Free Books!!!

Hey kids! Want a book? For free? How about the best book ever written in English? I'm speaking, of course, about Moby Dick.

Coyle and Sharpe

The best thing I've heard all day (in a recording).

"Let's just cut your head open. Why be bureaucratic about it?"

www.coyleandsharpe.com

Puddle Leaflets

Max Middle put out some poetry leaflets last year, and is continuing this year. Some of my visual work became his last Puddle leaflet of 2006, and for $10 you can have my leaflet and 7 others, or subscribe to his 2007 line-up for $15.

Borat

I finally saw Borat. Outstanding. I haven't seen a comedy as clever or one that takes so many risks for years and years and years. Kind of like Andy Kaufman meets Coyle and Sharpe. Whether you like the film or not, you've got to admire Sacha Baron Cohen's performance. This guy should win the Oscar for Best Actor this year.

In formal terms, the film is a very experimental work in some respects, in the way that it mixes documentary and fiction film techniques to present a pastiche-work which nonetheless develops along a somewhat conventional three-act structure. Also, the way that he avoids letting the subjects in on the joke is perhaps ethically unsound (I'm undecided) but nonetheless leads him into darker, more complex, and ultimately funnier territory than the usual nonsense that results from the "gotcha" setup.

The best of luck with your lawsuits in the New Year, Mr. Cohen!!

The Rare "Crack Spider"

This is awesome and informative:

Australian publication

Australia is being good to me. I published an article on George Bowering in an online magazine there in 2005, and just got word that Etchings wants to publish a short story of mine in a print magazine down under. With a UK publication in 2005 as well, and a few US publications last year, I am officially "international" in the most humble sense. So why won't anybody give me a grant?

New Year, New Stuff

I'm back in Calgary and excited about a lot of things. The first thing I'm excited about is going to sleep. The second thing I'm excited about is that Bookthug will be putting out my chapbook WOLVES (lone.ly). The third thing I'm excited about is that I have completed a rough draft of a book-length long poem and will revise/finish the manuscript this month. I am submitting it anonymously to the Snare Books contest so I won't talk about it here until after the results are in, in the interest of fairness, as it is a small Internet world. The fourth thing I'm excited about is that people are ordering chapbooks (see below) and you can too! The fifth thing I'm excited about is all the mail I will get tomorrow when my hold expires. The sixth thing I'm excited about is that I am delerious from sickness and soon will collapse. Oh, and the new Bond film is good too.