A Big Blue Dick: A Review of Clown Tear Junkies by Douglas Hackle

This is that painting by Munch, The Scream

Do you know that painting The Scream by Edvard Munch? Okay, now imagine that that character there in the foreground is real, and he’s called The Scream, and he doesn’t talk or make any noise at all, and he usually keeps his wavy hands next to his gaunt face unless he’s doing something else with them. And he hangs out with an immature, blue-collar jerk who takes him clubbing all the time, trying to pick up chicks. And the chicks all think the Scream’s friend is a loser, but that’s okay, because he’s got a pat response that puts them all in their place: he tells them they are 7s. Then goth chicks start to dig The Scream and he becomes a horror movie star, so the two part ways….

That’s pretty much what it’s like inside Douglas Hackle’s mind all the time.

And that’s pretty much the story The Scream, My Dog, part of Hackle’s collection Clown Tear Junkies. I spoilered the crap out of it, but you should still read it because it’s still good.

Camera zooming out for a moment, Clown Tear Junkies (WARNING: Contains zero clowns and/or circuspunk elements) is a collection of 27 very short stories. People like to use the term “absurd” to refer to this style of prose, and while some of it is absurd, Hackle’s style is much more nuanced. He draws equally from the wells of the existentially absurd turf mined by Kafka (see: Struggle of a Description); the playful, list-loving postmodernism of Barthelme; and obscure pop cultural references—Stiles from Teen Wolf makes an appearance alongside the chain-smoking Indonesian toddler of YouTube fame. What makes Hackle’s writing so much fun is his unpredictable wordplay and his juxtaposition of low brow fare and academic trivia. You’ll find quite a bit of recursive humor tying the stories together, not the least of which will be the intoxicating and addictive nature of clown tears (esp. when mixed with mime tears and mainlined—what a rush!). You’ll find yourself looking up words to see if they are in the real dictionary or at urbandictionary.com (yes, both chyme and chyle are for real). You’ll find yourself expecting the stories to be going in one direction; you’ll be surprised where they end up taking you.  

Now, there are a few moments when the stories just get downright silly, and there’s probably a story or two that doesn’t stack up to the rest of the collection. But 27 is a nice round number, and who are you to tell Hax to the Max to drop a story from his baby? I mean, these stories are like his children, and just because some of them are born with beards or flippers or lobster faces doesn’t mean you love them any less, right? Are you asking the man to pick his favorite child? What kind of a monster are you? Quit Sofie-ing his choice! When you do see one of these freak babies, do not make direct eye contact. Just keep your head down and push through to the next paragraph, which is bound to be creepily brilliant, like Crispin Glover playing Sherlock Holmes.

And there are a few moments where you think to yourself, “Is Douggie Hacksaw trying to tell me something?” It’s possible some of the stories actually have a meaning. Racism, homosexuality, intimacy, education, cosmology, music, art, life and death, puppets/poppets, chyme and chyle are all examined in varying degrees of insanity. At the end of the book, I learned that Strange House advertises within Rooster Republic books, and this seemed like a sort of conflict of interests, but nowadays networks advertise their shows on other networks, so whatever. It just makes it harder to remember which station the shows come on, but I have a TiVo, which doesn’t seem to get confused and can always figure out how to record the shows I tell it to.

I’d point out the highlights, but that’s almost the entire book. If I can only recommend three of these stories to strangers, I’d say that you, stranger, should start with The Perfect Popcorn: A Recipe, Fishing with Higginsworth Fig VII: A Tale of Denial, and Give Courtney Cute Anything She Wants.

The Scream, My Dog could really act as a sort of synecdoche here. Meaning, I could say, “You read The Scream, My Dog yet?” and you would understand that I meant, “Have you read Clown Tear Junkies by Dig Doug Hackensplatz yet?” We just have that kind of understanding of each other, don’t we, stranger?

Wait, forget it. Just read the whole damn book. We’re done here.

The Missing Edge by G. Arthur Brown (Random Title #2)

A girl sat in a park on a bench made from the rinds of fake plastic skeletons, which children had broken open to get at the gelatinous resin within. Recycle or die, the signs all said, but you can’t really do a lot with those rinds. And that’s why there were all these weird benches in the park.

She wasn’t thinking about the construction of the bench. It was comfortable enough that she could sit in peace and think about Eden. James Eden. He was quite a famous kid actor at the time. She had several of his pinups from the Tiger Beat Bopper magazines that she saved her lunch money to buy. Looking a bit like a skeleton herself after skipping lunch all week, she marveled over his image on the front of the new Kiddie Bat Hopscotch that she’d stolen from a local convenience store by stuffing it down her pants, filling out her mostly hollow pelvic bone.

James Eden has a pretty face, all the signs said. But she didn’t bother reading the signs anymore. She had glossy mags galore. Galores and galores of them. And they were all hers. She’d poked out the eyes of her eight sleeping sisters to be sure of it.

Horror took her when she finally turned to the centerfold. She saw his glistening, knobby preteen feet. She saw his hairless, nubile torso and his squiggly, flaccid pee-wee. She saw his pigeon chest… but she did not see his face. That edge of the page was torn away. Without his face, she realized, he was just a long pink worm, waiting to squirm against another body and shoot out his love tendril to impregnate. He was one of those dirty seed-spreaders that her mother had warned her about, before she’d cut out that filthy mother-tongue.  

“James Eden needs all his edges! I might as well eat lunch!” she said to several passersby, before throwing her magazine in the nearest receptacle and leaving the park forever. If you can’t enjoy a teen mag there, what the hell is the point of the park?

