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emmer effer
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volume 4, issue i, 4.21.09
miles cimerman
"We met sporadically, in a hotel room, in a bar, at an airport, and she would recount to me all that she had encountered. All that is left are the stories she told me. An oral tradition continues, to this day. And, appropriate to tradition, I am recounting to you these stories filtered through my own memory, imagination, and obsessions."
luther blissett
"I. I think about walking and meeting people who don’t want to talk to me. Who. Who stop me and ask me questions about nothing. In a park or adjacent to a park. Someone sitting on a bench while kids fidget in school where teachers talk about nothing. "
monty cantsin
"Many humans pass information to each other through ‘conversation’. Sometimes this information is false. Sometimes it is true. I have a dog. More specifically an eritrean shepherd. I am left handed. I have a tattoo on my finger that reads ‘quixote’. This passing of information occurs even when it is unnecessary."
rose selavy
"This is what they describe to you while the Martinique revolution plucks the roots of her lightly moistened wheat fields. There is a pause and then it continues. She harbors a sleight predilection for plaster. Three times the weight of heavy. Horn made of Punjabi silk. Enough a) to make one festoon."
intro:
Over the last several months we have been deluged with questions about when we could expect the return of Write This. It is with only a little regret I can announce that time has come. You should know this: It was no small feat to assemble the brain trust (as it were) of the pretend genius cabal around a common purpose to provide our fans with a consistent schedule of new issues this coming year. But we have decided to put our egos aside and forget the infighting that drove us apart and sadly contributed to one suicide. (We salute our former editor Suzie Blankenhoff and remember her fondly. God speed, Suzie).
A bittersweet moment, my own misgivings of restarting this project might be best described by my AA counselor when he said, albeit in another context, "just think of the new horizons you'll discover in simply being able to remember things". This, indeed, might be the only introduction I've ever written in perfect clarity. Our restart premier issue contains four stories of the appropriately trivial and insane - the usual potent mix of our ethanol. It is what you have come to expect (we know) and, it seems, we're not strong enough to disappoint. In somewhat less than perfect clarity were these selections apparently written.
In our first offering, the narrator, Miles, clearly a bored hipster, whose ennui- and other French sounding things - find expression in some netherworld called, conveniently, America. A Catalogue of 21st Century Monsters tells the story of a comically disturbed Naomi Grace, a notorious smirker - who is anything but mad. Anything. Over the span of several years Miles peculiarly continues to accept phone calls from and agree to meetings with Naomi. Follow as those two meander listlessly through the years dealing with the recurrence of a collective sort of static (or 'Static' if the narrator is to be believed) that wends through an atmospheric haze when suddenly... well, to be honest nothing happens suddenly but still... I predict you will enjoy the slow unwinding of a broken gray sidewalk leading to the inevitable empty field.
there is somewhere. I wouldn't presume to know. Somewhere in the story the word éphémère appears as if out of somewhere. I also don't presume to know what that means but my best guess is it has something to do with a ballerina forgetting her underwear. This appears to be written by a man but I think the narrator is a woman. This has confused me very much. I'm not really one for the subtle intricacies of art but my publisher tells me this is a very good story and I believe him because I need this job. Also, there is a you and an I in this story. You and I will have to speak for themselves, I suppose.
mumble mumble clearly has something to do with humans. I think it might be the musings of a drunk philosophy professor or possibly written by the bastard son of Noam Chomsky, the famous linguistics guy. Guy is a very interesting word. I'm not sure it appears in this story but I would only be a little bit surprised if it did. Needless to say there will be viewless windows and blowing curtains and closed paragraphs and I believe the story was written from prison.
Our final story is perfectly clear but slightly Nixonian. It's robotussin and cheese. Cheese that has been left out in the garden shed and confused for fertilizer. Yet, there is something here that acts as a good mental suppository and we would be surely amiss in not including the fine chromosome.
We are also introducing a new feature called Books We Have Not Read. The first book we have not read is War and Peace. We're confident you haven't read it as well so that you can gain the maximum benefit from our not reading it.
If I could be allowed one last personal note I would keep it to myself.
Bloog Mandrake
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fictitious non-fiction - issue 4.2
Opening Date: April 22nd
Closing Date: June 5th
Publication Date: June 21st
Summation: There are many ways to write a fictional story without writing a fictional story. Your mission is simple; send us any story you want about anything you want at any length you want (but we are human; don't make it too long). The only requirement: write that story in the style of a nonfiction piece. This can be a newspaper or magazine article, a short biography, a transcription of an interview, a book, music, or film review, an academic article, an encyclopedia entry, etc. Don't be lazy; Make us think it's real.
long live king ludd, the futurist! - issue 4.3
Opening Date: June 22nd
Closing Date: August 5th
Publication Date: August 21st
Summation: In the early 19th century, a group of British textile workers criticized the Industrial Revolution and the emerging relationship between man and technology, a relationship they felt put the technology before the man. On the other end of the Industrial Revolution, in the early 20th century, the Italian Futurists proclaimed their love for the new speed of the modern world. Finally, human technology had triumphed over nature, and they were proud of this triumph.
Today, as technological advancement progresses exponentially every day, humankind's relationship with the machines we build has grown even more complex. The ghosts of the Luddites and the Futurists live on; they have commingled, cohabited, and reproduced.
Write This represents this fusion but we ourselves cannot make sense of it. We need you! Send us your stories of the intricate, violent, beautiful, destructive and nasty relationship between man and machine. Send us your love songs and laments about those 21st machines.
ghost stories - issue 4.4
Opening Date: August 22nd
Closing Date: October 5th
Publication Date: October 21st
Summation: Filmmaker Jan Svankmajer stated, "Unless we again begin to tell fairy tales and ghost stories before going to sleep and recounting our dreams upon waking, nothing more is to be expected of our Western civilization."
Your mission is simple: the 21st century needs new ghost stories (we'll get to the fairy tales and dreams later). Abandoned those stuffy Victorian mansions and tired blanket cliches. Our century needs new tales of haunting. Scare us. Make us scream in ways we've never screamed before.
the blasphemy issue - issue 4.5
Opening Date: October 22nd
Closing Date: December 5th
Publication Date: December 21st
Summation: Fuck God. TBA
fuck this apocalypse - issue 4.6
Opening Date: December 22nd
Closing Date: February 5th
Publication Date: February 21st
Summation: Every generation thinks that they are living at the cusp of the apocalypse, and we are no different. But that apocalypse is so much more than the mundane end of the world. The word comes from a Greek word meaning the "unveiling" or "revelation." What could be sexier than an unveiling? What is fucking but a divine revelation? As Wikipedia (an always reliable source) states, the apocalypse might more accurately be thought of as, "the disclosure to certain privileged persons of something hidden from the majority of humankind." It is, thus, a revelation of the secret history or unspoken truth of the world, of existence, of the cosmos, or simply of humanity, or even more simply, of the naked human body.
We want to tell the story of the real apocalypse, the erotic apocalypse, and we want your help. Send us your stories of revelation, and hey, we wouldn't mind it if they happened to be apocalyptic in the more common, modern sense of the word as well. And remember, in honor of St. Valentine's Day, make it fucking hot!
disclaimer: write this content does not necessarily reflect the views of all write this contributors. happy flails.
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