New Article Up

My article on eco-friendly sex toys, Green: In Search of the Eco-Friendly Dildo, is up at Blackheart Magazine. Drop in. Say hi. Leave a comment. Wear a bucket on your head. Whatever.

Bits.

First review for LipStik Indie sent. Expect it, and a staff profile, up Monday. My dildo article should be up Friday at Blackheart Magazine.

In other news, last night I whipped up a quick piece about the oft-declared death of the novel for one of them pay-per-click sites. The article took me about twenty minutes to write, so it's no skin off my back if this turns out to be an epic bomb. It's an experiment, like.

I'm also probably starting a sister blog to this, if I have the time and inclination, wherein I catalogue, and review, whatever trashy pulp paperbacks come my way. It would be a labor of love.

Finally, I electrocuted myself the other day. Nothing serious, just a weird twitching sensation. I need a new extension cord.

Found

Book-finding is a pleasure. When something catches your eye for no reason at a used bookstore, or you find a weird volume underneath a park bench, it's easy to feel like whatever you've found was placed there for you. I think we're all closet solipsists like that.

A few months ago I found an old, tattered tome, a musty beast the size of a bible, for less than two bucks outside BMV. Who knows why I noticed it. The cover's the kind of minimalist ugly that people probably liked a century ago. This one has a crude drawing of a hand with a spiderweb of lines charted along the palm. Tell me this title isn't gorgeous: Laws of Scientific Hand Reading. Published in Burma, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, 1962. Sometimes I pick it up and read a few pages. I find it difficult to describe the writing itself, a blend of science and superstition with echoes of some personal narrative in it. The kind of book, in other words, that's made to inspire stories. I hold it dear.

The other day a book of similar portent turned up, an old shorthand workbook, hard cover, for women in the 50s. Someone pasted a little pink sheet with their name on the inside cover. All of the exercises in it had been completed by such an expert hand that I first mistook the cursive for some kind of kooky font.

Someone else saw the book and wanted it.

Breaks your heart when they're prettier than you and beat you to the punch.

Lipstik Indie

Looks like I'll be doing regular book reviews for Lipstik Indie. From the front page: LipStik Indie Reviews is all about Indie Artists. If you are a singer, band, spoken word artist, comic book creator, writer (from zines to novels), have an ezine or online DIY store, you should be reviewed by us. We’ve all been in your shoes and know it is important for the world to know about you.

Birthday

I usually get one or two really fantastic cards for my birthday. The one that's held a special place in my heart to this point has a black and white picture of two kids sitting on a dock in their bathing suits, staring out onto a lake. The caption reads, "It's your birthday. Sit back. Relax. Wear a bucket on your head. Whatever."

For me, the card has this really palatable quasi-taoist philosophy behind it, like, chill out buddy, accept your idiosyncrasies (of which I have many). Wear that bucket on your head and don't let anyone make you feel bad about it.

This year the bucket-head card has competition. The card is white, unadorned. No images on the outside, just the following statement, in plain bold helvetica:

A disturbing birthday greeting card that shows a black and white photographic image of a semi-nude elderly lady. She is standing in a non-provocative pose, revealing her breasts.

Inside the card is nothing (except for the card giver's message, which is itself quite glorious and signed 'the Squid').

Interview

Xenith Interviews Andrew

An interview with me is up at the nifty webzine Xenith. I'm kind of flattered and totally happy with how the whole thing went down. Sometime in the future I'll probably post the whole damn thing on here, but not for awhile.

Fisticuffs

Waaaah. I should be finishing this article for tomorrow's deadline. Instead I'm rubbing my cat's belly, listening to instrumental jazz and playing Street Fighter EX plus Alpha (Capcom's sad attempt at Tekken style 3D). The entire scene looks like this:




*note: this is a random internet cat culled from google image. I in no way endorse cat boxing or any other forms of unregulated feline pugilism.

Fiddlehead

The summer issue of The Fiddlehead is out and contains my story, "Customer X." Information below.

Contents, No.240


Editorial

5 Mark Anthony Jarman: Dark Was the Night, Bright Was the Diamond

Fiction

6 Alice Petersen: Among the Trees
13 Rebecca Rosenblum: ContEd
27 Rebecca Rosenblum: Tech Support
41 Richard Cumyn: The Goddess Throws Down
49 Hazel Lyder: Grasping History
56 Jeff Park: A Boat in Still Water
71 Jeff Park: Back to Disney
81 Paul Martone: Homecoming
92 Lori Hahnel: Excerpt from Love Minus Zero
96 Elisabeth de Mariaffi: Ajaccio Belonged to the Genoese
103 J.M. Villaverde: The Spanish Hour
118 Stephanie Austin: "The Sink in Here Is Always Wet"
127 Hugh Graham: Klenau's Advance
137 Andrew MacDonald: "Customer X"
144 Jennifer Stone: Knowing
151 Steven Heighton: Shared Room On Union