Copyright 2014 G. Arthur Brown
Artwork Remedios Varo

The Tree by Ray Fracalossy

The maple tree stood upon the hill.

Motionless, daunted, consumed in ambition, it remained certain that with sufficient effort it could uproot itself and walk away. "I am in need of change," it thought. "I will replant myself in the suburbs where I will make new friends, and become a home to creatures now unknown. I will spawn children and grandchildren, and when I eventually rot away, I shall be in the mist of a dense forest." The idea of looking proudly upon its numerous offspring made the mighty tree attempt a smile.

In the winter, he would become naked, and was unsure how trees in the suburbs concealed themselves from this embarrassment. Garments were obviously needed, and clothing implied the exchange of money.

Was there work for an ambitious tree? The post office? "That's steady employment, isn't it? But you have to be able to drive, which," thought the maple, "is a difficult thing to do for a giant such as myself." You can't drive with birds in the vehicle.

Perhaps the answer lay with the problem itself. Was there any possibility of making money by selling pictures of his wintered naked self online first, and securing clothing before jumping into his big move?

Men approached. The tree attempted to move, and found he was too securely rooted. Noises, blackness, unconsciousness. He awoke later in the form of a picnic table and chairs, on a deck also composed of his innards.

He had indeed found a new life in the suburbs.

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Ray Fracalossy is the author of Tale from the Vinegar Wasteland, and a frequent contributor to the New Absurdist whenever it is functional. All around good egg, not deviled in the least.

Copyright Ray Fracalossy
Artwork by Ruth Ruhnke

The Finding Smile by Shawn Misener

He was a smile. The rest of him was almost transparent, barely a glimmer of form, but his gaping grin shone so intensely that it provided a distraction from everything else missing.

My mother gave her all to convince him to be a politician. My sister begged on bleeding knees for him to give her head. I just needed somebody to help me find things.

I handed him the list of lost items. He quickly looked it over, then swallowed it whole with that magnificent, glowing mouth. “We'll look for your sense of humor first,” he said.

It took six days in the jungle until we finally had leads. He negotiated with birds so colorful they made crayons leap from cliffs. He threatened enormous snakes, and when they didn't cooperate he'd clench their jaws between his gleaming teeth and swing them around like weed whackers.

We finally stumbled upon the End of the Earth. A beautiful sight for sure, the red yolk of sun framing his levitating smile, bright upon brighter. Hovering closer, he whispered “Look in your pants. The secret to humor is nestled softly down there.”

So we began the frightful journey back home. By law I was required to go without my trousers or underwear. To refuse would invalidate the rediscovery of comedy. He took hold of my shaft and used it to point us toward the highway.

In this way he guided us out of the jungle and home to my wife, where I proceeded to make love to her with all kinds of sarcastic thrusts. Orgasmic laughter all around. “I'm sure glad you followed that smile,” she later sighed, sweat dripping from her chin to her clavicle.

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Shawn Misener lives in Michigan.  His chapbooks include Dry Humping a Fire Hydrant and In Your Face(book), and he edits the absurdist blogazine Clutching at Straws.

Copyright Shawn Misener
Artwork by Picasso 

Cactus Subconscious by Shawn Misener

I'm bouncing along the desert like a rubber ball, deftly avoiding cactus after angry cactus. My pants are soaked with scorpion juice.
      The voice in the sand: "If it has soul you must funk it."
      The field of geysers has turned to carbonation. A bubbling tribute to the three clouds suspended in the air. What does a cloud feel like when swallowed?
      Below, the army of Southwestern poets begins to gather. One by one they set up shop: Rusty typewriters, old booze, loose tobacco, and pissy attitudes. Flailing through the sky I see them as they skeptically measure me up.
      "He won't be up there for long," they croak, sharing nods and commiserating huffs. The clacking of atomic words explodes from their fingers. They blast away my abstractions with sex, drugs, and indie rock.
      "See you when you fall," they sing.
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Shawn Misener lives in Michigan.  His chapbooks include Dry Humping a Fire Hydrant and In Your Face(book), and he edits the absurdist blogazine Clutching at Straws.

Copyright Shawn Misener
Artwork by Carlo Carra

Make a Better Brody by G. Arthur Brown

In this canoe, adrift at sea, I do not feel truly secure from the bites of sharks. The Ocean of Shame is just half a channel away.

"Open boats be damned!" Shaking your fist at the canoe doesn't help, I can tell you with more assurance than I have that I will not be eaten by sharks. For a moment I think I see a huge sausage just beneath the surface of the briny deep. It is just a dead manatee. I poke at it with my spear and it bursts open, oozing decay that bubbles up and forms a foul smelling pool. The sea here is incredibly calm. I grab the locket that hangs around my neck and hold it tightly in my fist. "Veronica! Why did I ever leave thee?" I pose the question in a deliberately melodramatic fashion. In my mind I see her Victorianesque visage, not bothering to open locket and look at the portrait that has been emblazoned on my mind's eye.

An albatross squeals overhead. I convince myself he's lamenting Veronica's distance from here. She should have been in this canoe. I fall in love with the oozing corpse of the sea creature now floating well behind me. I name the canoe Later. I pat the leg, that appears to be attached to me, and I say, "They just don't make canoes like they used to. I bet you a shark could snap this thing in two. I saw that movie. I think Paul Newman would have made a better Brody." The albatross squeals her agreement. I sample the fine wine that is the sea. Blurriness ensues.

