before the ball bearings hit the floor, he claimed he could dream up some of his best ideas.

How did Edison actually make sense of the disparate ideas that are unleashed in sleep? Well, probably the most useful part of his technique is that he stopped actively trying to solve his problem. By drifting off to sleep, he stopped demanding results from his mind altogether, letting the product of thousands and thousands of years of cognitive evolution roam free without trying to bottle neck his mental capacity into a single task.

Sometimes when you stop thinking about thinking, your mind does things you didn’t know you were capable of. A 2003 German study illuminated this idea. The study gave subjects what is called a remote associate test, which was developed in 1962 to test creativity. In this test, subjects are shown three words, and they’re asked to provide a fourth word that is associated with the first three. For instance: law, birthday, swim. The fourth word would be suit. Or, for sun, back and television, the fourth word is set.

But now and then they’d slip in three words that shared no association. And what they discovered is that their subjects could detect whether or not a triad of words had a fourth word in common before they’d even solved the test. They were able to sense the presence of a solution, or the lack of one, before wasting their time trying to find an answer that wasn’t there.

Similarly, Edison must have understood that his unconscious mind was capable of saving himself a lot of fruitless effort. Like Shakespeare before him, he demonstrated that he effortlessly understood what social scientists would arduously discover many years later with PhDs and government grants.

 
If your creative well is dried up and you’re looking for a new source of inspiration, give the one second nap a try. Let me know how it works out. And if you come up with anything profitable, please consider adding me to your will.

Your Shiny Holiday Shoppin' Guide

I, Holly Harrison, have a December birthday, a “seasonal” name, and a pin somewhere that says Happy Hollydays. Basically, I was born to do this.

I like to cast a wide net in composing a gift guide, so instead of delivering an avalanche of individual items, I will recommend a few shops/sites that you and people on your list oughtta fancy. After all, browsing is half the fun. If you don’t find what you're looking for here, I forgive you.

826 Valencia, Pirate Supply Store

I had long since had my fill of pirates by the time I stumbled across 826 Valencia. This shop sucked me back in with its clever design and hilarious product descriptions, and a look behind the About page sold me. 

826 Valencia and the other seven 826 chapters nationwide offer a variety of inventive programs that provide students, ages 6-18, with opportunities to explore their creativity and improve their writing skills. If pirates aren’t your thing, try Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co., The Museum of Unnatural History, or one of the other stores.

Pictured above:
1. Sea Salt and Sea Pepper, $6
2. Sixteenth Century Replica Playing Cards, $14
3. Compensation for Missing Limbs Poster, $20

Studio on Fire

Studio on Fire is a Minneapolis-based design and print studio that has been in the business of making beautiful things for twelve years. They have an endlessly impressive portfolio of stationary, invitations, and more, but if you’re not in the market for custom throwing star business cards (though you are, in your heart), check out their store.

Don’t miss:
1. Birds of Sadness Poster (Chinese Proverb), $40
2. 2012 Desk Calendar (with Paper Darts Contributors Tuesday Bassen and Missy Austin), $30
3. Wild Air Poster (Ralph Waldo Emerson Quote), $40

Fab.com

If you aren’t registered on Fab.com, do it now. It’s free and—warning—a little addictive. There are new sales on quality designer products daily, getting you up 70% off retail. And “designer” doesn’t necessarily mean “expensive”—Fab features more kickass $10 items than they do $1,000 items.  The products for sale range from shower curtains to jewelry, flash drives to bicycles, and more.

I only have one bad thing to say about Fab: their shipping time is abysmal. However, all items marked with a red gift icon are guaranteed to deliver by December 23, or they’ll overnight a substitute product or refund the entire amount of your order, plus $25 in Fab.com credit. Details.

A preview (from their ongoing 100+ Best Gifts Under $100 Pop-Up Shop):
1. M Is for Modernist Flash Cards, $15
2. Plumen Light Bulb Set of Four, $98
3. Armed Notebook Set of Three, $45

Physical Fiction

Pixel art and letterpress shouldn’t have to exist separately. Luckily, Physical Fiction has solved that. Samuel Cox and Justin LaRosa built a letterpress from LEGOs and now churn out inexpensive limited edition prints that are perfect conversation pieces. Seriously—letterpress prints made with LEGOs!

Get a load of:
1. The Cogitator, $25
2. The Indigotic, $15
3. Baddies, $50 

ClickforArt

ClickforArt provides an alternative to the classic art collection. Their limited edition products come from over fifty internationally acclaimed artists and studios and are sold with Certificates of Authenticity. More important than the products’ legitimacy, though, is their awesomeness. There’s something for everyone at ClickforArt, be they street art enthusiasts, traditional fine art purists, or people who don't realize they like art just yet.

