I got a Pushcart nomination! I know, I know. I’m not supposed to be excited about this. I’m supposed to be all, me and everybody else, right? But fuck that. I am always happy to have validation that someone enjoys what I do. Anyway, this one is for my story  “Five Kinds of Human History” in the latest issue of Big Lucks (thank you Mark and Laura and all!) and by the way, you can also get that issue with all its goodness for the Kindle for ONE DOLLAR. How could you pass that up? You can’t, right? Here you go.

So, there is a VERY long awaited and spectacular issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens available, and I have a favorite story of mine published inside: “Death and the People.” Thank you, Bradley Sands, for publishing this weird thing. (For those of you that saw the very first ever Three Tents reading in DC, this is the story I read there.) In addition to my piece, there are stories by Laird Hunt, D. Harlan Wilson, Cameron Pierce, Amanda Billings, Kirk Jones, Andrew W. Adams, Amber Sparks, and a novella by Kirsten Alene, as well as book reviews of Steve Lowe’s Muscle Memory and Shane Jones’s A Cake Appeared. You can buy it here (and sorry but Amazon’s the only place you can get it right now!)

If you’re looking for Christmas/Hanukkah/Whatever gifts, I compiled a great list of gifts over at Vouched. If you just want to get someone the perfect new book, I compiled a list of my favorite books of 2011 over at Big Other.

I guest-edited SmokeLong Quarterly last week and you all sent me some really great stuff. Dang. So now I’m busy trying to decide which story I love the most (and this is not an easy task.)

Ravi Mangla is an awesome writer/person. So I am very happy to see that, in another really terrific decision by Uncanny Valley’s Mike Meginnis and Tracy Bowling, the press is publishing Ravi’s collection of microfictions, Visiting Writers, as an ebook. There are 23 stories in the collection, some of which have appeared in Gigantic #2, Everyday Genius, >kill author, and The Outlet.

Brand new Bright Stupid Confetti, with 50 amazing pieces. It’s–indescribably good. Just curated like honey. Check it out here.

I like what Everyday Genius is doing this month. Where they have a contributor, instead of writing down the same blabbity bla bio that no one cares about, actually point out something else that’s cool online. Good on EG. As always.

WEEP…to read Michael Kimball’s sad and creepy and lovely new flash, at Matter Press!

DIVE IN…to Chantel Louise Tattoli’s excellent, fascinating essay on the Little Mermaid statue and its anthropological history!

DISCOVER…interviews, articles and more, as The Lit Pub celebrates xTx’s amazing book, Normally Special!

GET PUMPED…and pre-order a book by Lauren Becker, Erin Fitzgerald, Kirsty Logan, Michelle Reale, and me called SHUT UP/LOOK PRETTY, published by Tiny Hardcore Press, the likes of which is going to rip your face off!

GASP…as you discover that you, yes, YOU, can get the brilliant Laura Ellen Scott’s new book, Death Wishing, on Kindle for exactly ZERO DOLLARS HOLY SHIT DO IT NOW.

Whew. Wipe brow. Exhale. Now go shopping.

History of Graphic Design Avant Garde from Minji Aye Hong on Vimeo.

Manipulated photo from the "Structure, Sign, and Play" series by Matt Lee.

I love this. Artist Matt Lee, inspired by Derrida’s essay ‘Structure, Sign, and Play,’ has manipulated a series of photographs to create a dialogue and “a tension between what is known, assumed and thought.” Very cool stuff.  Worth taking a look at the whole series.

The Invention of the Internet, by Bobby McKenna

This is so cool. Seriously. Go to this site and click on every picture to see all the brilliant, riveting takes on history that make up this collaborative project. United States history told in pictures, in all our glory and all of our shame. We are a weird and complicated nation, and this project says that louder than words can. The Momentus Project site explains this project as:

A collaborative project in which a select group of designers, illustrators, and artists create visual interpretations of the most defining moments in United States history as a way of informing others of our proud, yet sometimes troubled and forgotten past.

Contributors hail from around the globe as the most defining moments in United States history have often had a radical effect on the world abroad.

H/t to NotCot.org.