Copyright G. Arthur Brown
Artwork by Salvador Dali

The Green Room: 3rd Iteration of The Meta-fictional Juggling Troupe by R.A. Harris

The thing about virtuality is that it really isn't that different to normaluality. Oh sure, there's the dizzying array of lime green processes that have no meaning, and cut and slice and mate with and engulf one another in an attempt at, what they call, “affection”, but to any normalized observer it is clearly the murder and appropriation of energies that look a little tasty or might go well with the furniture in an alternative home. But aside from that slight divergence in superficial appearance, there really isn't much between the virtual processes that produce phenomena and the phenomena themselves, which is considerably less exciting news than many speculative theories on the nature of being and everything put forward in the past few centuries, but such is the nature of existence.

Tomlinson kicked a stone, only to discover it was a frog, and what's more, it was a frog that when placed just where it was prior to his kicking it, provided key structural support to the entirety of being. Red lights swam through murky water and yellow tape criss-crossed over every surface.

After a moment or two everything simply vanished.

Then it re-appeared as it was, with just a subtle difference, everything was now a slightly lighter green, even bordering on yellow in parts.

The parasitic logicians were gorging themselves on the logical foundation of the virtual reality support system. Beeps from hidden speakers and oscillators showing a fading heartbeat signaled that the world's heart was still kicking, or punching - it couldn't be certain given that it only had ghost limbs, and wasn't sure which way its up was. To what end, and exactly what kind of fluid, this heart still pumped was up for debate.

Tomlinson and the troupe must've twisted and folded into at least twelve thousand different species of Ideas, their limbs rotating and splitting and bending through hidden dimensions, before settling on their current forms. They still felt like jugglers, though more amateur than before. Tomlinson even had a badge on that said as much. Gavin had goat legs but instead of hooves he had waffles for feet. Eric didn't have any legs at all, but as he was particularly lazy this was not an issue and was in fact a rather moot point to bring up.

Tomlinson was a professional at heart (even though that was where the amateur badge had stuck) and so began a new routine by throwing the dragon and the two young souls in a conceptual manner towards Eric. Eric sat in a boiling tub of water, screaming about how he wasn't a witch, Eric was the witch. Then the bath was in Eric. Then Eric was in the bath again.

Still, the dragon and the two souls were in a flight that could have rivaled Jesus' ascension to Heaven it looked so darn good, heading towards Eric, who was ranting and raving in the bath full of now luke-warm water, now frozen solid, now evaporated, when Gavin, being blind as he was, walked right into the path of these mythic projectiles. They struck him on the forehead, bowling him over. He folded into origami pseudo-dimensions until he was one-dimensional, which was an achievement considering there were no dimensions for his one dimension to exist in.

Tomlinson became Gavin. It wasn't a choice on his part, but given the circumstance, he wasn't about to complain. Gavin had a far better body anyway. The new combined being felt like his name was Tomgavlinson.

The three juggled objects became one, became a soccer ball, became a hot potato, became Tomgavlinson's own stupid sense of self. He bicycled kicked the conceptual iteration of his own stupid sense of self over his head towards and away from Eric in an impossible movement. It spread into a triptych piece of art that critics would refer to as “a shoddy use of imagination” and then unanimously slam as a feeble attempt at “weird for the sake of... well it's not even apparent what the point is, but the green is giving me a headache”. Thankfully, the shitty art then de-materialised just as Eric reached to catch it. His hands had become black-holes again.

“Eric,” Tomgavlinson mumbled through a mouth hidden somewhere under a roll of fat that grew around his face like a bubbling tumor, “Didn't I tell you to get that checked out?”

Eric blushed a deep blue. Then he started screaming about which witch would eat his sandwich. Tomgavlinson squashed a logician beneath an Idea of a toaster and a smattering of logic  caused him to diverge into Tomgav and Lininson. At least there were two of them again, they both thought, though not in unison, that would just be daft.



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R. A. Harris still lives in England, a merry land made up inside his head. He writes bizarre fiction and some of it gets published. Go here: www.leakylibido.wordpress.com to see some of his famous flash work.

Copyright 2013 R.A. Harris 

Artwork Giorgio de Chirico 

Funereal Disease by G. Arthur Brown

I felt embarrassed to be at my own funeral. Time travel created these sorts of faux pas. I had trimmed my beard earlier in the day, from my reference point, or many years in the past. But I still felt out of place.

The mortician, his three strands of hair plastered to his scalp, gazed at the body in the open casket, shaking his head. “I can’t get the bones to stay in,” he kept saying by way of apology to everyone gathered. Most people ignored him, pushing forward to flamingo pink chairs. No one wanted to stand the whole time. If the awkward flapping of the carrion birds wasn’t enough, there were low parlor ceilings to contend with.

So they all huddled in, crouching if they could not find a seat. A man was forced to remove his ten gallon hat and a woman to undo her beehive hairdo. I noticed a crunching under my feet, as if someone had dropped pretzels everywhere, but the lighting was too dim to see. I regretted attending; time travel wasn’t cheap. Deliberately I crushed something under my heel. “Chicken bones,” said the homely lady in furs next to me with a wince.

“No, no. Bones of the deceased, I’m afraid,” the mortician said. “Just so many and so small, I couldn’t keep them all in the cada—the body. I’ll give everyone five dollars back at the door as you exit. I’m just so sorry.” But none of the guests seemed to care. I hunched over, grabbing for a bone. The one I snatched did look like a chicken bone with some dried up meat left on, though it was distinctly greenish.

“Our bones are green on the inside,” said a rugged gentleman in front of me. He handed me his business card, reading: In the Business of Crying. It listed twelve different email addresses. “Are you the deceased’s grandson?”