Check out:
1. INSA Graffiti Fetish Cup and Saucer, $61
2. Ruben Ireland Times of Need Pillow, $61 
3. Vault 49 Eye Mask, $21 

Get In If You Want To Live

 

Paper Darts’ first book is a collection of nineteen short stories by John Jodzio with accompanying illustrations by some of the best artists in the galaxy. That means it’s both a great read and a sexy piece for your coffee table.

Ours isn’t the only gift guide where you’ll find Get In If You Want To Live—it was also featured on vita.mn’s 2011 holiday gift guide. 

Buy the book for $15.

30-50% OFF: Black Friday Sale

PAPER DARTS SAVES THE HOLIDAYS

30% OFF

Get In IF You Want To Live: Now $10.50 (normally $15.00) BUY NOW

Paper Darts Magazine Volume Three: Now $8.40 (normally $12.00) BUY NOW

Paper Darts Magazine Volume Two: Now $8.40 (normally $12.00) BUY NOW

 

50% OFF

Paper Darts Magazine Volume Three--Digital: Now $2.00 (normally $4.00) BUY NOW

Paper Darts Magazine Volume Two--Digital: Now $2.00 (normally $4.00) BUY NOW

Looking for a stocking stuffer to shock your grandma out of her eggnog coma but too cheap to spring for that nude Zumba class she's always wanted? Lucky for you Paper Darts is a friend to tightwads, cheapskates, penny pinchers, dweebies, and dickheads everywhere this holiday season. We're offering Get In If You Want To Live at the insanely reduced price of $10.50. We love a good deal almost as much as we love a well spiked 'nog, and we're pretty sure you and Grandma will too.

Old Time Audio

A few months ago I aired a small grievance about that Audible.com commercial, and mentioned that listening to audiobooks isn't as good as actually reading. While I still maintain that opinion, now that winter is here (at least in Minneapolis), the idea of getting all cozy and having a story read to me sounds just delightful. 

Of course, listening to an audiobook isn't always as charming as being read to by an elderly lady in front of a fireplace, all wrapped up in blankets and eating cookies. No, sometimes it can be downright awful. For instance, while there are other versions, read by more interesting people, the free LibriVox version of Great Expectations is depressingly stale. The worst part about this is how many students are probably listening to this version and thinking that the book is terrible when, in fact, it's really not (although how about that alternate ending). 

The perfect audiobook is one read (at least in part) by the author. (No fault to Dickens here, because clearly this would be impossible without a time machine and a little mind-blowing.) The author is the only one who truly knows what the words mean, knows the intention of each and every character (sort of, I mean, not all writers know why they do what they do, but that's the nature of psychology), and know when to inflect where no inflection was noted but they assumed it was inherent. Also, no pressure guys, that author must have an amazing voice.

Or, if that's impossible, or if the author has a ton of famous friends, in addition to pullable strings at places like This American Life, then said author should amass an amazing audiocast of the wildly hilarious and interesting.

If neither of those things is possible, then the author must write something terrifying enough to keep the listening pinned to their chair, unable to complete any other tasks while listening, and instill a deep-seated fear of sex games and handcuffs. (There's a "play sample" button. Probably NSFW, depending on where you work.)

Anyway, if you hate listening to audiobooks, but still want someone to tell you a story, you should definitely check out the Boundoff Short Story Podcast.

Let me know if there are any audiobooks I must hear!

who is matt ryan?

"Matt Ryan is so madly creative that it is downright intimidating. A master of wordplay and connoisseur of beastiality, butt cracks, and testes, this man is
--above all other things--
utterly unpredictable."

-Joey Goebal, author of The Anomalies and Commonwealth

Matt. Effing. Ryan.

Do you know who that is? Well, you should. Matt Ryan is an amazing writer, a seriously good dude, and, as you can see above, a connoisseur of beastiality, butt cracks, and testes. If that doesn't make you want to meet him then you maybe need a personality transplant, like, stat.

Tomorrow night from 7-10 at Moto-i in uptown Minneapolis, Paper Darts is hosting a launch party for the release of Matt Ryan's debut book, Read This or You're Dead to Me: Prose Poems, Flash Fictions, Words, which was just published by Hopewell Publications in October.

Featuring readings by Paper Darts contributor Matt Mauch, Vita.mn Summer Story contest runner-up Leah Drillias, and of course, Mr. Matt Ryan himself, this event is not for the stuffy, faint of heart, or those weird people that dislike butt jokes.

And, since you know we always like to throw a bangin party with some rad beats, Bethany Larson and the Bees Knees, who respected music critic Chris Riemenschneider called "one of the Twin Cities' best kept secrets" will be playing some live tunes for your heart-plucking pleasure.

What: Release party for Read This or You're Dead to Me: Prose Poems, Flash Fictions, Words.

Where: Moto-i Big Boy Room on the 2nd floor (2940 Lyndale Ave S)

Who: Matt Ryan, hosted by Paper Darts

When: Thursday, November 17th 7-10 pm

Wanna know more about the man before you commit to drink alongside him? Check out the official Matt Ryan website and RSVP to the Facebook event.