Ai Weiwei has been released!

Mel Bosworth’s highly anticipated novel, Freight, is available for pre-order.

This piece by Christy Crutchfield in The Collagist is well worth your time.  Promise.

Al Gore has a great piece about climate deniers in July’s Rolling Stone.

Having lived in college towns in both Wisconsin and Minnesota, I’m more than familiar with sports-born rioting. And no one riots quite like a hockey fan. And so having witnessed my share of violence-by-rioter, it warms the cockles of my heart to see that at least the crowd in Vancouver could be persuaded to refrain from book-burning, for Christ’s sake.

Sarah Palin continues her quitting streak.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is as pleasurable to read as Christopher Hitchens tearing some writer a new asshole. And when that writer is David Mamet, smug and self-satisfied after giving birth to a monstrously-formed, cobbled-together-by-orcs-on-speed political philosophy, the pleasure increases ten-fold.

Damn. That is a LOT of money. Go get some, writers!

It’s a great day for a painful story. Here’s another terrific one, from Ryan Bradley, over at Wigleaf. Ouch. I was scared of pit bills anyway. Now I’m scared of metaphorical pit bulls.

Dawn West has a terrific review up at PANK of a book I’m very, very stoked to read: Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water.

I got pissed and wrote how yes, yes YES  THE CIVIL WAR WAS ABOUT SLAVERY. Judging by the amount of comments (0) this is not very interesting to most people, so maybe it won’t be interesting to you, either. But I just thought I’d throw it out there. It’s interesting to me. But I am a history dork.

Today is just a bad day. It’s sunny but the news is terrible and there’s probably going to be a government shutdown and I hate the current crop of Republicans  who want to grind us all down to dust under the boot heel of Big Business more than anything and why are we in three wars if we could just get out of Afghanistan and go back to Clinton-era tax cuts which were still freaking huge our deficit would be pretty much gone but nope, we need to balance the budget on the backs of poor people and the arts and make sure the rich continue to see lower and lower taxes and make more and more moolah while the rest of us toil like serfs down here. Goddamn.

Maybe that’s why I’m enjoying all these painful, painfully good writings. Good pain breaks open the head, conquers bad pain. Distracts. Puts things in perspective. Read them, won’t you?

Anyway, that weird graphic description is just to say that this story, like anything you spend a long time on, is kind of near and dear to me. Here’s a bit of it:

Ruby knows she is selfish and silent and stark-raving. This is why she has to go away from everyone. This is why she has to go away from Randy; this along with all the other reasons that she can’t be with him. For starters, he will want to marry her, and then they will officially be Randy and Ruby Richter. They will have to start wearing matching track suits with puffy designs sewn on. They will have to start watching sporting events, and eating chips ‘n dip, and they will have to say it just like that: chips ‘n dip. Eventually they will have children, and they’ll have to give them names that start with R, like Ruthanne and Remus and Roxy and of course, Randy, Jr. They’ll acquire a minivan. They’ll use the minivan to shuttle children back and forth to soccer and baseball games, carrying loud and terrible musical instruments to band practice. She will go slowly mad until they have to put her in a padded cell shaped like a kitchen, because all she’ll want to do by then is bake brownies and cookies and cakes with names painted on in frosting, blue for the boys and pink for the girls and yellow for the ones who haven’t yet decided what they want to be, beautiful or strong because in this world you can’t be both.

By the way, when you’re done with my piece you’ll want to read through this issue in its entirety. It’s really, really great. Ravi Mangla, Meg Sefton, Peter Schwartz, Eric Bosse, Michelle Reale, Amelia Gray and Lindsay Hunter–yup, pretty much a do-not-miss-this-issue kind of issue. Thanks, Lauren and Heather. You ladies do some fine fine work.

This month, Robert Kloss is going to be remixing stories from other writers, and having them remix his own as well. For the first half of December, check out Necessary Fiction every day for a new remixed story from this very cool project. As Robert describes it:

It follows logically, then, that the idea of a remix also directly relates to the old conflict of authorship, although I’m not certain if a remix emphasizes or diminishes the author in favor of the text. I do know that I attempted to reshape every work I remixed into my “style” and I often worked hard to misunderstand the intentions or the meaning of the story I was remixing. In a way, I suppose, I wanted to be inspired by the wrong things.

I love that. Reverence to text is overrated. I can’t wait for Robert to be inspired by all the wrong things about all these stories in the coming weeks. He’s got a dark, twisted mind, so be prepared. Put the kiddies to bed first and then check out the stories to come, starting tomorrow.

Seriously. You really need to vote. I know most of you are voting. Yay! I will be right there with you. But I know (because I’ve had the conversations) that there are some of you who are saying, our politicians are total douches. They’re all contaminated with lobbyist cash. They don’t care about us, or public service. They just care about being re-elected. So why should I vote for any of them?

You wouldn’t be wrong on most of that. Trust me. I live in Washington, DC. I’ve worked in politics. I KNOW most politicians are, in fact, total douches. You have to be kind of a total douche, or a saint, to run for office. There are few saints, so there you are. Washington is filled with douches.

However. That does not mean you cannot vote. The douches are not of equal douchey-ness. We know this is true.  Your senator may be a total moneygrubbing douche,  but what if he or she also voted for health care reform? And student loan reform? And financial reform? And other good stuff, too? And the person opposing him or her has a platform that pretty much consists of “Government, bad. Guns, good.”? Then you gotta get out there and hold your nose and vote for the douche who has actually voted on some good things.