I’ll be forty-three years older when I pass. The attendants assumed I was a relative, but no one seemed to realize I had time traveled from the past, despite my name tag giving my true and full name. I did not answer, so he simply nodded with a sad smile, adding: “Glad we could both be inside him here, with the bones.”

I was very upset with the whole affair, and I hadn’t yet been to pay my own respects to myself. “I’ll travel back and get myself a better funeral,” I fumed.

The woman in furs turned to me and said, “Don’t waste your time. It won’t work.” Then I noticed the woman was actually me, a few years older, in disguise. It was not the look I was meant to sport.

“Instead, I shall simply die right now to save myself the embarrassment.” So I marched up front, pulled the future me from the casket and lay down in it. Everyone clapped as I forced myself to die there. Some of them were me, so they knew how much it meant to us.

Copyright 2010 G. Arthur Brown

Harvesting Brains Pastoral by Shawn Misener

The sky is red and violent and the skinny farmer digs up brains with his shovel.

      Pitching them from the earth they shriek in Morse code. A bawdy secretary languishes behind the farmer, translating the squealing gray matter and scratching her rectangular nose obsessively.

     As each rusted wheelbarrow fills with minds a donkey appears and slouches away with the load. "Fourteen thousand eight hundred and twenty seven" counts the secretary in whispers born under the prairie wind.

     Somewhere behind the far distant trees a monstrous fog horn bellows. Both the farmer and the secretary vanish in identical puffs of heavy dust, leaving behind brains strewn around like so much neglected cauliflower.

     A vacuous, slow moment.

     Then a new farmer appears, the atmosphere popping violently in his arrival, followed by another short-skirted secretary, her glasses askew and eyes cocked in confusion.

     The second shift begins when the farmer scoops his first brain. The sky reluctantly shades from maroon to a painful deep purple, the clouds wrench themselves into loose threatening coils, and the secretary bends an elven ear towards the multitudes of pleading encephalitic vegetables.


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Shawn Misener lives in Michigan.  His chapbooks include Dry Humping a Fire Hydrant and In Your Face(book), and he edits the absurdist blogazine Clutching at Straws.


Copyright Shawn Misener
Artwork by Leonora Carrington

The Seaman by Darrin Naill

When the only thing one has to fend off a swarm of moths is an arm broken off a lawn jockey (sans hanging lamp), it is best to swing fast and wide and round. Up and down motions usually end making a knot on the forehead (which is precisely what happened). The glancing blow causes staggering, which in turn allows the moths entrance into the small closet where, over time, a few of the items hanging in said closet will be damaged. Living in the closet, hunting down the dozen or so moths is the task of a mad-man. So, with water bottles and Chex mix in hand, the hunkering down began.

Not knowing what attracts moths (aside from the clothes already hanging in the closet), it is best to sit still and breathe little, match and candles in hand, and wait for the fluttering. And then it's simply a matter of match/candle/moth...poof!

If the telephone rings, it is not a good idea to panic, strike a match to see how to get out of the closet, inadvertently igniting a spilled oil lamp that was clumsily knocked over by the homeowner. It is also not a good idea to climb into the window of a dark brick rancher, chasing the moths that were to blame for ruining the old wool coat of the sailor admired by many (or perhaps just one) who died just a week before when a yard jockey fell upon his head while the sailor was bathing.

Also, do not try to fight fire with clothing. Naked, charred remains will be all that will be left.

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Darrin Naill. 70s born, father of 3, husband of 1. Eater of meats and cheeses. Hunter and Fisher; general killer. College degreed, yet employed at a bargain. Acquainted severally, friended fewly. Bourbon.

Copyright Darrin Naill
Artwork Leonora Carrington

Before the Last Object is Thrown by R.A. Harris

Tomlinson spun the ultra-pink neon bulb, the final piece of the puzzle, on his finger before tossing it into the mix. It flew after the other objects in a beautiful choreography that only a professional meta-fictional juggling troupe could achieve. Between Eric, Gavin and himself, they now juggled twelve emperor penguins, thirty laptops, tension, the human genome, an orange so moldy it was turquoise, an old Swiss lady, a rabid pregnant television set, a television executive with a gun, smaller versions of themselves juggling even smaller versions of themselves (ad infinitum), a mobile phone, a couple of young spirits, a fluorescent green dildo with a pot of honey flavored lube and the ultra-pink neon bulb. The only thing that was missing was a woman with flaming nipples.

Tomlinson was shocked when the turquoise orange metamorphosed into a miniature dragon. After consideration, he realised that this may well have been a full sized dragon as he hadn't actually seen one before. It wasn't such a surprise to him when its razor sharp wings tore a hole in reality, letting in a collective of parasitic logicians, as he always suspected his world to be made of flimsy material stitched together with frail premises. The logicians flew in like locust, latched onto the soft membrane of reality with terrifying ferocity and immediately began draining logic from its virtual metaphysical processes.

Eric got bored with juggling, which was at odds with his very raison d'être. But given that his entire consciousness would otherwise revolve around juggling, it came across as a development that gave a previously unfathomed depth to his character. It was probably caused by the case of Praxis Illogica brought about by the parasite logicians collected on the membrane of reality like so many ticks, rather than any intention on the part of a Creator-entity. He yawned immeasurably wide.

“When you open your mouth wide like that I can see a black hole where your soul should be,” Tomlinson told him. “Maybe you should get that checked out. You're not supposed to be able to see black holes.” He juggled the pink bulb towards Eric.

Eric stretched his mouth wider, trying to get a glimpse down his own throat. He took his eye off of the pink bulb and it sailed down his gullet. His interior burnt a brilliant neon pink as the sphere imploded into its own negative state just before passing through the black hole.