Reviews

164 Katia Grubisic: Mating Rituals of Homo Sapiens Newfoundlandsis
The Darren Effect, Libby Creelman
166 Pat Leech: Life's Greatest Questions: The Enigmas of Human Emotion
The Withdrawal Method, Pasha Malla
168 Shane Neilson: Not a Traditional Coming-of-Age Story
Skin Room, Sara Tilley
171 Ian Colford: Movie Magic
Silver Salts, Mark Blagrave
173 Richard Cumyn: The Compleat Male
Quintet, Douglas Arthur Brown
The Order of Good Cheer, Bill Gaston
176 Edward O'Connor: His Debate with Pain
The Push & The Pull, Darryl Whetter





Notes on Contributors
179

Cover
Suzanne Hill:
Markers, 1 of 3

Antique Debauchery Aids

Doing a bit of research for the eco-friendly sex toy article I'm working on and want to state for the record that dildos have a long, illustrious (and illustrated) history. Like this antique vibrating [pleasure] chair, manufactured by (I shit you not) Kellogg of cereal fame. Well. Have fun eating your Corn Flakes tomorrow morning.

echolocation

I'm not on staff or anything, but I know they put together a good publication. Submit now.

Link: http://www.echolocation.ca

We are now accepting submissions for Issue 9 of Echolocation! DEADLINE IS SEPTEMBER 30,
2009.

We are accepting:

Fiction, max. 3000 words
Creative Nonfiction, max. 3000 words
Poetry, up to 10 poems
Visual art, submitted in .tif format

We are accepting submissions from students, faculty, or alumni of the University of
Toronto, as well as writers and artists from outside the University.

Please email your submissions in a Word document to:

echolocation.utoronto@gmail.com.

Feel free to contact us regarding any writing that falls outside of the guidelines
stated above. We're willing to be a little flexible if you've got something good.

We can't wait to see your email in our inbox! Look forward to announcements about future
Echolocation events!



Thanks in advance for your consideration,

Catastrophe via Flower Boquet

Think twice before dropping a bouqet from an airplane at your next wedding.

Be afraid.

According to this article from the BBC, cats manipulate their human owners into providing food and attention by shifting the pitch and tone of their purrs. The wily little bastards aurally mime the cry of infants, flicking on whatever primordial ma/paternal protect-the-kids switch is programmed into our brains. So when Beaker, my neurotic, corpulent little tuxedo cat wakes me up at four in the morning to get fed, it's that nutso purr that stops me from ignoring it.

Insidious. 

Daily XY / Feline

Just got a contract for a short freelance piece I did for Daily XY: The Magazine for Urban Men. It features my three favourite regular literary readings in the city, The Pivot Reading Series, TINARS, and Art Bar. I'm not sure how I'll spend the cash. Probably on booze. And cat food. Which reminds me - my cats look like this:

George

Beaker K. Beakerton (nee Meredith)

The indignities the cute must suffer. . . 

ducks, attractions, montreal.

It's looking like my review of Oberon's latest edition of Coming Attractions 08 will appear in the next ish of Broken Pencil. Word has it, anyway.

Book details:

Coming Attractions 08 Edited by Mark Anthony Jarman Rebecca

Rosenblum writes offbeat, innovative stories that tend to show up in the Journey Prize anthology. Her characters come from the brittle world of ex-urban strip malls. In one story she features an Edmonton Oilers toque, but there are many other reasons to like her work. Daniel Griffin has also appeared in the Journey Prize anthology. He’s interested in gender roles and writes about fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters. Alice Petersen was a joy to discover. She writes compelling, painterly stories in assured, sophisticated prose. This book is much the richer for her appearance in it.

8.5 by 5.5 by 120 pages, cover from a bestiary, c. 1500 $18.95 (paper) ISBN 978 0 7780 1322 8 $38.95 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 7780 1321 1

Next up: some as-yet-unwritten-book-related writing for Matrix Magazine and an article on environmentally friendly sex toys for Blackheart Magazine. Coincidentally, both are Montreal-based.

Finally, this hot piece of comic ass was in the paper today and sums up the ebbs and flows of my writing process to a T:





xo andy

Birds

You: go read Anne Lamott. Now. She's good. Powell's dot com notes that she "writes cleaner than she lived," one of the snazziest things I've ever heard someone say about a writer. Her memoir Operating Instructions was one of a handful of books from the late 20th century on the Modern Library's 100 Best Nonfiction Books.

It's heartbreaking and hilarious and sort of grimy. 

On the chopping block for me: a couple book reviews and pecking at the pile of papers I'm tentatively calling my thesis. 

andy

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