Duh, right? And please, don’t tell me you’re withholding your vote because the Democrats haven’t done shit on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Or because the Democrats didn’t keep their promises on immigration reform. Or cap and trade. Or the public option.  Do not try to tell me that they’re “all the same.” Don’t try to tell me you’re tired or busy or just not inspired anymore.

Withholding your vote to “punish” your party is stupid. The Democratic Party or GOP Party officials are not looking at a list and going, oh, man, Dick McSack didn’t vote this year. He must be really pissed at us. Let this be a lesson to us! No. Instead, the parties go, oh, I guess once again the young people didn’t turn out this time, or the lefties didn’t turn out, or the moderate Republicans didn’t turn out, or the Latinos didn’t turn out, so let’s not pay any attention to their issues next time. Let’s keep paying attention to what the tea partiers and old people and people living in rural North Dakota want.

Because guess who isn’t withholding their vote this year? Tea partiers! Because if you do not go out there and vote, crazy people (Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Carl Paladino, Rand Paul) will win and will take over our government and if you think things are bad NOW…just wait until next year. These people think government is evil, that we should all fend for ourselves, that if we want roads and schools and parks that we should pay for those things ourselves and if we can’t afford to pay (just like those lucky duckies who can’t afford to pay taxes) then we should just eat cat food and die. These people are NUTS. You do not want them in charge. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or Democrat or Green Party or Libertarian…you don’t want these people in charge.

So don’t be dumb. Don’t withhold your vote. Get out there and prove that young people care, that we didn’t just come out for Obama because he was so hip and cool, that we’ll vote to continue to push the issues WE care about, like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and gay marriage, and environmental reform, and meaningful financial reform, and immigration reform, and infrastructure, and jobs, and so on and so on. Make our votes matter. And then after the elections–hold them accountable! Make them keep their word this time. With two elections and a strong turnout under our belt, we’ll have more power to scare our legislators and make them take us seriously. That’s what democracy is all about.  It’s also about me not stabbing you in the head with a fork.

If you genuinely don’t know why your vote matters, shoot me an email at anoellesparks at gmail dot com and tell me where you live and I will be happy to tell you exactly why YOUR SPECIFIC VOTE matters.  Seriously. I will do this.

Also: yes, I am familiar with the South Park episode where the kids have the choice of voting for a douche or a turd for their mascot. And while I thought the episode was funny, the message was stupid. Especially this year. Sometimes, it really is kind of difficult to distinguish the politicians in both parties from each other. This year, though, it is not so difficult at all. This year, if you sit this one out–then you’re the douche. And you’ll be a douche with a plastic fork in your head.

Good morning, Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology some time and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day.

Anita Hill’s obviously way more level-headed and a billion times smarter than me, and her response was quite dignified. But in her place I think I would have returned the call with this message:

Good morning, Ginni Thomas, it’s Anita Hill. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and slap some goddamn sense into your inflated balloon head.  I would love you to consider an apology to me some time for the fact that your mean, crazy-ass, silenter-than-Calvin-Coolidge husband harrassed the hell out of me and paid no price for it. So give it some thought and certainly pray–pray that I don’t come to your house and beat the living shit out of you for stalking me and leaving crazy messages on my phone years and years after the fact out of nowhere I mean what the fuck is wrong with you? No, really? NO SERIOUSLY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU YOU MUST BE AS BATTY AS HE IS, YES? YES???? OK, have a good day, nutsack squared.

It’s probably a good thing that Anita Hill is more level-headed than me.

I’ve eaten a corn dog and a funnel cake, watched part of the Miss Mothman Pageant (don’t ask), checked out more Mothman merch than you would ever believe (including a sweet Katakana Mothman tee that Chris picked up) and now we’re sitting in a dark theatre waiting for the unveiling of a new Mothman documentary. Rule.

It’s all way surreal. It was surreal last night, too, driving to West Virginia, where I’ve never been. (I have to admit, as a Northern city kid from birth on, the South is always kind of surreal to me.) So it was just part of the surrealness last night when I found out decomP nominated one of my stories for the Best of the Net Anthology. It still is. I’ve never even been nominated for any kind of writing anything before, so this is really neat. Thank you, Jason and the awesome decomP! You guys rule. For real. And not in a Mothman t-shirt way, but in a real, awesome, high-quality, consistently great, devoted to promoting online writers and writing kind of way. Thanks!

Now to watch this movie. God, I hope they turn off this butt rock they’re piping through the speakers soon. It’s making me queasy.

Or maybe that’s the deep-fried Oreos.

Now, this awful excuse for a human being brings us…ready for it?…TERROR BABIES. It’s like Muppet Babies, but EVEN SCARIER.

Fuck these people. Can’t we just admit they’re nuts and hang a sign around their necks that says, I AM NOT ALLOWED TO TAKE PART IN THE DEBATE BECAUSE I AM TEH MORAN? Can’t we please?

The Laundry Room (Men and Woman in the Shower), 2009, by Richard Jackson

A wife and her lover lock her elderly husband in the laundry room for a year. Nope, that’s not the opening of a joke, but a news story making the rounds today.

Read more here.