Once the dazzling light had dissipated Tomlinson risked another look down Eric's throat. “Would you look at that? The black hole's gone.” His voice echoed around Eric's gaping mouth. “But you, my friend, are soulless.” And then, without really knowing where it came from, he added, “Merely an empty vessel to facilitate a world of events far removed from the mundane reality we inhabit here.”

“I'm blind,” Gavin said as he groped around for the soft membrane of reality that held him in place. “It's all pink.”

Tomlinson couldn't help but think that their existence was a mere formality now. No longer able to really call the three of them a meta-fictional juggling troupe, he set about dismantling the dimensions that had been constructed to house their essence. A flat packed Tomlinson cursed it all to hell.

“All this cursing makes me want to go boil a witch,” said Eric.

Tomlinson briefly pondered on the implications of his thoughts being projected so that Eric could comment on them, but just shrugged it off as a glitch in the mechanisms guiding their world, most likely just another symptom of the ontological virus represented by the plague of logicians. He held the deconstructed dimensions out at arm's length because they stank like rotten egg. He pinched his nose with his other hand and hop-stepped over to the tear caused by the dragon, where he tossed them out into oblivion.

Without a structure, the soft membrane of reality cascaded over the troupe like a collapsing circus tent, little bubbles of paradox silently rose from the mess and then popped, spilling antithetical notions and conclusions into one another, making their enunciation redundant. Tomlinson and the others swirled around in eddy currents, transient pools of liquid similarity, before descending into the depths of irreal virtuality like waste down a plug hole.



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R. A. Harris lives in England, a merry land made up inside his head. He writes bizarre fiction and some of it gets published. Go here: www.leakylibido.wordpress.com to see some of his famous flash work.

Copyright 2013 R.A. Harris 

Robots Make Our Food by Shawn Misener

“This is where we suck the skin off the beasts,” remarks the General, pointing to a small white tube dangling from the ceiling. “We coat the mouthpiece with mushroom sauce, and as soon as they wrap their stinky bulbous lips around it... VROOOP! No more skin.”

He leads us over to an electrified holding pen, where several skinned beasts meander, bouncing off one another and yelping squeamishly. The General smiles and points to them with his bone cane. “These are the skinless sows. Watch what happens when I press this button.” He taps a tiny button with the cane and the floor releases, sending the beasts into the void with the force of a public restroom toilet. Rousing applause booms from speakers mounted on the fence.

“Thank you, thank you,” says the General, bowing.

The tiny pink woman touring with me pipes up, “Isn't it the truth, Herr General, that robots make our food? What do you say to that?”

“You bitch!” He sings, pounding the top of her bald head with his cane. “Where do you think you are? Afmenistan? Turkily? This is 'Merica! We invented robots.” Breathing deeply and adjusting his robes, he whistles. The entire facility rumbles upon the grand entrance of a metallic ball the size of a three-story Victorian. It saunters up next to us, and I feel compelled to hop the fence and join the beasts in their doom.

The General laughs. “This what happens when you roll all the robots into one! A Katamari! You guys want some dinner?”

Artist, Genius, Sorcerer by G. Arthur Brown

The cover of the text appeared to have droplets of water on it, so, using a napkin, I made an effort to wipe them away. I was shown to be a fool, for these were not water droplets at all, but merely an effect of the cover painting. I flipped through the internal notations, finding the artwork credited to one David Caldwell. A painting this convincingly three dimensional requires a considerable amount of skill. One of two conclusions would explain this:

A)    David Caldwell is a genius.

B)    David Caldwell is a sorcerer.

This is not an exclusionary disjunction, I decided. He might be both a genius and a sorcerer. But I was forced to consider that, although I did not know much of sorcery, it could be presumed that a work of three dimensional art is not an incredibly difficult thing to create by sorcery, so I deduced that if he were a genius, he was likely not also a sorcerer.

But upon formalizing this note I reconsider. As a hypothetical sorcerer operating in a society that does not readily acknowledge the existence of said black art, perhaps it would be ill-considered to commit acts which could only be accounted for by sorcery, thus giving up the game and revealing the true nature of his powers. It would then seem that an intelligent sorcerer may use his arcane abilities to produce three dimensional works of art that might otherwise be assumed to be created by non-sorcerer geniuses. If this is correct and he is a sorcerer, then he is likely a genius.

A conclusion would require further research.

His small terrier dog was harder to apprehend than I had presumed. Presumption has shown itself, once again, to be my undoing. In the process I was bitten numerous times. It becomes far more difficult to retain one’s composure when one is bleeding into the flowerbed of a well-known artist, possibly also genius and/or sorcerer. The prospect of climbing back over the fence was more and more daunting after each dog bite on either my hands or ankles. Surprisingly, the dog was able to lull me into a false sense of security in several instances, at which point I would bend over and try to snatch up the small creature. This is when he would occasion to bite my face.

The dog could be the familiar of a sorcerer. Conversely, it could be a rambunctious terrier dog attacking an invader of its home territory. It was, without a doubt, the most cunning animal I have ever encountered during my research. But could this be accounted for by mere innate animal intelligence? A conclusion would require further research.

Upon eating the dog’s heart, I was unable to come to a confident conclusion in the matter. It had taken considerable time to light Caldwell’s grill, and shortly after I had worked out the organs of the tiny beast, someone had alerted the police to my presence. In my head I am marking the case as open until I can complete the necessary investigation. As I fled the scene, I wondered if Caldwell also had a cat or a parrot or, possibly, a large lizard like an iguana. Hamsters and the like have such small innards that I have never found them useful in my scientific inquiries.