I love that Pantone does this. Just let me say that. And now I’ll go window shopping and pretend to buy everything in Deep Teal and Orchid Hush.

Sometimes, when I’m sitting and drifting and not thinking about anything at all, the music from King’s Quest V will start playing in my head. The piece I’m thinking of is actually a classical piece of music, just changed slightly, but I forget which. I learned it on the piano once, I seem to remember. And it was wicked hard.  It’s part of my default soundtrack, which consists mainly of computer and Nintendo game theme songs and 80s cartoon theme songs. And I’m a child of the 80s who’s getting old. So it’s pretty easy to press my nostalgia button. Sigh. Just keep shoveling crap at me that reminds me of my childhood. I’ll keep buying it.

Everyone else who comments in response to Christopher Newgent’s posts at The Lit Pub through midnight PST, June 30th, with be entered in a LIVE draw tomorrow to receive a $100 gift certificate to spend at The Lit Pub and purchase from the great and growing titles in their library. This gift certificate expires December 31st, 2011.

So comment already! What are you waiting for? Hopefully you’ve checked out the Lit Pub already, but if not you’d better get over there today, before Ethel’s wonderful book stops being featured and they’re on to something else new and exciting. I guess what I’m saying is, the Lit Pub is worth checking out at LEAST once a month. But I’d go more often than that if I were you.

This terrifying picture was taken by Peter Hinson, and you can buy it from his sister on Etsy if you click here.

One of my favorite books that I’ve read this year so far is Ethel Rohan’s wonderful debut, Cut Through the Bone. I finally had the chance to review it over at Vouched.

xkcd put together this chart that breaks down how much radiation we’re exposed to normally, how much the Japanese around the power plant and elsewhere are being exposed to, and what exactly that means in terms of health and safety. Really interesting stuff.

I’m reading this weekend in DC with Joseph Riippi, Laura van den Berg, and Paul Zaic at the inaugural reading of the Three Tents Reading Series, put together by the folks at Big Lucks.  If you’re here or close, come on over at 7pm Saturday the 26th, to the Big Hunt in Dupont Circle, and watch some good people read. This should be a very fun event.

Over at Fiction Writers Review, Tyler McMahon reviews Alan Heathcock’s short story collection, Volt. I’ve been very much looking forward to reading this one, and even if I hadn’t been McMahon’s review would have sold me. Love this:

Heathcock’s third-person narrator has the big heart and bright socks of a Garrison Keillor, but the bad liver and hard knuckles of a Raymond Chandler. The prose moves like an old flatbed down a one-lane road: with confidence, with wisdom, and with a trail of meaning drifting skyward in the mind’s rear-view mirror. It is the poetry of bowling balls through shop windows—of freedom, of consequences, and of beautiful sounds.

The reliably excellent Roxane Gay has a sharp (ha, ha) story over at the Good Men Project about a knife salesman and his would be customer. I won’t give too much away but I absolutely loved this story and guarantee that you will, too.

Barrelhouse is one of the organizers, along with the Baltimore Review and Potomac Review, of the Conversations and Connections: Practical Advice on Writing conference, which is being held in Washington, DC on April 16, 2011. The keynote speaker is Steve Almond, and we have three separate breakout sessions, with an awesome lineup of craft workshops and panel discussions, including some of our favorite people, like Matt Bell, Michael Kimball, Adam Robinson, Rae Bryant, Tara Laskowski, Randall Brown, Steve Himmer, Dylan Landis, Mike Young, Amber Sparks, Barrelhouse editors Dan Brady, Dave Housley, and Matt Kirkpatrick, and many, many more.

Registration is $65 and includes the full day conference, plus a year subscription to a literary magazine, a book (attendees will be able to choose among four selected books), and a ticket for “speed dating with editors” (where you’ll get instant feedback on a poem, or a few pages of a short story). The conference is held in downtown DC, minutes from the DuPont Circle metro, in the buildings of the Johns Hopkins Advanced program in creative writing. This conference sells out every year, so the smart move is to sign up early.

Here’s the conference site, where you can get more info and sign up. And you should! It’s going to be a good time and hopefully damned educational, too. In the funnest way possible, of course.