Copyright 2013 G. Arthur Brown

Where Babies Come From by G. Arthur Brown

I want to kill this baby, but I’m in the middle of making spaghetti sauce and I really feel the need to get it right this time. Earlier in the week I’d attempted spaghetti sauce, but the failure was so miserable that I pretended it was chili.

Another failed attempt could spell the end of my self-esteem. It’s been a hard couple months.

The baby’s mother doesn’t understand. She gets her sauces out of a can or a jar. She doesn’t think we need to kill the baby. I’ve explained it to her. She nods but then a few minutes later she asks, “Do we have to do this?”

The phone rings. I answer it. “Mr. Thusandso? The pictures of your child are ready.”

“I don’t recall taking photos to be developed.”

“Well, they are here. You should come get them.”

I hang up and tell the baby’s mother I need to run down to the photo lab. I explain how she must stir the sauce every fifteen seconds with the wooden spoon. She doesn’t want to do it. “You don’t want to do anything, do you?” I say. “Back in 5 minutes.”

The photo lab is operating out of the back of a Winnebago. I hadn’t noticed that before. I knock on the flimsy, aluminum door. It creeks open to reveal the startlingly aged faced of a female photo developer. “Come inside,” the old woman tells me. The chemicals have made her even more prune-like.

The interior is decorated like a palm reader was the prior occupant. The lamps have beaded fringe, the lighting is dim, there’s an icon of a saint with four hands, palms facing front. That kind of thing.

“Sit at the table,” she tells me, calling from the kitchen area. I sit. It’s a small, round, wooden table, like a fortune teller might use. She strides in, her shawl waving wildly about her. She tosses a packet of photos onto the table. “Seventy-five bucks,” she says.

I open the packet and examine the photos within. They are of a teen boy, his Bar Mitzah. From the looks of the clothes, this happened some time in the 1970s. “I have a daughter. She’s still an infant. And we are Roman Catholic.”

“Oh, some people are very picky,” she says. I feel uncomfortable not taking the photos. She has clearly gone to a lot of trouble, making a dark room in an RV bathroom sink. I hand her an eighty dollar bill. “Keep the change,” I say.

When I get back to the apartment I show the pictures to the baby’s mother. “Oh, this might be the future! Do we have to kill the baby?”

I explain again that the baby is a girl, but she shakes her head and rebuts, “What about the semen?”

I don’t know what to tell her. I had noticed something strange about the baby. It happened the day before. The baby was crying. The teardrops were too thick and cloudy to be normal tears. She was leaking seminal fluid, impregnating herself. They won’t let us spay her until she’s six months old.  I fear that she’ll birth a litter of subbabies, and I’ll have absolutely no time to make spaghetti sauce. And, on principle, we just can’t have that kind of thing going on in this day and age. Bisexualism is only suited to the invertebrates, a relatively well-known scientist told me once.

“She’s still a girl,” I say, but the baby’s mother doesn’t listen. “We are also not Jewish,” I point out. “These photos look like they are someone else’s past, not our future.”

The baby is crying. And I notice that the sauce is burning. The baby’s mother has been stirring the sauce every twenty to twenty-two seconds.

I huff. The day is not starting out how I envisioned it. Now the baby’s mother is crying.  She picks up the baby and shushes her. “Okay, okay,” I tell her. “We can kill the baby tomorrow.” 

Copyright 2013 G. Arthur Brown

The Long John Silver Vinegar Douche Abortion Attempt Situation by Jon Konrath

I skipped my 11:15 Introduction to Anal Bleaching class and went to Long John Silver’s to steal a bottle of malt vinegar as a potential douching solution. I saw something about its alleged prophylactic effects on an old episode of Quincy, or maybe the very special episode of Perry Mason where Raymond Burr got gang-raped by a group of transient railroad workers that drove a railroad spike through his head, Phinneas Gage-style.  It pays to go to a school that actually teaches science classes instead of one that offers associate’s degrees in Chicken McNugget Technology, so you don’t go through life getting all of your reproductive health knowledge from TV shows run into the ground during syndication by fringe UHF TV channels that can’t afford real programming. But it’s not like amalgamating together six different part-time food service and shit labor jobs is going to make the nut on Harvard tuition, so I’d have to scrape by on whatever I could glean from Matlock reruns and obsessive WebMD searches.

A voice mail told me she skipped town to drive nine states away and get an abortion before her “buy five get one free” card expired, but I figured I’d get the vinegar as a backup, in case she got lost on the way and blew all of my money on weed.  When I got to the fake fish store, I saw her twin sister Judy working the cash register, a pudgy, greasy-haired brunette with chronic halitosis, a Dr. Who infatuation and little love for the dude banging out her genetic duplicate.  There’s no way to ethically date twins, I thought.  If you fuck one, you cannot look at the other without thinking about sitting on her face.  Even if I suffered a traumatic brain injury, chemical lobotomy, or a snapped spine with full quad diagnosis, I’d still be thinking about my tongue in her asshole.  Her sister’s asshole.  Whatever.

“I hope you don’t try to steal any vinegar,” she said.  “I know Trudy thinks she can wash her hoohah with it and kill the babies.”

“Of course not,” I said.  “I want one of those ten shrimp gang bang platters.  And some vinegar of course.  And that red shit.  Not the ketchup, the chunky one.”

Staring down Judy in her stupid fake pirate smock only made me think about how to tell Trudy about the aliens.  I knew she wouldn’t believe me.  I wanted to ignore all of it, but now I could see backwards, forwards.  I knew she was out fucking an entire arena football team and spending my hard-earned abortion money on cheap skag and collectible Holly Hobby plates, but I couldn’t do anything about it.  I couldn’t tell her I knew she was going to do it, because then she would do it.  Time travel and women with behavioral problems don’t go together well.

I still couldn’t sleep, the kind of chronic insomnia that would cause a person to write an entire book of poor-selling absurdist fiction about demented nightmares and an inability to sleep, a horror I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy. The night before, as I drifted in and out of consciousness, I had recurring nightmares of being in a suicide pact with the pregnant probably-not-by-me girlfriend, and then blowing off my face with a shotgun and living, after she managed to Cobain herself with the same gun. But through some modern science miracle, they scooped out the kid and he lived, and I was forever stigmatized by this mangled Popeye face, plus being known as “the shotgun abortionist,” which would make an awesome death metal band name, but it’s not the kind of shit you want to come up every single time you try to meet a new fuck-buddy online.  And I couldn’t even revel in the pity-grief of the incident, because the girlfriend’s mom lost her hands in some kind of freak dishwasher explosion, and spent all her time one-upping my tragedy.  Plus the not-aborted kid grew up in foster care, and eventually became a late-night talk show host.  Wake up screaming.

“Number fuckin’ 17,” said Bubba, the guy at the counter.  He looked high on Robitussin, and had engine parts from an Evinrude outboard boat motor hanging from giant holes in his earlobes, the latest fashion with the Hot Topic crowd. I vaguely knew him, from all of the times I came in the store buying food and trying to talk to Judy, before I knew she wasn’t Trudy and the two of them were twins. “Hey man, you ever fuck a chick while watching Faces of Death?” he said.  “One time I’m at this whore’s apartment, some chick I met at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, and I’ve got three fingers in the pink, both thumbs in the stink, and my dick in her mouth while I’m watching that scene where those fuckin’ dudes are cracking open a monkey’s head and scooping out the brains.  I blew a load in her mouth and thought her head was going to explode like JFK’s skull in that fuckin’ Zoolander film.”

“Zapruder,” I said.

“Gezundheit.  Oh, you might not want to eat any of this.  Everyone on the morning shift fucked the bag of fry batter this morning. It probably took ten loads before we breaded all the fish this afternoon.”

Oh well, consider it a five dollar investment in intel, I told myself.  Besides, eating that shit was like putting sugar in your car’s gas tank, draining the oil, and then red-lining the engine for 45 minutes.  I don’t even think the government legally allows people to consume it anymore in states like California.

I pocketed the vinegar bottle, brought the food outside, and arranged it in a pyramid to signal the aliens.  These fuckers will never find me, I thought.  Then I saw a shift forward through the time colonnades, a 4th dimension view of that arena football team running train on my soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend.  I need to escape this world.  I don’t even care about the anal probe thing, just get it done already.

------

Jon Konrath writes absurdist fiction, and has published eight books, including Rumored to Exist, Fistful of Pizza, The Earworm Inception, and Sleep Has No Master. When he is not writing or creating an environment to foster dust mite reproduction in the form of collecting books, he takes things apart, tries to play bass, and spends too much time on wikipedia reading about obsolete technolog and farming methods of the 14th century. He can be found at http://rumored.com or on twitter at @jkonrath.

Copyright 2012 Jon Konrath 

 

The Much Delayed Ray Fracalossy Interview

One of my favorite writers, whom I stumbled upon almost accidentally at the (currently non-operational) New Absurdist, author of Tales from the Vinegar Wasteland (rereleased by LegumeMan ), Ray Fracalossy, allowed me to pester him with a few questions.  He answered these questions.  Then I decided to publish the whole thing, call it an interview and post it here on my blog.  Without further ado:

GAB: When did you start writing?

RF: I've dabbled with writing since high school, but never found my voice until I discovered the New Absurdist website around 2003. I actually discovered the site through a surrealist newsgroup.

GAB: Why do you write?

RF:I think I mostly write as therapy. I'm also not a writer who feels any need to mass produce. In fact, I'm of the opinion that most people only have a limited number of stories within them before they begin to repeat themselves. I think that's true with most art as well.

GAB: You have expressed to me previously that you think of yourself as an absurdist. In your mind how is absurdism different from other genres such as surrealism, irrealism, magical realism or Bizarro?

RF:I've heard all those terms tossed around. Modern absudism is virtually indistinguishable to surrealism and irrealism. I'm sure there may be subtle differences, but they're all contrived.

It comes down to a preference in labeling. Magical realism is a different beast, and I find that term a little confusing. From what I know, they share elements, but absurdist writing is much freer. That was my initial attraction to the genre. It can be very non-linear. There doesn't even need to be a plot, a definite beginning or ending or any strong characterization. There can be all those things, but it's not necessary.

Bizarro is just a catch phrase. A made up genre trying to tie all oddball writing together under one umbrella. So I guess all absurdist fiction is Bizarro, but not all Bizarro is absurdist. Again, lots of common elements. I'm not a big fan of the term. It implies certain things.  Bizarro seems to attract writers captivated by disturbing images. I think a lot of Bizarro authors would be writing horror if they didn't find that genre so over done. It's also very cultish and kitschy, tons of pop culture references. Very B-movie influenced. I think my main complaint with the genre is its disposition towards novels over short stories. I love short stories. There also tends to be a lack of childlike innocence concerning Bizarro. Often they appear to be shooting for shock value, or a gross out.

GAB: Which other absurdists are you reading?

RF: Daniil Kharms is a must. Other old schoolers I enjoy reading include Alexander Vvedensky and Eugene Ionesco. Barry Yourgrau is real good. His stories are always short and in the first person. Very dreamlike. Other good reads include Eric Chevillard and Valery Ronshin. Lewis Carroll ranks high. At the moment I tend to be reading more nonfiction. I've always preferred it.

GAB: What non-fiction in particular?

RF: Biographies, anything regarding altered states of consciousness, texts pertaining to the spiritual or paranormal.

GAB: Are there any Bizarro authors that you do particularly enjoy reading?

RF: D. Harlan Wilson, Kevin Donihe, Matt Revert, Bradley Sands, Gina Ranalli. (Although she isn't fond of the label either.) Again, my favorite stuff by them is their short stories. I'm not up on Bizarro. Not following it, I may be missing writers I would really enjoy. Christy Leigh Stewart is really good as well. You can find a bunch of her short stories online (http://christyleighstewart.com/). Very clever stuff. I'm also a fan of your writing.

GAB: Also, you've got a relatively unconventional view of psychopharmacology. Can you elaborate on your views of the subject and explain how this ties in with your overall worldview, view of the mind, writing as a therapy, etc.? 

RF: Wow, heavy stuff. Like a rather large portion of the population, I've had my own personal experiences. I'm neither for nor against dabbling with chemically altered states. It can indeed come with a price, but life is a series of gambles. Considering that the human population spends their sleeping hours in a hallucinatory state, and while awake experiences everything from memory flashbacks, daydreams, fantasies, and the countless hours we sit hypnotized by television and music, which is another very real altered state. People cry at movies. How weird is that? So dabbling in chemical realities is not really all that unnatural for mankind. It's the nature of the beast.

I often feel guilty being caught in the consumers web spending money buying books and music, material possessions, but I think we need it. We need the Internet. We need new experiences, new sounds, new thoughts, CONSTANTLY. I think that is the real purpose of life. Live, and send those experiences back to the source.

Regarding writing as therapy, it's often used in psychology. Hard to say its impact on me, as I'm restless, and tend to need a drink or something just to sit still and focus. Most of my writing is done late at night, or semi intoxicated.

GAB: I too love short stories and find it puzzling that in our fast-paced, instant gratification culture that novels far outsell short fiction collections. What's you theory about why this might be?

RF: I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's like certain movies. Lots of action, everything is spelled out. People don't want to think too much. So a novel paints everything out for them. But it's a lot more effort reading a novel. I'm a horrible reader. Most novels I've read, I read in bits. I put them down and move on to something else, and return to them much later. Reading itself can zone you out. I can't maintain that focus. My bookshelf is full of books, all with bookmarks stuck in them.

GAB: Do you find that films have an impact on your writing? If so, which ones have been particularly influential upon you?

RF: The Marx Brothers movies have probably influenced me. Other than that, I think only the approach has influenced me, meaning sometimes I'd write a scene as if I were writing a film script. I'd see the scene in my head as if it WAS part of a movie, and try to do it justice.

GAB: And music - you played in the band Lord John. Do you find much connection between the composition and performance of music, and the process of writing fiction?

RF: Only in the finalizing process. Tweaking a song is not that different than doing editing. Similar mind set. In both cases you're looking for the definitive final version of a piece of art. Other than that, it's apples and oranges.

GAB: Is "Tales" the only book you've written?

RF: The only novel. I have two e-books available for free download: mOsbURAnd and Garbage Head.

GAB: Was Tales from the Vinegar Wasteland a very personal story? It seems like there are elements of your self in it, though maybe I'm just wishing them to be there.

RF: Stupidly so, to the point that I was certain huge amounts of it wouldn't make sense to the general public. There were a huge amount of ‘in' jokes in it, as well as other personal things, such as things people had told me, or odd things customers at work would spout, and I'd scribble down.

The blue gary apple game is an actual game my nephew created where you chase someone, and yell, "Get back here, you Blue Gary Apple." It was too weird not to use somehow. He was also the inspiration for the flashback where the main character thinks back on a children's book he's read, where a boy's pillows come to life. I used to make up stories for him about such events. There's mention of The Jesus Lightbulb, which I thought would be a good band name. The chapter titled "More money for paisley shirts" was an unused song title for my ex-band The Narc Twins. Gregory has a fear of dogs, like myself. The main character has a phobia of driving, and is extremely introverted, also like myself. I don't think it's possible to write without throwing huge chunks of yourself into the mix. I think those are the bits the reader enjoys the most, because they come off as the most true. But I do wonder how much of the obscure bits I put in there made sense to anyone at all.

I also made myself a character in the book, and it's a fairly well defined representation of myself, seen through my own eyes.

I threw just about everything into this book, because I wasn't sure where I stood creativity wise. I was feeling as if I'd spent my load, was insecure about myself and the future in general, and pulled a Dylan. There's a story where Dylan was so unsure of the future that he composed "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" from the first lines of a stack of songs. I constructed Vinegar Wasteland the same way. It's a swan song, in case I never do anything else. It breaks the fourth wall, uses allegory, is self aware, and uses a bunch of tricks and gimmicks to grab the reader. I threw in the proverbial kitchen sink, thinking if this is the totality of my official output, hopefully down the line, someone will sing its praises.

I'd also like to announce its re-release by Australian publishers LegumeMan. It's an honor that they found my trashy little novel worthy of a second pressing. And many thanks to Afterbirth Books for giving me an outlet in the first place. I'd also like to say the best thing that could possibly happen would be if my book influenced someone who went on to have some success. Good luck to all you odd ball writers out there. Don't lose the faith. Keep believing and producing.